Crossey, P. (2011) Interview: Rod Morgan, Prison Service Journal, 193, 37-42

Prison Service JournalIssue 193 1

P R I S O N S E R V I C E

OURNALJJanuary 2011 No 193

Where does the prisonsystem go from here?

Special Edition

W 344 PSJ 193 Jan 2011 Complete:Prison Service Journal 30/12/2010 14:04

Issue 193Prison Service Journal

Margaret AdamsPublic Sector Bids Unit

Maggie BolgerPrison Service College, Newbold Revel

Alan ConstableHMP WinchesterDr Ben Crewe

University of CambridgePaul Crossey

HMYOI PortlandDr Michael Fiddler

University of GreenwichSteve Hall

SERCO

Dr Karen HarrisonUniversity of Hull

Professor Yvonne JewkesUniversity of LeicesterDr Helen JohnstonUniversity of HullMartin Kettle

HM Inspectorate of PrisonsMonica Lloyd

Interventions & Substance Misuse GroupAlan Longwell

Criminal Justice Division, Northern Ireland Prison Service

William PaynePublic Sector Bids Unit

Dr Basia SpalekUniversity of BirminghamChristopher Stacey

UnlockRay Taylor

HMP PentonvilleDr Azrini Wahidin

Queens University, BelfastMike Wheatley

Directorate of High SecurityRay Hazzard and Steve Williams

HMP Leyhill

Editorial BoardJamie Bennett (Editor)

HMP Morton Hall

Contents

Crispin Blunt MP is ParliamentaryUnder-Secretary of State for Prisonsand Youth Justice. He is interviewedby Jamie Bennett who is theGovernor of HMP Morton Hall.

Michael Spurr is Chief Executive ofthe National Offender ManagementService.He is interviewed byMonicaLloyd who worked for many years inthe prison inspectorate beforerejoining NOMS in Headquarters towork with extremist offenders.

Juliet Lyon is Director of the PrisonReform Trust. She is interviewed byMartin Kettle who works in HMInspectorate of Prisons.

Nick Hardwick is HM Chief Inspectorof Prisons.

Editorial Comment

Interview: Crispin BluntJamie Bennett

Interview: Nick HardwickJamie Bennett

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Richard Garside is Director of theCentre for Crime and Justice Studies.He is interviewed by ChristopherStacey, Information and AdviceManager at UNLOCK, the NationalAssociation of Reformed Offenders.

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29 Interview: Eoin McLennan-MurraySteve Hall

Eoin McLennan-Murray is Presidentof the Prison Governors Association.He is interviewed by Steve Hall,former Governor of HMP Styal nowworking for SERCO.

Interview: Juliet LyonMartin Kettle

Interview: Richard GarsideChristopher Stacey

Interview: Michael SpurrMonica Lloyd

W 344 PSJ 193 Jan 2011 Complete:Prison Service Journal 30/12/2010 14:04

The Editorial Board wishes to make clear that the views expressed by contributors are their own and donot necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the Prison Service.Printed at HMP Leyhill on 115 gsm Claro SilkSet in 10 on 13 pt Frutiger LightCirculation approx 6,000ISSN 0300-3558♥ Crown Copyright 2009

January 2011

1Issue 193 Prison Service Journal

Cover photograph by Brian Locklin,Health Care Officer, HMP Gartree.

John Bowers is an ex-prisoner andformer commissioning editor for InsideTime. He is interviewed byMaggieBolger who works in HM PrisonService Training Services.

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37 Interview: Rod MorganPaul Crossey

Rachel Halford has been the Directorof Women in Prison since July 2010.She is interviewed by Karen Harrisonwho is a Lecturer in Law, University ofHull.

Interview: Rachel HalfordKaren Harrison

Jamie Bennett is Governor of HMPMorton Hall.

Book ReviewControversial Issues in PrisonsJamie Bennett

Interview: John BowersMaggie Bolger

Rod Morgan is part-time Professor ofCriminal Justice at the University ofBristol and Visiting Professor at boththe London School of Economics andthe Police Science Institute, CardiffUniversity. He is interviewed by PaulCrossey, Head of Security andOperations at HMYOI Portland.

50 Book ReviewCrisis and change in the British and Dutch PrisonServices: Understanding crisis-reform processesJamie Bennett

Book ReviewTurning the corner: Beyond incarcerationand re-offending and Trial and error in criminaljustice reform: Learning from failureJamie Bennett

W 344 PSJ 193 Jan 2011 Complete:Prison Service Journal 30/12/2010 14:04 Page 1

Editorial Comment

Issue 1932 Prison Service Journal

This special edition of Prison Service Journal hasbeen commissioned in order to explore the question:where does the prison system go from here? Thisquestion has been posed as the prison system is atthe start of a period of potential change.

There are at least three elements to this change.The first is that the global economic crisis that startedin 2007 has led to the necessity to look afresh at howpublic services are delivered. The Spending Reviewwas announced in October 2010 in order to providea national plan for tackling the deficit in publicfinances. This is to be achieved predominantly byreducing public spending rather than by raisingadditional revenue. For the Ministry of Justice this willmean a 23 per cent reduction in funding over a fouryear period. Meeting this challenge will mean askingquestions about the use of imprisonment. Can itcontinue to be used at the same rate and expandedat the same pace as over the last 15 years? Can itcontinue to be delivered in the same way? Will prisonservices have to be scaled back? Will they have to bedelivered by different providers? These are allquestions that have confronted governments aroundthe world over the last three and a half years and willcontinue to challenge them. For many, this has led toa shift in their thinking about how many peopleshould be in prison as well as what services theyreceive whilst they are incarcerated.

The second element of the potential change isthat a new government was elected in the UK in May2010. Elements of their policies are starting toemerge and will be fully announced in a sentencingGreen Paper. One of the key aspects of the policychanges include challenging the use of imprisonmentand arguing that imprisonment should not continueto expand and indeed should start to contract. Thishas been argued not only on grounds of efficiency,that this is not affordable, but also on effectivenessgrounds, that community sentences often workbetter, and on moral grounds, that the continuedexpansion of prison is not justified. Manycommentators have noted that this marks a shift inpolitical policy. The second distinct area of policyemerging is about the approach to the purpose ofimprisonment. There is an increased focus onrehabilitation and in making sure that prisons areeffective at providing services that reduce thelikelihood of prisoners reoffending on release. Thethird aspect is in re-examining the role of the state.This can be seen in discussion about the role of

commercial and charitable organisations in deliveringservices. This is not simply about competition but isalso about what has been described as the ‘BigSociety’, a broad idea about how citizens cancontribute to the wider community and theachievement of political objectives.

The third dynamic element of the current landscapeis the nature of the government. This is the first fullcoalition since the Second World War. It has beenclaimed by many, particularly those within thegovernment, that this marked the beginning of the ‘newpolitics’, which would be less partisan and morecollaborative. This is important as many commentatorsnoted that the rise in the use of imprisonment wasfuelled by political and media competitiveness aboutbeing tough on crime. If the ambition of a ‘new politics’were to be realised that may mean a debate about crimeand punishment that is more temperate and rational.

These issues are explored in this edition by nineprominent and knowledgeable players in the worldof prisons. These include those with senior rolesincluding the prisons minister, Crispin Blunt, the ChiefExecutive of NOMS, Michael Spurr, and the ChiefInspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick. It also includesthose who can speak from the perspective of those atthe front line of prisons including Eoin McLennan-Murray, the President of the Prison Governors’Association, and John Bowers, an ex-prisoner andeditor of the prisoner newspaper Inside Time.Prominent commentators are also interviewedincluding Richard Garside from the Centre for Crimeand Justice Studies, and Juliet Lyons of the PrisonReform Trust. The edition also includes two expertswho look at the issues from the perspective ofspecific groups. Rod Morgan brings his world-classexpertise in young people in the criminal justicesystem, and Rachel Halford talks about the issuesfrom the perspective of women in prison.

The issues were discussed with each of theseinterviewees through a standard list questions. Thesequestions examined the key points including the sizeof the prison population and the conditions ofimprisonment now and in the future. They alsoaddressed prominent government policies includingthe ‘big society’, the ‘broken society’, the‘rehabilitation revolution’ and the role of thecommercial and charitable sectors. They were alsoasked about how these changes might have animpact on particular groups including prisoners,prison managers and prison staff.


Prison Service Journal

Each of the contributors adds a distinctive andpersonal view but there are some common themesthat emerge from the interviews. The most clear arethat there is an emerging consensus that the use ofimprisonment needs to be reduced and its purposerefocused on rehabilitation. There is also an orthodoxview that is pragmatic about the operation of prisonsand services, being comfortable with a mixedeconomy of public, commercial and charitableproviders. Many of the interviewees also welcome thepilot of ‘payment by results’ at HMP Peterborough. Inthis innovative project, a consortium is investing upfront in a scheme to mentor released prisoners withthe prospect of making a return on their investmentby being paid for reducing the instances ofreoffending amongst those involved in the scheme. Ifsuccessful, this may provide a model for a newapproach to funding services for prisoners.

It is recognised by the interviewees thatachieving their aims will be challenging. In particularthe financial pressures will make it difficult tomaintain services and there is a risk that there will bepressure to erode the quality of provision forprisoners. Some of the interviewees are also realisticthat there may be media, political, professional andpopular resistance to reducing the prison population,

particularly as this is turning a tide that has beenprogressing for over a decade and a half. How willthis direction be maintained when inevitably a highprofile case hits the headlines? What will the reactionbe to political criticism and claims of being ‘soft’ oncrime? How will the resistance of unions orprofessional groups such as judges be overcome?Finally, the interviewees recognise that an aim such asreducing reoffending is laudable but turning this intoreality is difficult. What approaches work? Cancomplex social problems be effectively addressed inprison? Will payment by results be attractive tosufficient numbers of investors? Although thereappears to be an emerging consensus, turning thisinto reality will have to follow a rocky road with manypitfalls and potholes along the way.

This edition of Prison Service Journal is publishedat an important time and is an attempt to provide aninformed and stimulating exploration of the keyissues. This will provide practitioners and a wideraudience with insights from respected professionalsand commentators. This is an important resource thatsets out the current direction of travel and thechallenges to be faced. The success of this project willbe apparent in the years ahead.

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Prison Service Journal4 Issue 193

Crispin Blunt became the Member of Parliamentfor Reigate in 1997 and since May 2010 he hasbeen the Parliamentary Under-Secretary ofState for Prisons, Probation and Youth Justicewithin the Ministry of Justice.

He served as an army officer until 1990 beforehe entered politics. Between 1993 and 1997 heacted as special adviser to Malcolm Rifkind in hisroles as Secretary of State for Defense and ForeignSecretary. Whilst in Opposition, he held shadowministerial briefs covering Northern Ireland, Tradeand Industry, and Home Affairs and Counter-Terrorism and has worked in his party Whips office.He has also been a member of the House ofCommons Environment, Transport and RegionalAffairs Select Committee.

In his current post at the Ministry of Justice, he isresponsible for prisons and probation, youth justice,criminal law and sentencing policy and criminal justice.

JB: How do you regard our relatively highnational imprisonment rate?

CB: It is evidence of failure. First the level ofcrime is too high and we have failed to address thatas a society. Second, we have a high number ofpeople circulating around our system as short-termprisoners where their rate of reoffending is twice ashigh as those serving community sentences. This isevidence of our failure to effect rehabilitation.

JB: How likely do you think it is that thisrate will be reduced? How desirable do youthink this is?

CB: The job of the Ministry of Justice is toincarcerate those who are sentenced toimprisonment by the courts and we cannotcompletely predict that. What we have done is makeassumptions about the future direction of policy, inparticular reforms that will be presented toParliament in the Sentencing and RehabilitationGreen Paper later in the year. That has informed ourSpending Review bid and we have therefore madean estimate that the prison population will be 3,000fewer by the end of the Parliament. However, thesethings are inevitably estimates.

JB: Is Britain a broken society and to whatdegree do you think prisons can contributetowards addressing social problems such aspoverty, unemployment, family breakdown andanti-social behaviour?

CB: We have a major social justice agenda toaddress and rehabilitation of offenders is a key part ofthat. That is why I sit on Iain Duncan Smith’s CabinetCommittee on Social Justice. If one looks at the lifecycle of an offender, for all too many people it ispredictable from the circumstances that they grow upin that they are going to get into trouble with thejustice authorities as they get into their teens andprogressively as they become men. That path peopletake is far too predictable. As it is predictable, weshould be able to divert people from it with moreintelligent policies, particularly around earlyintervention. That is where there is going to be asignificant focus on the social justice side. Our workon early intervention should not be seen as separate,in that sense, from the work we are doing withpayment by results as part of the rehabilitationrevolution.

