Sleeping in the jacuzzi.
Some inmates are living and sleeping in toilets because of jail overcrowding, a report says.
This itself raises the question of where the prisoners did administer their deposits; "slopping out" was meant to have been banned years ago. You have to admire the thinking behind stuffing an extra bed in the toilet area on one level: now that's private sector efficiency and productivity in action. Whether Serco are paid by how many prisoners are in the premises at any one time is surely beside the point.
Could this initiative use of cell space possibly be related to this?
Incidents of violence and self-harm have also increased.
Thankfully, things in some areas have improved since Anne Owers' last visit. It would have been rather difficult for them not to; Owers then said conditions in some areas of the prison were "squalid", that less than a third of ethnic minority prisoners thought they were treated well and that the "first night centre" put prisoners in danger from others, making 156 recommendations on which to improve (PDF).
All of which hardly provides even the basics for any sort of rehabilitation. Speaking of which, also convienently shoved out on the last day of parliament before the recess, the justice committe more or less ripped Labour's criminal justice policy to shreds:
The Commons justice committee found Labour's flagship criminal justice reforms had been a "significant contributor" to prison overcrowding.
"We urge the government to address sentencing policy in a more considered and systematic way and to reconsider the merits of this trend," the cross-party committee of MPs said.
The Criminal Justice Act 2003 was the centrepiece of government plans for delivering clear, consistent sentencing. But MPs said the act had "fallen short of its aims".
The committee blamed a desire to appear tough on crime and a failure to inject sufficient resources into community punishments for a rise in short jail terms, which they said could lead to increased reoffending.
"There is a contradiction in stating that prison should be reserved for serious and dangerous offenders while not providing the resources necessary to fund more appropriate options for other offenders who then end up back in prison," the committee's Liberal Democrat chair, Alan Beith, said.
"Short custodial sentences are very unlikely to contribute to an offender's rehabilitation; in fact, short custodial sentences may increase re-offending."
Vulnerable groups such as women, young people and the mentally ill were found to be particularly susceptible to being imprisoned even though "their needs could be dealt with both more effectively and more appropriately in the community".
The solution to all of this is simple: build even more prisons, ones that will have overcrowding built into them. Oh, except, the review that recommended the "titans" was, according to the committee:
a "deeply unimpressive" review of sentencing by Labour peer Lord Carter that they said was based on "wholly inadequate" consultation.
Carter's report was "a missed opportunity for a fundamental consideration of problems with sentencing and provision of custodial and non-custodial facilities in England and Wales", the MPs found.
No surprises there: all the evidence suggests that the truly effective prisons are local, small ones which don't completely remove the offender from their local community and help with their resettlement and opportunities once they're inside. Titan prisons however are far more attractive to the government because they don't need to go through the hassle of going through multiple planning processes across the land, instead building some of them near to already existing ones. They're also tough: just look at that word, "titan". Ooh, that's hard, isn't it?
Who cares whether those within prisons are reformed while they're inside, the point is that while they're inside they can't commit crimes, right? That's the view the government's pandering to, one which cares only for immediate results and tomorrow's headlines and not for the long-term. There isn't however any dispute between the Conservatives and Labour on this: both are convinced that more people need to be locked up despite everything that suggests it simply doesn't work. To do otherwise would mean having to challenge the orthodoxy on the right and in the tabloids which has bequested us the current mess. Perhaps if ministers themselves had to sleep in toilets it might concentrate a few minds.
Related:
David Ramsbotham - We need a royal commission into our prisons
Update: I just noted I misspelled "jacuzzi" in the title as "jazuzzi". Whoops.
Labels: Anne Owers, cushy prisons, Doncaster prison, Justice Committee, prison reform, prisons, titan prisons
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