Why more cells won’t fix the prisons crisis
WILLIAM TITTENSOR
- Since 1986 the prison population has more than doubled, and the average sentence has increased from 11 to 20 months
- Prisoners participating in educational programmes are 7.5 percentage points less likely to reoffend.
- Many prison workshops fail to provide any formal qualifications at all, limiting employment opportunities on release
Carl Court/Getty Images
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Britain’s prisons are at breaking point. This month, 85,840 people are currently detained across prisons in England and Wales, with the estate operating at over 96% capacity. In 2023, 66% of prisons were operating above their original design capacity.
The situation is desperate. In 2024, with fewer than 100 spare beds across the entire male estate, the Labour government was forced to release thousands of offenders earlier than planned. It is a system constantly running on the edge of collapse. When Andy Burnham entered No 10, he ordered an urgent review of the early release scheme. Today he announced the scheme will continue, although rapists and grooming offenders will now be excluded.
Once we begin providing the building blocks for change, the relentless demand for more space might finally start to subside
The solution to our unceasing capacity crisis has been framed as a simple one: build more cells. But this is an incomplete answer to a far more fundamental question: what do we want prison to achieve, and is it succeeding?
Prison’s purpose should be to ensure that those leaving custody are equipped to lead a law-abiding life, facilitating their re-integration into the social and economic fabric of society. The evidence, however, presents a grim picture. In the UK, almost 40% of offenders will reoffend within two years of being released from custody. We perform poorly compared to our European counterparts; the Netherlands and Austria enjoy a reoffending rate of less than 25%, while Norway’s is just 17.6%.
As a former police officer in Staffordshire, I can personally attest to the operation of something of a ‘revolving door.’ I was seeing the same people being arrested over and over, weeks or even days after their release.
Factors which had contributed to their criminality, including addiction, alcoholism and a general lack of skills or qualifications, were left unresolved. The constant revolving door of incarceration disrupted any chance of the stability they needed to improve their lives.
So before we resort to a very expensive solution of building more and more cells, perhaps we should begin by addressing what we actually do with people once they are inside. Once we begin providing the building blocks for change, the relentless demand for more space might finally start to subside.
Evidently, the system is failing to protect the public and ensure the meaningful rehabilitation of offenders. The question is why? Is it that sentences have become too short? Or is it that we are sending fewer people to prison than we used to, such that our criminal justice system is now a soft touch? Contrary to political orthodoxy, the answer to both questions is no.
Over the last four decades, the prison population has more than doubled. Within that time, the population of England and Wales has grown by just 22%. At the same time, average sentence length has increased from around 11 months in 2000 to around 20 months today.
The real crisis goes beyond just the number of beds to the fundamental issue of what happens inside prison walls. While politicians obsess over building new cells, a blind eye is often turned to the reality of prison life.
Former Prisons Minister Rory Stewart was blunt in his assessment: British prisons are ‘the most shameful part of our society’, and that during his political career he never saw anything as ‘viscerally upsetting as the conditions within our prisons.’
Reports by HM Inspectorate of Prisons have time and time again found living conditions to be unacceptable, recently describing them as ‘squalid’. Prisons are often insanitary and unhygienic, with damp and vermin infestations rife across the prison estate. It is simply naive to expect any meaningful rehabilitation to occur in such environments.
Conditions are only half the battle. Those housed in prison are very often poorly educated, lacking the qualifications and skills required to gain meaningful employment on release.
Depressingly, we are utterly failing to address these issues. In 2023, just one out of 37 men’s prisons received a positive rating from inspectors for purposeful activity. Where prison work is provided, much is poor quality and fails to adequately prepare prisoners for life on release. Many workshops fail to provide any formal qualifications at all, limiting the extent to which they can help prisoners into sustainable employment upon release.
The lack of rehabilitation harms not only prisoners but the taxpayer too. What all taxpayers desire, left or right, is to get bang for their buck. Spending £53,000 per year per prisoner and £500,000 on building a new cell in a system, which not only fails to reform but helps exacerbate existing issues is a problem which we cannot afford to ignore.
We have to stop obsessing over building new cells and start fixing the system as it is. Beyond maintenance, the goal is strategic modernisation by investing in education, skills and better conditions.
Critics may argue that in the choppy economic waters in which we find ourselves, extra cash should be used for more police officers, teachers and nurses or for cutting sky-high taxes. But our failing prisons are a money pit which costs the taxpayer more in the long run.
Offenders who participate in educational programmes are 7.5 percentage points less likely to reoffend than comparable prisoners who do not, with a 40.1% reoffending rate for non-participants compared to 32.6% for those who engage and an even lower rate for those who attain qualifications. Ensuring those leaving prison can obtain employment on release substantially reduces the likelihood of reoffending.
Shifts in culture and policy should be achieved through incentives. Governors’ prisons that consistently ensure better employment and lower rates of reoffending on release should receive greater operational freedoms and preferential access to investment. Bonuses should be offered to governors and senior managers who run the most effective prisons.
The motivation to engage is also crucial. Rewards and privileges within prison must be provided so that education is incentivised. Work should also be rewarded fairly; the minimum wage in prison is £4 per week. That’s per week, not per hour. Such derisory pay is unlikely to encourage meaningful engagement in employment. These wages should be substantially increased, with earnings split between payments to cover part of their room and board and a pot for the prisoner to access upon release, helping their transition back into normal life.
These proposals are not a panacea. For some, no matter what interventions you try, rehabilitation and reform will be unachievable. For those offenders, lengthy sentences will often be necessary to prevent their reoffending and to protect the public.
For everyone else, however, prison should provide the opportunity to change. Every offender who leaves prison, finds work and never returns to crime represents one fewer victim, one fewer demand on the justice system and one less need for another costly prison place.
Politicians can continue to push for ever greater capacity while ignoring the fundamental problems which prevail across the estate. Or we can respect taxpayers’ money and fund prisons in a way which ensures good, eminently desirable outcomes for prisoners, the Treasury and wider society. The result is a win-win. Whether we achieve it is a political choice.
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(UKR)