JB: To what degree do you think it will bepossible to achieve a ‘rehabilitation revolution’,significantly reducing reoffending, given thecurrent squeeze on resources?

CB: We have to because the position we are innow is not acceptable. We have to find a way ofdoing it despite the squeeze on resources. There aretwo principal ways in which that will happen. Thefirst is what the state does. We need to get muchcleverer about how we deliver our services as agovernment. That is principally through locallydelivered services and locally delivered interventionsto offenders. It is about getting all services, whetherthat be local authorities or health services, deliveredmore effectively. They need to be more co-ordinatedand delivered together. We as the state need to dowhat we do better. There are some good examples tobuild upon such as what has taken place inManchester where local authorities have got out oftheir silos in order to look at the overall objective.The second element is that there is a large capacity inthis country of groups and individuals who think it isthe right thing to do to help rehabilitate offenders.We need to make sure that all of those people, inthe voluntary and private sector, are engaged to helpus. If we do that we can then grow our capacity forrehabilitation. We have to do that because if wedon’t grow our capacity for rehabilitation, then itwon’t work.

Interview: Crispin BluntCrispin Blunt MP is Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Prisons and Youth Justice.

He is interviewed by Jamie Bennett who is the Governor of HMP Morton Hall.



JB: How do you think the actual prisonerexperience has shifted in recent years? How is itlikely to change in the next few years?

CB: I sincerely hope that they will see an improvingservice in prisons as far as their futures are concerned.If we have prisons where they are more focussed onbeing a working environment and where their time isbeing put to constructive use rather than simplyoccupied, then we will be better preparing prisoners fortheir life after prison and giving them a better chance ofbeing effective members of society. At the same timewe will be enabling interventionsto be delivered to prisoners notonly on release but also beingprepared for release along thelines that we are seeing in thepilot scheme at Peterborough.

JB: What do you regard asthe biggest problems in theprison system?

CB: Delivering effectiverehabilitation and breaking thecycle of reoffending.

JB: What are the majorobstacles to prison reform?

CB: Silos. It goes back to theissue of growing capacity. Wehave to incentivise people towork together in the widerinterests of successfulrehabilitation. For example youhave to make the Housing Officerof a local authority, who is underno statutory obligation since aprisoner makes himself homelessby getting himself imprisoned, toplay his part in the wider agendaof rehabilitating that individual.That is an example but it appliesto every other service delivered toan offender. We work too muchin silos and we don’t bringtogether our services to effect arehabilitation.

JB: How do you see the idea of ‘The BigSociety’ impacting on prisons?

CB: The rehabilitation revolution will be an earlydemonstration of how effective the big society canbe. There are so many people that want to getengaged with the Ministry of Justice, the PrisonService and the Probation Service to help us in therehabilitation of offenders. If we can make a successof that, by making it easy for people to help us andover time grow that capacity, then that will be anactive demonstration of the big society. If we don’tchange our systems and incentives in order to make it

easy for the rest of society to help us with the task ofrehabilitation then we won’t succeed. In that sensethe big society is essential to what we are trying toachieve.

JB: Are there ways in which the charitablesector and citizens can make a new and differentcontribution to prisons and rehabilitation?

CB: What will be definitively new is that we wantto achieve that through social investment and paymentby results. That will be new. I am told that thePeterborough model is the first of its kind in the world.

We will be looking to have awhole number of pilots andpathfinders that draw on thatmodel when we publish theGreen Paper. We then want tolearn the lessons from thosepilots and pathfinders. That is allnew. If we are able to activelyengage the voluntary andcharitable sector to be part of thesuite of interventions that everyindividual needs in order to turntheir lives around, then we willmuch more effectively deliver ourrehabilitation objective.

JB: In relation to paymentby results, one of thequestions raised by the YoungFoundation, who developedthe concept of social impactbonds, was whether there isactually a market for these?Whilst there are peopleinterested in investing in apilot, is there enough of amarket to cover 140 prisons?

CB: I hope we are going tofind out what the size of themarket is. One of the particularchallenges to us is to get theeconomic modelling right,looking at what we are going topay against. If we can get this

right then everybody wins.JB: Prisons have an extensive system of

managerial monitoring and regulation, includingkey performance targets, audits, inspection andsurveys of staff and prisoners. Is this affordable ornecessary? Should prisons be the subject ofderegulation?

CB: The general direction of travel of the newadministration is to trust professionals, localise andreduce the burden of inspection and audit. Having saidthat, prisons will always be a particular area where youwould want a level of inspection and oversight because

Issue 193 5

If we have prisonswhere they aremore focussed onbeing a workingenvironment andwhere their time isbeing put to

constructive userather than simplyoccupied, then wewill be better

preparing prisonersfor their life afterprison and givingthem a betterchance of beingeffective members

of society.



you do have people deprived of their liberty in closedinstitutions.

JB: What role should the commercial sectorhave in imprisonment? Should they run prisons?Should they provide rehabilitation services?Should they provide support services?

CB: We now have a mixed economy and there isno suggestion that is going to change.

JB: Do you see an expanding role for thecommercial sector?

CB: We are not in a position except to extract thebest value for money for the taxpayer so in the end thekey judgements will be around how we can deliver theservices we have to in the most efficient way.

JB: To what extent do you think private sectorcompetition has altered the terrain ofimprisonment?

CB: The evidence seems to be that it appears tohave raised the game of the public sector, in particularin terms of the public sector’s own economicefficiency.

JB: There are plans to freeze public sector payand make fundamental changes to pensions andemployee benefits. What impact is this likely tohave on existing prison staff and for the futureworkforce?

CB: No one in the public sector is immune fromthis and everyone is going to be treated in the sameway. There is nothing here that distinguishes the PrisonService from other parts of the public sector.

JB: How do you think industrial relations inprisons are likely to develop over the next fouryears?

CB: I hope they will develop constructively. Beingfaced with a particular challenge, I was pleased to seethe POA recognise that in a response they made to theSpending Review and I hope we can go on andmaintain a constructive engagement in order to ensurethat we all achieve what we would like.

JB: Do you think that is how it is likely todevelop over the next four years, moreconstructive engagement?

CB: I certainly hope so.JB: How should prison professionals make

their voices heard in the current debates aboutprisons and imprisonment? Is anyone listening?

CB: I am certainly listening. I engage on a regularbasis with the trade unions but there are a number ofdifferent professional representative bodies to whichpeople belong. I am also conscious that carrying all ofthe people that work in the Prison Service with us isvery important.



Juliet Lyon CBE is director of the Prison ReformTrust, secretary general of Penal ReformInternational and a Women’s NationalCommissioner. Recently she acted as anindependent member of Baroness Corston’s reviewof vulnerable women and Lord Bradley’s review ofpeople with mental health problems and learningdisabilities in the criminal justice system. Julietrepresents the Prison Reform Trust as independentmember of the Ministerial Board on Deaths inCustody. She is a vice president of the BritishAssociation of Counselling and Pschotherapy(BACP). Juliet writes an online column for TheGuardian’s ‘comment is free’ and regularlybroadcasts and contributes articles on criminal andsocial justice.

The Prison Reform Trust is a leading independentcharity working to create a just, humane and effectivepenal system. Douglas Hurd is its president. The PrisonReform Trust produces information, conducts appliedresearch, effects policy leverage and promotescommunity solutions to crime. Supported by the BarrowCadbury Trust, it provides the secretariat to the All PartyParliamentary Penal Affairs Group with a widemembership of 96 MPs and 93 Peers. The Prison ReformTrust’s advice and information service, supported by theHadley Trust, responds to 6,500 inquiries from prisonersand their families each year.

Although still a small organisation, the PrisonReform Trust has considerable reach and meets itscharitable objective of providing clear, accurateinformation on prisons and the justice system.Independent media monitors show widespread,sustained print, electronic and broadcast coverage. ThePrison Reform Trust website hosts over 1,800 separateindividual visits a day. Last year the site experiencedconsiderable traffic with almost four million page viewsrecorded, The Bromley briefing prison factfile, a digest ofup to date facts and figures, was downloaded over16,000 times between January and November 2010.

Programmes of work, many with a focus onvulnerable groups, include ‘No One Knows’, inpartnership with Mencap and Keyring, to identify, andprompt a response to, the needs of people with learningdifficulties and disabilities in the criminal justice system;‘Out of Trouble’, supported by The Diana, Princess ofWales Memorial Fund, to reduce child and youthimprisonment and ‘Time is Money’ a strategy withUNLOCK to reduce the financial exclusion of prisoners

and former prisoners, backed by Friends ProvidentFoundation. Considerable new work on resettlement,‘Out for Good’, is underway supported by the PilgrimTrust.

Previously Juliet was associate director of Trust forthe Study of Adolescence. On commission to the PrisonService and the Youth Justice Board, she directed theteam that produced the first specialist training for staffworking with young people and with women in custody.She worked for fifteen years in mental health, managingRichmond Fellowship therapeutic communities, and ineducation as head of a psychiatric unit school. She actedas independent advisor to, amongst others, ChildLine,the Social Exclusion Unit and the Halliday review of thesentencing framework.

For reports, publications and further informationvisit www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk

MK: How do you regard our relatively highnational imprisonment rate?

JL: I think it’s a matter of national shame. You lookto the prisons, the size of the population and the stateof the prisons, as a barometer of how civilised a societywe are, and I don’t think we look good, especiallycompared to our western European neighbours. It’s fartoo high.

MK: How likely do you think it is that this ratewill be reduced? How desirable do you think thisis?

JL: It is more likely to happen now than it was onlya matter of a few months ago, because you’ve got thepolitical leadership, and an apparent political will, tomake it happen. Without that, there is no prospect,because it is easy enough to talk the numbers up, butto drive them down, in a way that is acceptable to thejudiciary and respects their independence, is a muchharder task.

MK: Is Britain a broken society and to whatdegree do you think prisons can contributetowards addressing social problems such aspoverty, unemployment, family breakdown andanti-social behaviour?

JL: They can make a positive contribution,balanced with negative factors which to some extenthave been caused by prison reforms. On the positiveside, prisons can contain seriously violent offenders,and people can be confident that they will be heldoutside the immediate community for a period of time.In terms of the societal issues — poverty,unemployment and so on — the best establishments

Issue 193 7

Interview: Juliet LyonJuliet Lyon is Director of the Prison Reform Trust. She is interviewed byMartin Kettle

who works in HM Inspectorate of Prisons.



are constantly working against the institutional tide. Butprison itself is bound to damage people’s prospectiveemployment, sever links with family, make the prospectof safe housing less likely, and in general contribute toan ever-growing army of former prisoners, homeless,jobless and likely to offend again. So some piecemealimprovements can have counterproductive effects, likethe NHS takeover of prison health — the net result insome parts of the country is that you are much morelikely to get a detox or drug treatment in prison thanyou are in the community. This tends to encouragecourts, especially magistrates’ courts, to treat prisons asa sort of capacious social service, as treatment centres,and that is desperate for the service and desperate forsociety. If prison is genuinely apunishment of last resort, theneverything else flows from that— you can focus on improvingthe important things, healthcareand other services, but you don’tget caught up in having a rangeof social solutions inserted intothe prison system.

MK: So do you think thatthere is an equation here, thatthe better prisons become,the more sentencers will wantto send people there?

JL: Well, that is the danger.And that is why you have to havethat last resort principleestablished firmly. Once it is, I amvery supportive of anenvironment that would beconstructive and decent. But itisn’t ever going to be, nor shouldit be, a substitute for social services or any of the otherservices on that spectrum.

MK: To what degree do you think it will bepossible to achieve a ‘rehabilitation revolution’,significantly reducing reoffending, given thecurrent squeeze on resources?

JL: It is possible, but only if the first thing that KenClarke has identified is successful, in that he said thatlast time he was Home Secretary there were about44,000 people in prison, and today there are over85,000; that he finds that quite astonishing, hechallenges it and wants to cut costs by reducing prisonnumbers. If the Justice Secretary can succeed in thatprimary aim, then the rehabilitation revolution ispossible. The worst of all worlds would be acontinuously rising prison population and some failedattempts to improve regimes when there are absolutelyno resources in sight, in fact the cuts are biting hard.The other thing about the rehabilitation revolution isthat it has to be tied in to the concept of justice

reinvestment which the Justice Select Committee in theHouse of Commons has set out for us — the solutionswon’t all lie in what can be achieved in prisons, therewill be other departments called into play, and prisonscould become less isolated and more effective as aresult.

MK: A bonus question — what do you thinkwould be the best way of reducing the number ofpeople in prison?

