UK: Mentally ill and record number of children
locked up
Prisons chief (and new head of
Barnardos) hits at 'gross' overcrowding
The departing head of the prison and probation service
has launched a scathing attack on Britain's penal system, expressing his
deep concern that a record number of prisoners are behind bars when the
crime rate is falling. Martin Narey, a civil servant who has served
every Home Secretary since 1989, highlights statistics showing that
thousands of mentally ill inmates and a record number of children now
constitute a significant part of the prison population.
'As I leave, I cannot pretend to be other than
dismayed at a prison population now heading towards 78,000,' writes
Narey, who quit this month as permanent secretary at the National
Offender Management Service, the combined prison and probation service.
'With such pressures on prisons, and even after the investment they have
received, the numbers locked up often overwhelm regimes. Overcrowding
condemns about 16,000 prisoners every day to conditions - sharing a
toilet in a cell in which they also eat their food - which are simply
gross,' Narey says in an article to be published in December. 'And the
problem is not only numbers or the consequent overcrowding. Within the
77,500 we are locking up right now are about 5,000 people who are
profoundly mentally ill.'
The damning comments - written for the December issue
of HLM, the magazine of the Howard League for Penal Reform - come at a
critical time for the prison service. Reformers claim that Britain's
jails have only around 400 spaces left before they are full to capacity
and express fears about the consequences for prisoners.
The problem has prompted the Home Office to consider
radical options to relieve congestion, including recommissioning the
floating prison ship, HMP Weare, which was closed after extensive
criticism. Other proposals being considered by the Home Secretary,
Charles Clarke, could include early release of up to 700 offenders,
greater use of electronic tagging and converting women's jails - which
still have some capacity - to house men. In addition, a building
programme is predicted to boost the total number of prison places to
80,400 by 2007. Since 1995 the UK prison population has increased by 51
per cent, and the numbers have risen by 17,160 since Labour gained
power.
Narey, who is the new head of the children's charity
Barnardo's, says the rise is impossible to justify: 'Crime has been
falling for some years. Some crime, burglary for instance, has fallen
very significantly indeed.
'So there is simply no need for us to incarcerate the
numbers we do. And in particular, there is no need for us to lock away
3,000 children... and because there are so many we have not been able to
make children's custody the safe and constructive environment which it
could be.'
Narey's concerns about the children were echoed in the
House of Lords last week by the Bishop of Leicester, the Right Reverend
Timothy Stevens. 'The vulnerability of the young people in prison
service custody has been well documented,' he said. 'Some 60 per cent
have previously been looked after by a local authority; 85 per cent
exhibit signs of personality disorder; and 25 per cent of males have
suffered violence at home.'
The Howard League says the most overcrowded prisons
are also those with most suicides. A quarter of jails account for more
than half of all suicides. 'Overcrowding is the canker at the heart of
the system,' said Frances Crook, its director. 'This government has been
sleepwalking to a crisis. There are signs Charles Clarke is beginning to
wake up to the seriousness of it, but the government has to develop
alternatives to prison.'
A Home Office spokesman said it was spreading
innovative sentencing strategies to ease the pressures and keeping the
prison population under continuous review.
Jamie Doward
23 October 2005
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1598827,00.html