JL: The first thing is political leadership, which hasbeen absent in the past, and the explicit statement thatwe need to do this, and this is why we need to do it —an explanation to the public by the politicians.

MK: The last time that was tried, the judgesgot angry about it.

JL: Yes, but we are talkingnow about a fantasticopportunity. Labour had it — theycame in with a tremendousmandate, and I think they failedin that they didn’t join up theirsocial justice with their criminaljustice policies. But now there isanother opportunity, with thecoalition government, and withan unusual degree of agreementbetween all three political partiesin fact, that we need to take amore moderate approach to theuse of imprisonment, to put it nomore strongly than that. So that ishow you start, and then we lookat sentencing. We are going tohave to look at the number ofmandatory sentences, we aregoing to have to recalibrate

sentencing, we are going to have to work out how totrim back the ever-growing number of indefinitesentences, as well as dealing with short sentences, andalso remands and recalls. Then you have to look at thevulnerable groups — women, and children, and peoplewho are mentally ill — and work out ways of dealingwith them outside.

MK: Would you abolish short sentences, orIPPS?

JL: Both, or at least constrain their use significantly.MK: How do you think the actual prisoner

experience has shifted in recent years? How is itlikely to change in the next few years?

JL: The decency agenda, the whole business oftreating people like responsible citizens, has beeneffective. I don’t believe all prisons have reached thoseheights, but if you look at the inspectorate reports, youfind that a number of individual establishments areimproving, but you still notice that there isn’t enoughtraining. That emphasis on the tests of a healthy prison,

8 Issue 193

The worst of allworlds would be acontinuously risingprison populationand some failed

attempts to improveregimes when thereare absolutely no

resources in sight, infact the cuts arebiting hard.



all those things like no use of strip cells for people whoare suicidal, (almost) no slopping out, a different way ofdealing with people, the Human Rights Act which gotrid of the governor having to act as judge and jury — allof those things are very significant and positivedifferences. No strip searching for women is also animportant next step. Where we are lagging behind is interms of family contact, and the prisoner thinking ofhim or herself as a person who will step outside theprison — there is a lot more to be done onresettlement, in terms of financial inclusion as well asjobs and housing — helping people to get out of debtrather than rack up more debt in prison is a major issue.And the last thing, and I think this is a really negativething which has happened, is theintroduction of much moreuncertainty into the prisonenvironment, because of theintroduction of indeterminatesentences, and the high use ofremand — this destabilises thesituation, and makes it very hardfor prisoners to serve their time,or survive their time.

MK: How likely is it thatthe improvements will bemaintained in the future,looking to the spendingreview and beyond?

JL: Given the leadership andthe experience of staff, peoplewill be very reluctant to let it slipback. There is always a problemthat prisons have a default toproviding the bare minimum; butI think a lot of it isn’t aboutresources, it is about attitudes and behaviour, andmanagement.

MK: What do you regard as the biggestproblems in the prison system?

JL: We have just talked about one of the biggestproblems, which is the explosion in indeterminatesentencing. And I didn’t even put it first on my list, butovercrowding is still a big problem— and it has becomealmost institutionalised. We now take operationalcapacity — the figure with overcrowding built in — asa measure of whether a prison is full, whereas thecertified normal accommodation is what we should betalking about. The Prison Service has accepted that ahigh degree of overcrowding is normal, and seems tosee it as a luxury to reduce the numbers to a level whichwould make the establishment more workable. Theother thing is the over-representation of black andminority ethnic groups — which is hard for theprisoners themselves, for their families, and indeed forstaff. And I suppose the last problem is that prisons, out

of all the public services, are still the least visible andcertainly the least connected. Despite the NOMSagenda; some establishments are still pretty isolated,and the modern Prison Service has got to see moreconnection with other public services.

MK: What are the major obstacles to prisonreform?

JL: The first one is what we have talked about —political will. It is not just about a straightforwardstatement, but that needs to be backed by the politicalwill and drive that makes everything change. Thatneeds to be followed by a preparedness to reinvestmoney. And none of that is easy. Because the solutionsto prison reform lie in a range of departments —

whether it is Treasury, whether itis Health, whether it is the DWP— we all know that workingacross departments is verydifficult, and always resisted. Sothat is another obstacle to reformat a national and local level, towork across boundaries. There isan issue of public and judicialconfidence, but that stems fromthat political drive that explains tothe people why it would make usa safer society if we had a goodlast-resort prison system in place.

MK: How do you see theidea of ‘The Big Society’impacting on prisons?

JL: It is a phrase that needsquite a bit of unpacking —people still put it in invertedcommas; but it does haverelevance, and has had for some

time, to prisons in a couple of ways. Firstly a number ofprisoners work as ‘citizens behind bars’ — theSamaritan Listeners are prime examples where prisonersreally go the distance to help other people in distress.They obviously gain from that themselves as well. Thereare also opportunities for volunteering, for prisonercouncils, which have expanded a bit in recent times.The other aspect of the big society which we have seenis the engagement of the voluntary sector, both on avery small scale, with local churches for example, and atthe level of national players, in relation to resettlement.There are a lot of people who either are paid orvolunteer to work to resettle people and to work onthe preventative side as well.

MK: Are there ways in which the charitablesector and citizens can make a new and differentcontribution to prisons and rehabilitation?

JL: I am hugely impressed by the WI ‘Care notCustody’ campaign because there are a lot of serviceswe can point to with possibilities for change, but this is

Issue 193 9

The Prison Servicehas accepted that ahigh degree ofovercrowding is

normal, and seemsto see it as a luxuryto reduce the

numbers to a levelwhich would makethe establishmentmore workable.



the largest women’s organisation in the country, andthis campaign was inspired by the tragic death of theson of one of their members who killed himself inManchester prison, a young man who was seriouslymentally ill. The WI is a remarkably democraticorganisation; so from one member, one woman in asmall Norfolk village, through the region, to thenational level, eventually the motion is voted in by over6000 members, who decide that they will have acampaign called ‘Care not Custody’, and they decide todo their absolute best to changethat unacceptable face ofprisons, and they are doing it in avery grassroots way. Their latestplan is to have people go intoschool to ask headteachers ‘Doyou have enough support forvulnerable pupils?’. They aregoing into police stations to askwhether they have facilities fordiversion mental healthassessments. They are going togo into courts and ask the samesort of questions. They are goingto inform their local councillors,their local MP. They are aformidable group and they aregoing to be backed by suchorganisations such as ourselves,other penal affairs groups, all themental health charities. That’s anexample of how other civicsociety groups can engage withthis agenda and help to achievesocial change. I think that’smarkedly different. There hasbeen a terrific history of groupssupporting people in prison, faithgroups praying for people in prison, but less evidence ofcivil society groups wanting to change things andsaying ‘This simply isn’t acceptable, we’re going tomake a difference.’

MK: Prisons have an extensive system ofmanagerial monitoring and regulation, includingkey performance targets, audits, inspection andsurveys of staff and prisoners. Is this affordable ornecessary? Should prisons be the subject ofderegulation?

JL: Given the nature of prisons, it is absurd to talkabout deregulation, especially when we have justsigned up to the UN Optional Protocol. In fact we aretied in to regulation, and seen as leaders in that field, sothat the Foreign Office and the British Council areconstantly bringing delegations over to learn about theconcentric circles that very carefully surround ourprisons, whether it is the Inspectorate, the

Ombudsman, IMB’s, or independent groups such as thePrison Reform Trust; because prisons have that capacityto default back to something that would not be at allacceptable.

MK: So you think the ‘bonfire of the quangos’shouldn’t touch prisons?

JL: Everyone has to take some degree of hit, but Iwould be very anxious if we thought we could just say‘Get on with it, folks’ because I don’t think that wouldwork at all, not because the will wasn’t there, but

because the nature of thepopulation, and the nature ofsome of those who gravitatetowards working in prisons, it willalways need to have that externalregulation.

MK: What role should thecommercial sector have inimprisonment?

JL: The latest commentsfrom the Secretary of State aboutprivate sector involvement inproviding jobs andapprenticeships for prisoners arereally to be commended, and it issomething the CBI have beensigned up to for some time.Employers can provide thatsecond chance and engage onthat level, On the other side,where private sector companiesare engaged in running prisons,we have to be wary, we have toask questions about vestedinterest. It is a good businessethic to grow the market, andfrom the Prison Reform Trust’sperspective we would like to see

the market for imprisonment shrink. Quite reasonablywe look to international examples to see whathappens, to see where there might be benefits, but alsosome of the disadvantages.

MK: You mean America?JL: Well, we hold proportionately more people in

private hands here than in the States, but yes, we canlearn something from there, and also from somedeveloping countries.

MK: To what extent do you think privatesector competition has altered the terrain ofimprisonment?

JL: It would be foolish to deny that it has and it hasto some extent done what that experiment wasdesigned to do, which was show that things could bedone differently, to introduce an element ofcompetition. I’d be sorry if it was the only way to bringpressure to bear on the public service to manage

10 Issue 193

There has been aterrific history ofgroups supportingpeople in prison,faith groups

praying for peoplein prison, but lessevidence of civilsociety groups

wanting to changethings and saying‘This simply isn’tacceptable, we’regoing to make adifference.’



prisons excellently. That is a blunt instrument — to tellpeople ‘if you don’t do this you will be privatised’. Theremust be better ways of improving management andstaff than by just threatening them. It has shown thatnot being hidebound by what were at one time quiterestrictive practices has helped but it has also shown usthat you can cut corners, and that that has not hadparticularly good results. If you look at some of the testsof performance, you see that some private prisonswhich started well have fallen back now. When we talkto prisoners, and we run an advice service whichresponds to about 6,500 enquiries a year, some will saythat they like being treated withmore respect, or having morefreedom; but others will say thatthe staff are less experienced andthat the prison is not a safe place.I don’t want to be doctrinaire, itis important to acknowledgegood practice, but it is equallyimportant that we raise questionsabout whether this is the rightapproach, what are thedownsides, whether this is theright direction to travel.

MK: There are plans tofreeze public sector pay andmake fundamental changes topensions and employeebenefits. What impact is thislikely to have on existingprison staff and for the futureworkforce?

JL: It is going to be verydifficult for everyone in the publicsector. We are talking just before the ComprehensiveSpending Review, but there will be a chill wind blowing,and we could lose some seriously experienced and wisepeople who will exit either to ensure they get a decentsettlement or just because they cannot exist in this newclimate. In future you want the very best people bothgoverning prisons and working in them: it is one of thehardest public service jobs you could imagine, with theleast visibility. People aren’t always proud to say wherethey work. If you look at the MORI polls on people’sview of their own work, the Prison Service comes verylow, compared to police or firefighters. There is apotential for loss here, because if you are trying toattract the best people, it is not all about money, butmoney and conditions count.

MK: How do you think industrial relations inprisons are likely to develop over the next fouryears?

JL: I should think they are going to be prettybumpy. In the past the POA has worked closely with theTUC, and that is a very sensible approach, because thePrison Service needs a modern negotiating union; andthe emphasis that the TUC has on that style ofnegotiation is important. It would be a great pity if thePOA were backed into a corner where they felt that theonly way they could operate was by threatening. And ifmanagement in the Prison Service was backed into therespective other corner, so that they felt the only waythey could react was by threatening. Whether byprivatisation or by clamping down on people in terms

of strikes or no strikes, then thenet result would be that prisonersthemselves would suffer and sowould their families, becausethere would be even less time outof cell, even less contact withfamilies, and all of that reallymatters.

MK: How should prisonprofessionals make theirvoices heard in the currentdebates about prisons andimprisonment? Is anyonelistening?

JL: When I arrived at PRT,Douglas Hurd was our chair, nowour President. At one point hesaid to me that he felt abarometer of the health of theprison system, and indeed of awell-balanced debate, washearing directly from prisongovernors and prison staff, or in

the case of police from police chiefs and so on; thatactually you do need to hear from the people who arethere doing the work. I think that is true. The publicreally do take account of what people who work in thesystem say. That is why it is a good thing thatapparently there is a slight lessening of pressure not tospeak out. There are restrictions on the civil serviceanyway, but it is noticeable under the newmanagement (and this was true from when Jack Strawcame in, but certainly under the coalition government)that there is less pressure on people to avoid mediainterviews, and more encouragement for them toengage. That is very good, because unless you get thedebate informed by people who are actually working inand running prisons, and indeed prisoners themselvesand their families, then you get a very lop-sided debate.So yes, people are listening, and the more that prisonpeople join in, the better.

Issue 193 11

In future you wantthe very best peopleboth governing

prisons and workingin them: it is one ofthe hardest publicservice jobs you

could imagine, withthe least visibility.

People aren’t alwaysproud to say where

they work.



Nick Hardwick began work as Her Majesty’s ChiefInspector of Prisons in July 2010. He waspreviously the first Chair of the IndependentPolice Complaints Commission from 2003 to 2010.His earlier career was in the voluntary sector,where he began working with young offendersfor NACRO. From 1986 to 1995 he worked as ChiefExecutive of Centrepoint, a charity and housingassociation for young homeless people. In 1992he was seconded to the Department ofEnvironment to work as a special adviser to thethen Housing Minister, Sir George Young Bt. MP.He was the Chief Executive of the Refugee Councilfrom 1995 to 2003.

Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for Englandand Wales is an independent inspectorate whichreports on conditions for and treatment of those inprison, young offender institutions and immigrationdetention facilities. HM Chief Inspector of Prisons isappointed from outside the Prison Service, for a term offive years. The Chief Inspector reports to Ministers onthe treatment of prisoners and conditions in prisons inEngland and Wales.

The Prisons Inspectorate also has statutoryresponsibility to inspect all immigration removal centresand holding facilities. In addition, HM Chief Inspector ofPrisons is invited to inspect the Military CorrectiveTraining Centre in Colchester, prisons in NorthernIreland, the Channel Islands and Isle of Man.

JB: How do you regard our relatively highnational imprisonment rate?

NH: I have the same reaction to it as Ministers havehad coming into their role. I began my working life backin the 1980s working with young offenders for NACRO.I remember at that time people were worried that theimprisonment rate was getting close to 40,000. Thenyou go away and you do other things and although youkeep a reasonable lay interest, you come back anddiscover to your surprise that the imprisonment rate hasmore than doubled. The same as Ken Clarke said: howcan this be the case? It can’t be that suddenly everyonehas got much worse and it doesn’t seem to me that bylocking up more people that we feel any safer. It is aproblem and it has got out of control. Apart from thosearguments, we can’t afford it.

JB: How likely do you think it is that this ratewill be reduced? How desirable do you think thisis?

NH: It is certainly desirable to reduce it. It has beenstriking how consistent Ministers have been in theirstated desire to reduce it. The targets are notparticularly ambitious; they are talking about gettingthe numbers down to 82,000. However, getting thingsgoing in the right direction is welcome. Clearly there isa difficulty as the increase comes largely from peoplegetting longer sentences for serious offences, ratherthan an increase in people serving short sentences.Therefore it is politically difficult to reduce it quicklywithout releasing people before they have served thesentence imposed by the courts.

The other issue also arose in my previous job incharge of the Independent Police ComplaintsCommission. Contrary to popular belief, most peoplecomplained about the police because they had beenthe victims of crime and they didn’t feel that the policeor the criminal justice system more widely had dealteffectively with the crime against them. That didn’tnecessarily mean that they were vengeful but they didwant an effective recognition of the wrong that hadbeen done to them. Part of the challenge of getting thenumber of people in prison down is making sure thatthere are credible alternatives that victims can see as aproper acknowledgement of what has happened tothem.

JB: What about quantum or scale? What doyou believe would be an appropriate prisonpopulation?

NH: It is difficult to put a number on it but what Iwould like to see is a steady decline rather than a steadybuild up. There is not a right number here but we oughtto be looking for a consistent reduction over time.

JB: Is Britain a broken society and to whatdegree do you think prisons can contributetowards addressing social problems such aspoverty, unemployment, family breakdown andanti-social behaviour?

NH: No, I do not think Britain is a broken society.We are a fortunate society as a whole and shouldn’tgrumble. However, some people have limited lifeopportunities and huge difficulties to overcome. Thereality is that in most cases prison does not help peopleto overcome those difficulties. If anything for theprisoner and the people left behind, in most cases itmakes things worse. Some people lose their jobs orsome people go into prison without a drug problemand come out with one. Having said all of that, for

12 Issue 193

Interview: Nick HardwickNick Hardwick is HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. He is interviewed by Jamie Bennett

who is Governor of HMP Morton Hall.



some people prison can offer an opportunity for somestability to sort themselves out. In my opinion, prisonshave to be more ambitious, it is not enough to punishpeople and keep them secure and safe in decentconditions. That is the baseline, the minimum that isrequired. Prisons have to be more focussed on reducingthe risk of people reoffending when they leave. Thatdoes not mean that you can do that in every case oreven in most cases, but you can reduce the rate atwhich people reoffend when they leave. That requiresprisons to focus more single-mindedly on overcomingthe problems that prevent that. We could do more thanis being done at the moment.

JB: To what degree do you think it will bepossible to achieve a‘rehabilitation revolution’,significantly reducingreoffending, given the currentsqueeze on resources?

NH: I’m cautious aboutterms like ‘revolution’ but Iunderstand the government’spoint about focussing on thisissue. My impression coming intothis new is that there needs to bea fundamental rethink inattitudes towards rehabilitation.It needs to be pushed further upthe agenda. I believe that we canreduce the rate at which peoplereoffend. What is interestingabout the Peterborough Project isthat it is realistic, what theyrecognise is that for some peopleit is about reoffending less oftenand less seriously. You can reducethe rate of reoffending and in the current climate thatis also an economic necessity. If we can do that it willreduce costs. It is not necessarily easy but we have toredouble our efforts in that area.

JB: How do you think the actual prisonerexperience has shifted in recent years? How is itlikely to change in the next few years?

NH: It is difficult to make comparisons being newin the role, but if you asked inspectors, they would saythat on the whole prisons have improved and thatwould tend to be the evidence from our inspectionprocess. That does not mean to say there are not areaswhere there are significant problems but overall therehas been an improvement in safety and the physicalconditions in which people are held. One of myconcerns is that changes to reduce reoffending andreduce the prison population will take time to happenand the money will reduce more quickly than thenumbers do, and as a consequence there is a risk thatpeople will spend longer locked in their cells. That

would be counterproductive. There is also a risk thatsome of the smaller initiatives that create improvementsfor prisoners will be the first ones to be squeezed, sothe regime will become more harsh and less productive.This is a risk and countervailing pressure to the pressureto improve regimes and reduce reoffending. We do notknow how that balance will be struck and that is achallenging problem.

JB: What do you regard as the biggestproblems in the prison system?

NH: There are three. I do not claim any fantasticinsights and I will probably say what everyone elsewould say. First, prisons are being used as warehousesfor people with multiple problems of which criminality

is a symptom rather than a cause.We are locking up too many ofthe mad and the sad as well asthe bad. Prisons have to deal withcomplex social problems withouthaving the resources or being theright places to do that.

That job is made moredifficult by a media culture thatdoes not necessarily reflect widerpublic opinion and is not willingto engage in a meaningfuldiscussion of the issues. One ofthe interesting experiences I havehad is that when I speak to myfriends and family about the factthat I visit and walk freely aroundprisons, is that one of their firstreactions is ‘aren’t you scared?’They are reasonable people andwhat that means is that theybelieve that prisons are mainly full

of violent people that need to be locked away to keepthe public safe. The idea that I can walk around a prisondoes not fit with that image. That is revealing to me.

On a more practical level, whilst I knewintellectually that drugs were a big problem in prisons,seeing it is something different. I have been struck bythe extent to which some of the prisons I have beeninto are dominated by drugs –— searching is aboutdrugs, safety of prisoners is about drugs, vulnerableprisoners is about drugs, control is about drugs,rehabilitation is about drugs. It dominates thediscussion that is happening in the prison. We were ina prison recently where in the surveys, 31 per cent ofprisoners told us it was easy to get drugs and 17 percent said that they developed a drug problem in prison.You think these places have got great walls aroundthem with barbed wire on top, how can that be? I’mnot saying anything silly like people let drugs get in soas to keep prisoners quiet, but there is an element thatpeople who work in that situation get used to it. When

Issue 193 13

We are locking uptoo many of the

mad and the sad aswell as the bad.

Prisons have to dealwith complex socialproblems without

having theresources or beingthe right places to

do that.



you come into it fresh it strikes me as extraordinary.Whilst I am sympathetic to the task prisons have, thefact that so many people develop a drug problem inthere is intolerable.

JB: What are the major obstacles to prisonreform?

NH: They are the other side of what I have said.Some of what needs to happen in order to reformprisons needs to take place outside of prisons. Prisonswill end up warehousing these people with multipleneeds if there are not resources in the community todeal with them. A lot of thepressure to put more people inprison comes from the mediaand with the drug issue prisonsare often dealing with problemsimported from outside. Thesqueeze that is happening inprisons as in other parts of thepublic services will be hard andwill make things more difficult.The only way to respond is to tryto free up prisons to be moreinnovative in their responses toissues You do see that someprisons, in particular someprivate sector prisons areinnovative in responding to thechallenges they face. It does nothave to be that private sectorprisons can do that but publiccannot, we have to find ways ofenabling public sector prisons tobe more innovative in theirresponses to the problems theyface. We have to be careful thatwe do not stifle that ability toinnovate.

JB: How do you see the idea of ‘The BigSociety’ impacting on prisons?

NH: There is an issue about understanding whatthe ‘Big Society’ is. If the ‘Big Society’ means noteverything being done by the state but also bycommunities and members of society having a role inprisons, then that is a good thing. You can see thatalready in prisons. IMBs are a good resource that arenot valued enough. It is a good thing that members ofthe community come into prisons on a regular basisand take some responsibility for what is happeningthere. There are ways in which business can beinvolved in providing employment and training forpeople. There are small voluntary projects that riskbeing squeezed out in the cuts. These help not only bycreating a positive environment inside the prison butalso help to educate the public outside about what isgoing on. Prisons should not just be left to the

professionals, there is a role for a range oforganisations out there to get involved and I hope thatthey have an opportunity to do that.

JB: Prisons have an extensive system ofmanagerial monitoring and regulation, includingkey performance targets, audits, inspection andsurveys of staff and prisoners. Is this affordableor necessary? Should prisons be the subject ofderegulation?

NH: I have spent most of my working life beingsubject of those measures rather than providing them.

My view would be that you haveto keep that constantly underreview and ensure that it isproportionate to what ishappening. Anyone who isinvolved in the running ofprisons and is thoughtful aboutit knows that prisons are behindwalls and out of the public gazeand there needs to be scrutiny.That should be a positive forprisons. One of the issues mypredecessor, Anne Owers, talkedabout was the ‘virtual prison’ –— there is the prison thegovernor thinks he or she isrunning and then there is whatactually is happening andsometimes those two things donot fit. That can happen in anyorganisation but it prisons it ismore problematic. An inspectioncoming in with a fresh lookshould be seen as a positive. Inreality nobody jumps for joywhen inspectors arrive butpeople are in general positive in

their reaction to us.JB: What role should the commercial sector

have in imprisonment? Should they run prisons?Should they provide rehabilitation services?Should they provide support services?

NH: I do not have a view about them being goodor bad. On the whole a mixed economy is a goodthing. I would judge each individual case on its merits.I would not say that the public or private sector isbetter or worse, I would look at what was happeningin an individual institution or a bid that they made ina competitive process, and make a judgement on themerits. The issue is not who is providing the facility,the issue is whether there is adequate control of that.Ultimately it may be a private provider but the statehas to be accountable for what happens. In the endthere has to be a direct and clear line of accountability,whoever is running the service.

14 Issue 193

Some of whatneeds to happen inorder to reformprisons needs totake place outsideof prisons. Prisons

will end upwarehousing these

people withmultiple needs ifthere are notresources in thecommunity to deal

with them.



JB: To what extent do you think privatesector competition has altered the terrain ofimprisonment?

NH: It is true to say that some private sectorproviders have been innovative and that has been aspur for change within the public sector. Overall theintroduction of the private sector into prisons hasbeen good because it has stimulated providers as awhole to look at what they do and how it can beimproved and made more effective.

JB: There are plans to freeze public sectorpay and make fundamental changes to pensionsand employee benefits. What impact is this likelyto have on existing prisonstaff and for the futureworkforce?

NH: These are going to bedifficult times for everybodywho works in the public sector.It doesn’t seem to me thatprisons are being singled out.There is a broader social andeconomic argument about thepace and scale of change butthat is outside of my remit.

JB: How do you thinkindustrial relations in prisonsare likely to develop over thenext four years?

NH: It is a concern. Myimpression coming in is thatsome of the IR feels old-fashioned and confrontational.On the one hand, in hierarchicaland status consciousorganisations, the way that staff are engaged andconsulted and their expertise tapped into is not doneeffectively. On the other hand that leads to a situationwhere the responses are adversarial. It strikes me asold-fashioned.

JB: How should prison professionals maketheir voices heard in the current debates aboutprisons and imprisonment? Is anyone listening?

NH: They do have to make their voice heard.With any profession it is easy to fall into debating thefiner points of theoretical detail with people whobasically agree rather than going out and explainingto the public or people that do not agree with you.The prison world has not done a good job inexplaining what really happens in prison, what it is likeand what the issues are. I am not saying that is not a

difficult thing to do. We need to do more and that isone of the roles of the Inspectorate, to answer someof the concerns that people outside have had and tryto explain what is really happening. That is of coursedifficult in the media climate I have discussed, but itneeds to be done. It is not about banging anideological drum, but we should be saying that ifthere is to be a debate about what prison is for,rehabilitation, numbers and so on, then that debateought to be informed by the facts of what is goingon. Prison professionals have a responsibility to getthose facts over.

JB: What do you see as the role of theInspectorate over the comingfive years when financialpressure will be at its mostintense and reform will be atits fastest pace?

NH: Part of our job is toexplain what is happening andwhy, so we have to be anindependent and trusted voicethat is reporting back to thepublic about what is being donein their name. We are going tomake some changes in how weoperate. I want to move to asystem where rather thanmaking a large number ofdetailed recommendationsabout what should behappening, we focus on theoutcomes we expect to see andexpecting more from prisons insaying how they will meet those.

This pushes more of the responsibility for determiningthe improvements that are necessary will be madeonto prisons rather than us mapping them in detailfor them.

JB: Should the Inspectorate Expectations bealtered to take account of the financial pressuresfacing prisons and the country more broadly?

NH: We should not alter them by saying that weexpect the outcomes for prisoners to be reduced. It isnot politically controversial to say that prisonersshould continue to be safe, that prisons should bedecent, and should give prisoners purposeful activityand help them resettle. We should not decrease ourexpectations for outcomes for prisoners at all.However, we should be less prescriptive about howthose outcomes should be achieved.

Issue 193 15

Overall theintroduction of theprivate sector intoprisons has been

good because it hasstimulated providersas a whole to lookat what they do and

how it can beimproved and mademore effective.



Richard Garside has been the Director of theCentre for Crime and Justice Studies (CCJS) since2006, having previously been the director of theCrime and Society Foundation and head ofcommunications at Nacro, the crime reductioncharity.

The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies is anindependent public interest charity that engages withthe worlds of research and policy, practice andcampaigning. Its mission is to inspire enduring changeby promoting understanding of social harm, thecentrality of social justice and the limits of criminaljustice. Its vision is of a society in which everyonebenefits from equality, safety, social and economicsecurity. In 2010 they have published Criminal JusticeSpending Briefs, as a series of three publications. PoliceExpenditure, and Prisons and Probation Expenditure,were published in mid-2010, with the CourtsExpenditure publication forthcoming.

He has written on a range of crime and criminal-justice issues. He is a regular media commentator on arange of crime and related issues, as well as givingspeeches and participating in conferences and debates.His current interests centre on questions of crime, harmand political economy.

CS: How do you regard our relatively highnational imprisonment rate?

RG: Crispin Blunt, when he gave his speech back inJuly, described the current prison population as anational embarrassment, which is certainly one way ofdescribing it. I might be stronger in saying that it is anational disgrace, but I don’t think that anybody otherthan those who are relatively fringe in their politicalbeliefs think that having such a high imprisonment rateis desirable aim in itself. The question is how you bestaddress that problem. The problem with such a highrate is that it is quite costly, and if you are incarceratingpeople and warehousing people who really don’t posea threat to anybody including to themselves, then whydo it? As Ken Clarke pointed out in his speech in lateJune that we hosted, it is about double what it waswhen he was last Home Secretary. The Conservativesseemed to get through their last administration quitecomfortably on a much lower prison population, so onehas to ask the question what is that significantly higherrate really delivering in terms of social benefit, andobviously impact on individuals, and then of course youhave the fundamental challenges about who is inprison, the enormous rates of mental health problems,

just sheer need, which I think is quite concerning. Atthe end of the day if you are incarcerating people whoare either very mentally distressed going into custody orbecome very mentally distressed as a result of being incustody, one has to questions about how you squarethat with notions of a civilised society.

CS: Where do you think the LabourGovernment went wrong?

RG: Well, it depends at what level of abstractionyou are exploring. You have the surface level stuff thatwas going on, so all the tough talk, all the populism, aset of legislative changes that increased the number ofoffences, and a general inflation of sentencing,including a displacement of fines to communitysentences, community sentences onto prison, and soon and so forth. Then there is the underlying set ofpolicies that they were pursuing at a broader social,economic and political level, that fed in to and wasrelated to those surface-level changes, and you need tolook at both of those to really get a full picture as towhere they went wrong.

CS: How likely do you think it is that this ratewill be reduced? How desirable do you think thisis?

RG: Well, it is certainly desirable. If you assumethat prison should be used firstly as a last resort, andsecondly that you should only be putting in prison thosewho pose a significant risk to others, then I think all thelogic of that position would point to a much lowerprison population than we currently have. And giventhat at least some of those people who pose a risk arealso themselves often quite mentally distressed, andhave all sorts of personal problems that partly led themto commit the very serious offences that they did, onehas to ask whether incarcerating them is the right thinggiven the context of their lives. How likely is it? I don’tthink it is very likely at all. Even when you look at somethe recent pronouncements of government ministers,which are in many ways very much welcome in terms ofrhetoric and change of tone, no government minister iscommitting themselves to an active programme ofreducing the prison population. Whilst I am sure theymust be doing their own internal projections andanalyses, I think the general trajectory will be upwards,and will be upwards for some years to come. In someways, it is a depressing view, but it is a realistic view. Iwould be delighted to be proved wrong in that one.

Why it won’t happen depends on what you thinkprison is actually there for, and how people end up in

16 Issue 193

Interview: Richard GarsideRichard Garside is Director of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies. He is interviewed by ChristopherStacey, Information and Advice Manager at UNLOCK, the National Association of Reformed Offenders.



prison. Of course, at one level, you generally have to dosomething that brings you to the attention of thepolice, so at a certain level it is not like being in anasylum or a mental health unit. At the end of the day,prisons are very socially selective. They tend to selectparticular people who occupy certain socio-economicpositions in society. So the regulatory role that prisonperforms in terms of managing and controlling whatmight be considered to be an ‘unruly’ or ‘undesirable’population needs to be taken seriously. I put thoseterms in scare-quotes because there is a certain degreeof stereotyping that goes on there. If we look at it morebroadly, there is some quite significant researchevidence that points to the factthat the size of a prisonpopulation is related to theunderlying social processes of anygiven society, and broadlyspeaking more unequal societiestend to have higher prisonpopulations than more equalsocieties, and societies whoinvest more in their welfare andsocial support mechanismsgenerally have lower prisonpopulations than those whoinvest less. Now we are goinginto a period where we areprobably going to see growth inthe rate of inequality, and also anongoing disinvestment in socialsafety-nets, so it would bestrange if, as a result of thosequite big social processes, wesaw a fall in the prisonpopulation. There is no iron lawhere, of course, and it would bepossible for a government to preside over these policieswhilst also seeing a drop in the prison population. It justdoesn’t strike me as being very likely.

CS: Is Britain a broken society and to whatdegree do you think prisons can contributetowards addressing social problems such aspoverty, unemployment, family breakdown andanti-social behaviour?

RG:Well, I don’t think Britain is a broken society. Ithink that that was an election slogan, and it doesn’tstrike me that the Prime Minister has been harking onthose terms since the election. It is an unfortunate wayof describing what are without doubt some reallysignificant challenges. I don’t actually think that prisonscan make any significant contribution to addressingsocial problems. They do entrench social problems, butI don’t think that is the fault of people in the PrisonService, who often do a very difficult job to the best oftheir abilities and in very difficult circumstances. But the

notion that prisons, and the use of imprisonment, canbe some kind of mechanism for improving the state ofsociety and in some way addressing deeply entrenchedsocial problems just strikes me as a bizarre proposition.It is difficult to see how taking certain individuals out oftheir day to day existence, putting them in a veryauthoritarian and highly structured institution, wherethere is lots of problems of bullying etc, taking themaway from their family, it is very difficult to see howthat’s anything but a very negative way of trying to dealwith particular problems.

CS: To what degree do you think it will bepossible to achieve a ‘rehabilitation revolution’,

significantly reducingreoffending, given the currentsqueeze on resources?

RG: It is interesting how themood music has changed on thisover the years. When MichaelHoward back in the 1994 talkedabout ‘prison works’, he meantthat it keeps these horriblepeople away from law-abidingcitizens and stops themcommitting more crimes. But atthe time it was highly criticisedas a speech, and it is interestingnow that even those who wouldconsider themselves to be strongreformists are engaged in adialogue about making prisonwork. The proposition that if youcould just get it right, then itwould be possible to reform andrehabilitate people, then theywill come out of prison asbudding entrepreneurs, budding

businessmen and women, and people wanting to goback to education I don’t find very realistic or likely.Clearly, you can think of individual cases, and therewill people who have been through the prison systemwho might come out the other end and may havelearnt something. Maybe it is the first time that theyhave had the chance to learn how to read and write,or it is the first time they have come across anybodywho takes an interest in their lives and wants to helpthem. So I am not dismissing that. Indeed, in one ofour projects, the ‘Works for Freedom’ project, we arevery interested in exploring those examples ofpractices and interventions that can genuinelytransform people’s lives for the better. But, in theround, prisons are simply not equipped to deal withthose big problems that people experience. People goout in many cases with very much the same problemsas when they went in. So, like ‘Broken society’, or ‘BigSociety’, ‘Rehabilitation Revolution’ is a slogan. I

Issue 193 17

... the notion thatprisons, and the useof imprisonment,can be some kind ofmechanism for

improving the stateof society and in

some wayaddressing deeplyentrenched socialproblems just strikesme as a bizarreproposition.



suspect there will be some examples, where maybethe reconviction rate has been slightly reduced.Everyone will get excited about it, but in broad termsthe general situation where roughly half the peopleleaving prison are reconvicted within two years Isuspect will continue. That is not necessarily becausethey are bad people. It is to do with the system as awhole. One of the innovations of the LabourGovernment was that the criminal justice systemprocess was much more tooled up to keep hold of,supervise and manage people, once they have leftprison as well. Broadly speaking if you monitorsomebody and watch them close enough for longenough, they are going to do something that theyshouldn’t do. So, there aregreater hurdles now for peopleleaving prison to get away fromcriminal justice surveillance, andthat is above all of the otherhurdles that they may face,whether it be finding a home,getting a job, or just rebuildingtheir lives.

CS: How do you think theactual prisoner experience hasshifted in recent years? Howis it likely to change in thenext few years?

RG: Now, I am not really thebest person to ask that questionas I am not particularly close towhat goes on in prison thesedays. I don’t get to visit prisonsvery often, and CCJS do not getparticularly engaged in prisonreform questions. It is notbecause we do not think theyare particularly important, it is just not where we seewe can have the biggest impact. I am sure some of theproblems around overcrowding can’t have helped thegeneral experience. It is difficult to see how theexperience can be in any way improved, particularly inthe context of squeezed finances, unless there weresimply fewer people in prison. For those who werethen no longer in prison, their experience will haveimproved, as well as for those who remain. Now, thereis one answer, which is to increase the level of staff,increase resources and increase the budget, and that iscertainly an argument. But the more desirableoutcome would be to use the current period ofsqueeze on budgets to actually start having an honestconversation about what the largest prison populationis that we can realistically sustain within currentbudgets which is also in keeping with good practice inwhat it means to be a civilised society, and use that asa base.

CS: What do you regard as the biggestproblems in the prison system?

RG: There are a number of different dimensions.Without doubt, there is a financial problem. The workthat we published a few months ago looking at prisonand probation expenditure made it very clear that prisonbudgets have been very stretched, and over a period ofyears it has a corrosive effect. The infrastructure decays.There is a major question about the role of the privatesector in terms of fragmentation, and what that meansin terms of having a coherent policy around prisons, butthe sheer number of people is the problem. It is abouttime that we as a society had some discussions aboutwhat size prison population we would feel is desirable or

justifiable. Prisons end up trying topick the pieces up of the failingsin other areas. As we have seen ina general retraction of the socialstate over the last 20 years, thedemands placed on prison haveincreased. Problems are not dealtwith at a earlier point, are greater,and I am sure that is one of thecontributors to the current prisonpopulation. One of the problemsat the moment is that the reformsector itself, in terms of its overallvision of how things could bedifferent, has collapsed into aform of pragmatism, with a fewhonourable exceptions.Organisations that 10-20 yearsago may have been leading thecharge in challenging ministers indebates about the role of prison,in terms of what size it should beand so on, are now just scurrying

around for service-delivery contracts. Whilst I canunderstand the pressures that they are under, it doesmake me think that a number of those historically loudvoices are now much quieter than they used to be. Butthere has been a certain exhaustion of the reformistvision. It is still locked into certain propositions, such aswe need more community sentences instead of prisonsbeing a classic of that, or community sentences need tobe tough and rigorous in order for prisons to be usedless. The world has changed an awful lot, including thedrivers for the prison population and the sheerexpansion of the justice system. I don’t think manyengaged in these discussions have really looked at that,but have repeated some quite tired and unevidencedpropositions.

CS: What are the major obstacles to prisonreform?

RG: To put it bluntly, I’m not myself particularlyinterested in entering into dialogue about making

18 Issue 193

It is about time thatwe as a society hadsome discussionsabout what sizeprison populationwe would feel isdesirable or

justifiable. Prisonsend up trying topick the pieces upof the failings inother areas.



prison work or to reform prisons. My own position isthat I am a long-term abolitionist. I don’t think it ispossible to do away with prisons tomorrow, but I thinkthat the use of imprisonment as a mainstream responseto certain behaviours which are regarded as crime is arelatively recent development, and something thatdeveloped as a result of the changes during theindustrial revolution. I can see that it is important at acertain level, and if I were in prison I would wantindividuals and organisations to be lobbying hard forimprovements in regimes and in changes in how I wasto be dealt with, but it is not what I feel isfundamentally at issue here.

CS: How do you see the idea of ‘The BigSociety’ impacting on prisons?

RG: Does anybody knowwhat this Big Society really is? Ihave never met the chap but I amnot even sure that David Cameronreally knows, apart from it beingan election-winning slogan. I willtake what I think is part of therhetoric, which is about theongoing development of a mixedeconomy of provision. One way tolook at it is the ongoing reductionof the monopoly that the PrisonService has over the delivery ofcustodial services, hence, theemergence of private providers.Now, of course, that is not linkedto the Big Society, but alongsidethat is a greater role for thevoluntary sector and communitygroups, all somehow comingtogether in a sense of a sharedendeavour to deliver on shared objectives and sharedaims. In all honesty this leaves me with a degree ofdepression. What it will bring out is not the wonderfulactivist society. It is cover for a fragmentation of what hashistorically been the role of the state. There are somesignificant question-marks about whether something likethe delivery of punishment and the delivery of servicesincarcerating people should be outside the remit of ademocratically accountable state, and that is where someproblems have arisen, for example with private sectorprisons in terms of the accountability for the moneyspent, and of officers working in those prisons, andlikewise with the third sector.

CS: Are there ways in which the charitablesector and citizens can make a new and differentcontribution to prisons and rehabilitation?

RG: There are certainly other ways in which thegovernment would like them to be involved. We haveseen the emergence of partnerships between thevoluntary sector and private providers in running

prisons, and I think we will see that in other areas, forexample in the Probation Service, and in the wholeongoing development of commissioning andcontestability, basically with third-sector partnerscompeting with Probation Service and the PrisonService for a slice of the cake. Given the pressure onfunding I can understand why there may be some kindof imperative to engage in that. But it is certainly notobligatory for them to be engaged in that. Assomebody who has worked in a number oforganisations over the years, including those whohave delivered front-line services, I have real concernsabout the future of charitable independence,especially those who become so dependent ongovernment for the delivery of their charitable

objectives throughcommissioning andcontestability. They end upbecoming para-statal bodies,they are not really independent.That said, I think there are somereal opportunities there as well.The time is rife for anengagement and discussionabout what makes genuinely fortransformative practice. So if youare talking about the kinds ofindividuals who often haveprofound social personal needs,in many cases through no faultof their own, there is animportant role for active citizensin the third-sector to operate inhelping and supporting thosepeople, providing interventionsand support that genuinely

changes their lives. I am sceptical about the degree towhich that can be achieved through the criminaljustice process, and engaging with that process,because so much of the pressure is on the narrowterms of reducing re-offending. The historic charitablevision of ‘looking after’ people and helping them isprofoundly alien in the criminal justice process. Thereis a very active role in charities doing what they havealso done which is helping people — I just don’t thinkthat partnering the criminal justice system is the bestway to do this.

CS: Prisons have an extensive system ofmanagerial monitoring and regulation, includingkey performance targets, audits, inspection andsurveys of staff and prisoners. Is this affordableor necessary? Should prisons be the subject ofderegulation?

RG: Taking affordability first, the overall budgetfor the prison system is around £3-4 billion. Given theoverall budget deficit it is a tiny drop in the ocean. So,

Issue 193 19

There is a veryactive role in

charities doing whatthey have also donewhich is helpingpeople — I justdon’t think thatpartnering thecriminal justicesystem is the bestway to do this.



at one level, the current system is entirely affordable.As one of the richest countries in the world, we couldno doubt afford a much larger prison system were weso minded, and perhaps that is where we are sadlygoing. But the question is then what you can’t spendmoney on, and I can certainly think of better ways ofspending it than locking people up in prison. Given thecurrent financial pressures it seems to me unlikely thatthe prison system is affordable in its current structure.But that is true for the criminal justice system as awhole.

As for all these targets, I am sure they must justdrive prison governors and staff to distraction. Theymust feel like they spend all their time filling out formsrather than be actually doing the work they would liketo do. There is clearly a balanceto be struck. Prisons, like otherareas of public service, are inreceipt in public funds, and sothere must be a degree ofaccountability there. It is notobvious to me that filling out aload of forms that have beendreamt up by bureaucrats inWhitehall is a particularlyeffective way of achieving that.

CS: What role should thecommercial sector have inimprisonment?

RG: I am not in favour ofprivate prisons. If I were Ministerof Justice, I would close allprivate prisons. In my view it isvery clear that the only socialbody that should be responsiblefor the prison system is the state. I can see the role,within a complex state bureaucracy, where all prisonsare run by the state, then at a certain level, whethercleaning, education, catering, building work, you cansee all sorts of areas where it may be desirable or costeffective to involve other providers. But in my view itneeds to be under the very clear oversight andaccountability of the state, and that is not the case atthe moment. So, in answer to the question, my answeris a much smaller role to what it currently has.

CS: To what extent do you think private sectorcompetition has altered the terrain ofimprisonment?

RG: It has altered it quite significantly. Those infavour of private prisons would say it has forced thePrison Service to up its game, that there are some verygood private prisons doing some very good work. I amsure that may well be the case. Maybe that is simplysaying new prison buildings are more pleasant thatdecrepit old Victorian buildings. Perhaps where youthink about the architecture and design you can do

some interesting things. I suppose where it hasfundamentally altered the terrain is that it is onlybecause of the injection of private capital into theprison system that we have been able to have theincrease in prison population that we have had,because it is only through private finance that hasallowed the government to keep all of this additionalcapital expenditure off the balance sheet. So, in thatsense, the involvement of the private sector has beenan entirely negative one.

CS: There are plans to freeze public sector payand make fundamental changes to pensions andemployee benefits. What impact is this likely tohave on existing prison staff and for the futureworkforce?

RG: I am sure it will have animpact. I expect the prisonofficers, including the POA, arevery unhappy about the situation.There is a lot of talk about a newwinter of discontent. Prisons arean unusual bit of public servicesin some way as the POA is notofficially recognised as a tradeunion, with trade union rights,quite wrongly in my view. Leavingthat to one side I can’t imagineworking in prisons in a very niceplace to be, and so I suspect therewill quite a lot of disruption, if notin the walk out and strike version,then there will be disruption ofother sorts, which will have aknock-on effect on prisoners.

CS: How do you thinkindustrial relations in prisons are likely to developover the next four years?

RG: I sometimes wonder whether, when you lookat the very ambivalent relationship between tradeunions and the Labour Party, and because manythought they were on the same side, having a verypublic dispute was quite difficult for many trade unions.Traditionally, Conservative governments and tradeunions haven’t always seen eye to eye. Indeed, the lastsignificant trade union conflict was in the mid-80 underthe Thatcher government. I am not sure that we willsee something like that again. I think actually tradeunion rules have now changed such a degree thatmakes that quite difficult, but I can’t see that industrialrelations in prisons will improve as a result of increasednumbers in prison, squeezes in budgets, and strugglingconditions. Who is going to go into work in a morningwith a spring in their step knowing that? So it is notgoing to be pretty I suspect. Whether we will see thesevere disruptions we have seen in previous decades isanother matter.

20 Issue 193

Given the currentfinancial pressures it

seems to meunlikely that theprison system isaffordable in itscurrent structure.But that is true forthe criminal justicesystem as a whole.



CS: How should prison professionals maketheir voices heard in the current debates aboutprisons and imprisonment? Is anyone listening?

RG: There are some real difficulties with prisonprofessionals, because it depends at what level youare talking about. It won’t be particularly insightfulobservation on my part to state the obvious that thePGA and the POA have not always seen eye to eye,but it seems to me that they have a level of sharedinterest in defending public services and workingtowards achieving objectives. But I understand thatrelationships in prison can often stop that activityfrom taking place. As for whether anybody islistening, well six months ago who would have saidwe would have aConservative/Liberal Democratcoalition. Three months ago,many would have expected anelection early next year, or atleast the following year. TheCoalition is looking quitedurable, though we arebeginning to see some of thefirst cracks developing in anumber of different areas.When the Government becomesmuch more entrenched andembedded in, and what will bequite unpopular series of cuts,then an awful lot of tension willbuild up, and which might givethose working in the PrisonService who might want toarticulate their views somethingto play for. The discussionaround that will need to be led by the PGA and thePOA. In my view, the argument needs to be moreproactive than simply defending jobs, importantthough that may be. There needs to be somethingabout articulating and developing a vision for whatkind of prison system we want; how large, what kindof people are in it, over that time, and what the stepsare to getting to it, which is not really being discussedat the moment.

The great strength of any organised voice is thatthey can claim to be a voice of many. When peoplecome together to represent a united position, theycan achieve things that people acting individuallycan’t achieve. So, some form of collective negotiationand action is both desirable and necessary. But it isnot the be all and end all. The challenge for any tradeunion is to try and democratically reflect the interestsof their members. There are other mechanisms, suchas staff forums, but it is just not particularly obviousto me necessarily that the management will listen. Itcan be useful way of testing the water, getting a

sense of what people are feeling, but whetheranything fundamentally changes as a result is anothermatter.

As for prisoners giving their views, that is one ofthe great areas of discussion that is not had at all themoment. It happened in a small scale, such as theongoing debate around prisoners’ right to vote,which strikes me as almost so obvious that it stilldistresses and depresses me that it is not taken forgranted. But it needs to be much more than that. Atthe end of the day, if you have been put in prison itdoes not or should not mean that you lose of all ofyour rights. The Prison Service does not own you. Youmay be in prison, but you are still somebody with

family, friends and aspirations,with a past, a present and afuture. Those things are veryimportant. It is a disgrace thatpeople in prison have so littlevoice and so little power toexpress their desires, and theirneeds and their wants. But howyou achieve that I don’t know,because I think it would requiresuch a change in the way thatprisons operated that theywould not be recognisable asprisons anymore. Prisons arevery hierarchical, which canaffect everybody that is there;both prisons and staff. If you aregoing to have a genuineprisoner voice, it would mean avery fundamental change to theway that prisons operate.

CS: What current work are CCJS involved in?RG: The Works for Freedom project is an online

resource for practitioners, to stimulate debate,reflection and knowledge sharing, which will includepeople working in the criminal justice system but alsothose working with those groups vulnerable tocapture by the process. We are doing a prison-basedproject which will be talking to individuals who havecommitted very serious violence acts, exploring theirbiographies to identify points in their lives as a way ofrecovering their sense of being real people.

We are also doing a piece of work looking atreformist strategies going forward, looking at thechallenges that the reform sector face and how thatmight relate to what the research evidence points toand explore where that may lead, in what is a verydifficult time for reformism.

We are also doing a new series of criminal justicepolicies, first of which will be coming out early nextyear, and we’re finally just finishing the third of ourseries of criminal justice expenditure. We published

Issue 193 21

The Prison Servicedoes not own you.You may be in

prison, but you arestill somebody withfamily, friends andaspirations, with apast, a present anda future. Thosethings are veryimportant.



one back in June on the Police, one on Prisons andProbation in July, and we’re just finishing the Courtsbriefing which will be published in the next few weeks.

We are very interested in care-leavers enteringthe criminal justice system, and whether their needsare being met, that is why is there such a strikingcohort of people who come out of care and spend ayear or two trying to making sense of their lives andthen end up in prison. That is part of a larger piece ofwork which we are interested in which is aboutexploring and promoting debate on why it is thatpeople seem to move around different institutions,

from when the old asylums were closed, to children incare, to people coming out of the armed services, andhow that revolving door can be addressed.

We are also a membership organisation, so if anyof your readers would like to join, we can offer a verygood rate. We also have a monthly email bulletinwhich is free and which, rather than just saying whatwe have done, it is about trying to take a sidewaysglance at recent policy developments, includingreports that have come out, and some importantnews stories, as well as the very popular ‘Quote ofthe Month’.

22 Issue 193



Michael Spurr joined the Prison Service in 1983,after graduating from Durham University. He spenta year as a prison officer at HMP Leeds beforestarting his training as an assistant governor at HMPStanford Hill. He then held posts at HMP Swalesideand served as Deputy Governor of HMYOIAylesbury before becoming Governor of Aylesburyin 1993. Following this he took up an HQ postmanaging the prisoner population andresponsibility for the Control Review Committeesystem for managing disruptive prisoners thatresulted in the creation of the Close SupervisionCentre system. In 1996 he becameGovernor of HMPWayland, a category C training prison, andsubsequently he became Governor of HMP and YOINorwich, a split site local and young offenderprison. In 2000 he was promoted to Area Managerfirst for London North and East Anglia and then,following the restructuring to align Areas withGovernment Regions, for the Eastern Area. Hebecame a Prison Service Management Boardmember in 2003 as Director of Operations,managing the areamanagers and responsible for allprisons other than the high security and inDecember 2006, he becameDeputy Director Generalof HM Prison Service. Following the reorganisationof the National Offender Management Service(NOMS) announced in January 2008, he took on therole of Chief Operating Officer, responsible foroperational delivery across Prisons and Probation.In June 2010 he took on his current role as ChiefExecutive of NOMS.

This interview took place in the week in which thegovernment cuts were announced and not long afterthe new Minister for Justice had announced his plansfor a ‘rehabilitation revolution’.

ML: The population pressures now are not assevere as they were, but we still have a highnational imprisonment rate. How big an issue isthis for you?

MS: Ensuring we have got enough places toaccommodate all the prisoners the courts send to us hasbeen a key pressure on the prison service over a numberof years. It is still important. It is true that at the momentwe have got more space than we have been used to butto put that in context, we are still only talking about anadditional headroom of about 2,000 spaces with 85,000prisoners. Our job is to make sure we accommodateprisoners sent to us from the courts in decent conditions

and that we work with them in prison in order to supportrehabilitation. We have to make sure that we managepopulation pressures to enable us to work positively withprisoners.

ML: Do you see this rate coming down underthe coalition government?

MS: The Secretary of State has made it clear that weshould look at the whole sentencing framework. He haspointed out his surprise at coming back, having beenHome Secretary in the early 90s, to find that the prisonpopulation has doubled, and there has been lots ofcommentary on that. From an operational perspective ithas been a significant achievement to have managedthat huge growth in the population and improve the waythat we manage prisons, the way we treat prisoners andthe rehabilitation opportunities that we have given them.I have already said we could do much more if thepopulation was more manageable and lower than it isnow.

ML: Do you think it is possible to deliver therehabilitation revolution given the constraints thatare also upon us at this time?

MS: It is refreshing that the coalition governmenthas made a clear point about wanting to focus onrehabilitation. That is something that all of us who workwith offenders should be really pleased about. It is rightthat we are challenged about whether we can do moreabout rehabilitation. Re-offending rates have reduced inrecent years and that has been a real achievement but,when 61 per cent of people coming into custody servingsentences of less than twelve months re-offend quicklywhen they go out, that can’t be a system that any of uscan be pleased with. Therefore it is the right challenge tosay can we do more. Of course, doing more when wehave resource constraints is going to be incrediblydifficult and that is why the government has asked howcan we do this differently? How can we energisedifferent sectors of the community to work with us toreduce re-offending? Can we get better engagementfrom the private sector, from the third sector? Can weuse mechanisms like payment by results? If we can getthese things working could they lead us to do the sorts ofthe things the Justice Select Committee has spokenabout previously: re-investing away from custody intoearly intervention? That has got to be the right approach.There is a difficulty in how we deliver that in what isgoing to be a really challenging financial time, but theambition is a proper ambition, a good ambition and I’mpleased to have that as a focus to work on.

Issue 193 23

Interview: Michael SpurrMichael Spurr is Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service.He is interviewed byMonica Lloyd who worked for many years in the prison inspectorate before rejoining NOMS in

Headquarters to work with extremist offenders.



ML: So you think there are ways that thecharitable sector and citizens of this Big Society canmake a contribution?

MS: There has been a significant contributionalready made by the third sector and voluntary sectorpartners over the last ten years or more. Prisons havechanged enormously over that period, with a muchgreater engagement from a much wider range of peoplefrom the community. We forget that ten, fifteen yearsago it wasn’t normal to have Job Centre Plus or thirdsector providers supporting offenders on drugs, or tohave health services coming into the prison from outside.Can we expand it further? Yes, we can and it’s reallyimportant that prisons are seen as part of the communityand not separate from them. That approach has helpedus to embed the decency agenda; where we are notisolating prisons from the rest ofthe community but breakingdown those institutional barriersand recognising that the majorityof prisoners only stay with us for arelatively short period. Most aregoing back to the community andthe community needs to beengaged in working with us andthem when they are in prison.

ML: How do you think theprisoner experience haschanged over the last fewyears and howmight it changein the future?

MS: The first thing to say isthat, despite all the rhetoric thatyou sometimes see in the media, I believe thatimprisonment, deprivation of liberty, remains agenuine punishment which hurts. For all that peoplesay that prisons are too cushy I have rarely metprisoners who actually want to be there. That isimportant to say because the fact that the custodialexperience is, by its nature, painful, should not beforgotten. What has changed is that we are deliveringmore decent prisons than we did before. The decencyagenda has been clearly defined and communicated. Itis now well understood and accepted withinestablishments and we must maintain this approach. Itmeans that prisoners are treated better than theywere; that there is a much greater recognition andappreciation of prisoners as individuals. The idea thatwe should treat prisoners as we would expect our ownrelatives to be treated if they were in prison is entirelyproper. The prisoner experience overall is better asresult of this. That doesn’t mean that prisons areperfect or that there aren’t individual things that gowrong in prisons, but overall the prisoner experience isbetter, and that provides a much stronger basis forrehabilitation.

We have tried to increasingly focus on individualneed. Offender management is about what theindividual prisoner actually requires to support them tochange and reduce their re-offending. So the biggestchange for me over the last ten or fifteen years has beenabout that individualisation. I accept that, particularly forshort sentenced prisoners, this has been difficult as theyare in and out so quickly, and it is more difficult to get toknow and deal with the person. But for longer termprisoners much more work is undertaken with them, ontheir individual sentence planning about how they willaddress their offending. This has been a big change overrecent years.

ML: Do you think any of that is in jeopardynow with budget cuts?

MS: Budget constraint is going to make everythingmore difficult. It would be wrongnot to recognise that. With theconstraints we are all under in thepublic sector it is going to be moredifficult to do some of the thingwe have been doing, but I’mdetermined that we won’t lose thefocus on the decency agenda. Wecan’t move to running prisons thatare not safe, ordered or secure,and it is not right or sensible for usto withdraw from dealing withprisoners as individuals. That iswhy the rehabilitation revolution isimportant because it does put afocus on helping individuals tochange. That does not mean that

all of this is going to be easy to achieve. I’m absolutelycertain that with fewer resources we will have to stopdoing some things. We will have to be careful about howto manage the reduction in resource to maintain thesafe, decent, ordered prisons that we have achieved overthe last ten to fifteen years, whilst also maintaining andincreasing the focus on rehabilitation.

ML: I understand that safety and decency areimportant as basics, but perhaps what is more injeopardy at this time is purposeful activity andresettlement which may not be consideredessential to good custodial management?

MS: Yes, I understand those concerns. In terms ofpurposeful activity, the aim will be to make better use ofthe activity and the space that we have got. I accept thatthere is not sufficient purposeful activity across prisons.We are trying to ensure that what activity space there is,is fully utilised and I am always frustrated if I go to prisonsand there are activity places not being used, whetherthey be in workshops or in education or on programmes.There is some scope to do more here and be moreinnovative about how we do things. For example, one ofthe areas over the last few years where prisons have

24 Issue 193

Offendermanagement isabout what theindividual prisoneractually requires tosupport them tochange and reducetheir re-offending.



begun to innovate is recycling, and there is still significantscope to do more. I went to Manchester last week andsaw that they had invested to develop and expandrecycling in the prison and to potentially extend it to dowork for the community. That’s a small example butdemonstrates how in difficult times we need to thinkdifferently about how to deliver activities, and link withothers to be able to maximise opportunities. Iacknowledge that it will be difficult with a shrinkingresource to maintain and improve what we aredelivering. But we shouldn’t be daunted. It is our job toensure we are using the resource that we get aseffectively as possible and I don’t believe we are doingthat as well as we can now, so there is scope to improve.We need to avoid the potentiallydetrimental and dangerousapproach to budget cutting whichis to just stop doing the goodthings we were doing previouslywithout considering theconsequences. We have to bemore ruthless about how we areusing the limited resource wehave. But even this approach Iaccept will not in itself be enoughto enable us to live within whatwill be a significantly reducedbudget and that is why thegovernment is also looking atpolicy reform. There is arecognition that there has to bepolicy reform to deliver thechanges that will be required.That’s why Ken Clarke has saidthat he wants to take afundamental look how we deliverrehabilitation including theSentencing Framework and is producing a Green Paperfor publication in December.

ML: Prisons have an extensive system ofmanaging performance and regulation. Is thisaffordable now in the current climate and shouldprisons be the subject of de-regulation?

MS: Prisons need to have a framework around themthat ensures that we and the community know what isgoing on. It is different for prisons than for many otherparts of society because they are closed institutions andtherefore the idea of de-regulation does necessarily haveconstraints. It is important that there is a clear frameworkspecifying what prisons must do and externalindependent inspection to ensure transparency. But, I dothink there is scope to look at the regulation in place andask, in the light of government priorities, whether wecan reduce the burden on individual establishments. Wehave already begun to look at that by changing what wedo with audit, but for most KPIs, even if we didn’t have

them as targets good governors would want to makesure we were still delivering on them. It would be daft tosay that we don’t now care about escapes, or to stopmeasuring the levels of drug use or violence in prisons.Or to abandon requirements for staff to be trained in C/Ror to ensure prisoners are supported to get a job andaccommodation on release. These are measures whichgovernors have at the moment and if we didn’t havethem as targets, any governor worth their salt would stillmake sure they were concentrating on those areas. Ifthey weren’t doing that I wouldn’t want them as agovernor.

Measuring the Quality of Prison Life (MQPL),looking at prisoners’ perspectives, is a huge resource to

a governor. It enables a governorto really understand what isgoing on in their establishmentand I wouldn’t want to give thatup. It is internationally regardedas one of the best ways ofunderstanding a prison. Externalinspection is also criticallyimportant because you do needan independent view about howwe are treating people whoseliberty we have taken away.There’s always a risk that those ofus within institutions can becomeimmune and can ourselvesbecome institutionalised. Externalinspection provides a necessarysafeguard to ensure that wecontinue to treat prisonersproperly. So there will alwaysneed to be a framework. Can wereduce the burden of thatframework? Yes, we can and we

should do that, but it can’t be complete de-regulation.It would be inappropriate to do that and we should notlose sight of the fact that over the last ten or fifteenyears we have massively improved the operation ofprisons and the experience of prisoners and reduced re-offending. This has not been achieved despite theregulatory framework we have in place but, in part,because of it.

ML: Can I ask about the role of the commercialsector? We have spoken about the third sector andcitizens, but should the commercial sector berunning prisons, providing rehabilitation services orsupport services?

MS: Well they are running prisons and they arerunning a range of service for NOMS, including prisonescorts, electronic monitoring and we have just let aframework contract for the private sector to provideunpaid work/community payback in the community. Thereality is that the private sector does have a role. Can they

Issue 193 25

We need to avoidthe potentiallydetrimental anddangerous

approach to budgetcutting which is tojust stop doing thegood things wewere doing

previously withoutconsidering theconsequences.



deliver good prisons? Yes, they can, as evidenced by theinspection reports on places such as Altcourse orLowdham Grange. They can deliver good services, andwhy is that? Because we make sure that the privatesector is properly regulated and that they are operated aspart of the system as a whole. My job is to make surethat all prisons, whether they are run by the private orpublic sector are decent, safe, ordered places that arepurposeful, positive and supporting rehabilitation. Thegovernment is clear that who delivers services is notimportant, what matters is the quality of those services.In the future, in line with Government policy, I wouldexpect there to be not only a continuation of privatesector involvement but a potential growth, along withthird sector engagement in the whole area of offendermanagement services.

The role of the Agency is toensure that services are deliveredas efficiently as possible butequally to a quality. That is whywe are going through the wholeprocess of developing detailedspecifications to articulateminimum standards for whoeveris providing services for prisonersor offenders in the community.That means that we can regulatethose services to ensure that theyare meeting the needs ofindividuals and the expectationsof the public. The reality is that inthe future there will be anincreasingly mixed provision ofpublic, private and third sectordelivering services to offenders inboth custody and community.

ML: Can you comment on what you think theimpact of private sector competition has been?

MS: I have said publicly that I have no doubt thatcompetition has played a key part in enabling us todeliver improvements in outcomes in prisons. I haveworked all my career in the public sector and there is apart of me that would very much like to say that wedidn’t need competition to improve public sectoroutcomes. But in reality it is true that in part the publicsector has been stimulated to improve because therehas been competition. It would be false to deny that.That doesn’t mean to say that I believe the privatesector can do everything better than the public sector.This is not the case and as HMCIP confirm there aresome excellent public sector prisons. But public sectorperformance has improved enormously over recentyears and competition has been one of the driversbehind that improvement.

ML: In terms of staff. There are plans to freezepublic service pay and make fundamental changes

to pensions and employee benefits. What impactdo you think this is likely to have?

MS: There is a lot of uncertainty at the moment andsome feeling of unfairness from staff about how theyperceive that public sector workers are being treated. Butwith that there is also an understanding that the countryis in difficulties financially. Therefore, as I go around I findthat the pay freeze has been reasonably accepted by staffwho generally recognise that everybody is having to takesome pain at the moment. There is obviously concernabout pensions. We don’t know the final outcome of theHutton review, and whilst there is recognition that this isa difficult problem for the Government there isunderstandable concern about what this might mean forindividuals. Of course I understand such anxieties, which

are not limited to prison staff.These are issues for the widerpublic sector and will impactacross many different groups. Wewill simply have to work hard toensure that staff do recognise thatthe public sector is genuinelyvalued, that the work that staff doremains important and whilstthere may have to be change it isin response to the financialchallenge we face not about de-valuing the work that staff aredoing. But of course this is goingto be a real challenge.

Internally we have alreadymade some changes to terms andconditions for new members ofstaff, we have removed thePrincipal Officer grade, and wehave introduced new terms and

conditions for prison officers on recruitment. Newofficers are recruited and trained to the same level aspreviously and are paid at the same rates — but we willset a ceiling on earnings below the current maximumcreating in effect two paybands for prison officers infuture. This has created some concern with theaccusation that we are undermining the value of whatprison officers do? But this is not the case, absolutely not.That is why we are training new staff to exactly the samelevel as the existing staff and we are not changing theassessment process. We are still recruiting people to thesame quality and having no difficulty doing that. Thechange has been made because we have to be realisticabout pay in the future and all the evidence indicatesthat we must differentiate Prison Officer pay to reflectthe wide range of work that prison officers do. I knowthis creates concern for staff but we have to workthrough that. We are going to have to work harder andcommunicate much better than we have in the past andengage with staff in a more effective way than we have

26 Issue 193

My job is to makesure that all prisons,whether they arerun by the privateor public sector are

decent, safe,ordered places thatare purposeful,positive andsupportingrehabilitation.



so that they understand what we are doing and why weare doing it.

ML: Do you think there is a threat to industrialrelations?

MS: Industrial relations are going to be difficult overthe next few years. That is true across the whole of thepublic sector. As we speak today there is a rally in Londonahead of the spending review where trade unions arebringing people together to demonstrate their concernsabout where we are. That is understandable. At theminute we have good engagement with all trade unions.They are realistic about the difficulties that the whole ofthe public sector are facing. Again we have tocommunicate and work with them to go through whatwill be a difficult period. But I dothink that staff are realistic and dounderstand that the wholecountry is going through a difficultfour years or so. The key thing willbe to make sure that we aremaintaining safe, decent, wellordered prisons where staff feelthat they are valued for what theydo despite all the difficulties thatwe may face. This will be achallenge but it is my responsibilityand one to which I am absolutelycommitted.

ML: How do you thinkprison professionals maymaketheir voices heard and isanyone listening?

MS: The coalitiongovernment does want to hearfrom practitioners about whatmakes a difference. One of theirthemes is that practitioners havebeen too constrained in being able to do the things thatmake sense and make the biggest impact. That issomething the government have said about teachers anddoctors, and about probation staff and prison staff andthis is a good opportunity. I want to make sure thatGovernors and staff have appropriate professionaldiscretion within a clear and sensible operatingframework. On the probation side we have beenworking on a pilot in Surrey and Sussex to give greaterprofessional discretion back to probation officers.Governors already have a fair amount of discretion abouthow they operate within their establishments, despitethe constraints and frameworks we have talked about. Ihave already said we are looking to further loosen someof the constraints whilst maintaining appropriateoversight. So there will be the opportunity increasinglyfor governors to feel they have a voice in how they candeliver more innovative practice to help offenders tochange and to drive the rehabilitation revolution. There is

a fear that the way that the Rehabilitation Revolution isbeing portrayed would mean that other people, thevoluntary, third sector and commercial companies wouldtake over all rehabilitative services for offenders and thatwould cut out prison governors. That would bedangerous and cannot be the right approach. What wehave got to do is to design opportunities to develop newdelivery models such as Payment by Results recognisingthe criticality of the Governors role. If programmes aregoing to operate within prisons, then unless thegovernor and staff are fully part of what is going on thebenefits won’t be achieved. Prison governors need to beat the heart of the rehabilitation revolution and fullyinvolved in developments such as the payment by results.

ML: Do you see a dangerthat they may be marginalisedbecause of the pressure toachieve change?

MS: I see that as a risk. But Ithink it is essential that we do notend up with governors and prisonstaff becoming marginalised andeffectively dealing only withsecurity and residential care.Governors and the majority ofprison staff did not join the PrisonService just to be involved inlocking people up. Part of thefascination and challenge of therole is to do what we can to helpoffenders to change as well as toensure safety and security. There isa recognition from ministers thatgovernors must play a key role ifrehabilitation is to be effective. Aswe work through mechanismsthat will deliver the rehabilitation

services in the future we have to do this with Governorsnot separate from them. Governors also have theopportunity to influence the future through theirprofessional organisation, the PGA, through engagingdirectly with the initiatives that come out of governmentand through their own ability to innovate and respond tothe agenda as it develops.

ML: Anne Owers in her valedictory lecture onher retirement drew attention to the increasinglevels of violence and the gang culture in highsecurity prisons. Do you a view on that?

MS: I though that Anne Owers lecture was veryinsightful, as you would expect from a Chief Inspector ofPrisons, and a very helpful analysis of where we havecome from and where we are today. The reality is, ofcourse, that we have now got a much longer sentencedpopulation than we had before including 13,000indeterminate sentences. Whilst a large number ofpeople pass through the system quickly, the long stay

Issue 193 27

The key thing willbe to make surethat we are

maintaining safe,decent, well

ordered prisonswhere staff feel thatthey are valued forwhat they dodespite all thedifficulties thatwe may face.



population passes through slowly and has grownsignificantly. In high security prisons the population isyounger than previously and serving sentences that arelonger, with some real risks around how individuals canpotentially become alienated. The risks to order andsafety are significant in such circumstances. We are aliveto that issue and I thought Anne Ower’s lecture wastimely and will help us to focus on how we can managethat long term population more effectively providingpotential for progression and hope within the long termsystem. That is really important, and some of the workthat Alison Liebling is currentlydoing at Whitemoor will help usto get an even better feel for whatis going on in high security prisonsand how we need to respond tothe changing dynamic.

There are similar issues inyoung offender institutions wherewe have gangs and longersentences and we have got towork though how best to managethe changing dynamic. It is one ofthe biggest operational challengeswe have at the moment. How wecan best manage a longersentenced population and manymore younger prisoners whodon’t buy in to the system, andwhere, consequently, there is aheightened risk of individualalienation and concerted disorder.

Gangs are not new inprisons. What is important for usis to recognise how gangs aredeveloping and to understand thechanging dynamic that reflectswhat is happening in communitiesand with crime in communities. Itis one of the reasons why I have been refamiliarisingmyself with High Security Prisons. It has been interestingfor me to really get a feel for what is going on there andthe challenges they face. Maintaining order, safety andsecurity for very long term prisoners and providingrealistic opportunities for personal development is thechallenge. For long term prisoners, education forexample, cannot only be about supporting people intoemployment, as that is not what you need in a highsecurity prison. You need regime activities to engageindividuals and help them cope with long sentences.

Education plays a critical part in this. We must providemeans for people to do their time and to stay sane andengaged and feel part of a system that is supportive andnot just coercive. If we do not do this the risk to order issignificant.

ML: Anne Owers also said quite boldly thatthere is no such thing as humane containment; thatcontainment’s for objects, not people. Are wemoreat risk of settling for humane containment now?

MS: There is a risk but such an approach would becontrary to my vision for the Agency and the Prison

Service. I believe strongly thatprisoners are individuals and thatif we ever lose sight of that then aprison system becomes entirelycoercive and potentially indecent.The minute we stop seeingprisoners as people, then thesystem and the Service is indanger. That doesn’t mean to saythat we don’t need secureregimes for the long sentenced,some of whom will never bereleased, but it must always bemore than mere containment. Itmust be about how we dealdecently with prisoners asindividuals and provideopportunities for personaldevelopment, and for individualsto make a positive contribution tosociety — even if they mustremain in prison for a long time.The decency agenda embodiesthis approach and I have alreadysaid very clearly that I won’t givethat up. It has been absolutelycrucial to the development of thePrison Service and it will remain a

key principle for us over the coming years. Governorsare committed to it, and this has now becomeembedded. No-one wants to see the Prison Servicesimply warehousing prisoners and settling for ‘humanecontainment’ whilst operational pressures, and prisonerthroughput can make it difficult, particularly in localprisons we must never lose sight of the fact that we aredealing with people not objects. That’s why thegovernment’s clear commitment to rehabilitation is sowelcome so important.

28 Issue 193

... it must always bemore than merecontainment. It

must be about howwe deal decentlywith prisoners asindividuals and

provideopportunities for

personaldevelopment, andfor individuals tomake a positivecontribution tosociety ...



Eoin McLennan-Murray joined the Prison Service in1978. He has served in ten prison establishments, aswell as spending four years in Prison ServiceHeadquarters where he was Staff Officer to theDirector General and then the manager responsiblefor development and national roll out of theaccredited cognitive skills and sex offenderprogrammes. He posts have included governinggovernor of HMP Blantyre House and HMP Lewes.

He was elected as President of the Prison Governor’sAssociation in 2010. The PGA was formed in 1987 torepresent the interests of senior Prison Service grades, inparticular governor grades. The Association currentlyrepresents almost 1500 members.

SH: How do you regard our relatively highnational imprisonment rate?

EMM: I think that we have a love affair with the useof custody. The PGA has argued that certain sections ofthe prison population should not be in custody in thenumbers they are. Such groups include children, women,the mentally ill and certain categories of short-termprisoners. We believe that we are out of step with Europeand have an incarceration rate nearly twice that ofGermany. Our rate is closer to Eastern EuropeanCountries. So although crime rates are falling this is notreflected in imprisonment rates which continue to rise.

SH: How likely do you think it is that this ratewill be reduced? Howdesirable do you think this is?

EMM:We have seen both Conservative and Labourgovernments talk up crime in response to presscomments. That in turn has led to longer sentences, andlegislation like that related to Indeterminate Sentences,which has driven up imprisonment rates. So althoughimprisonment should be falling the impact of this politicalpressure, itself a product of public perceptions of safety,has driven up rates. Politicians are no longer doing whatis right, and what the prevailing research tells us isappropriate, but simply responding to populist pressureas portrayed by the media. So for those particularlyvulnerable groups like women and the mentally ill there isa need to reduce their numbers within the prison system.For this latter group there is real evidence that suggeststhat appropriate treatment in secure psychiatric units canreduce the risks that this group presents and of coursedeal with the underlying issues rather than treat them ascriminals within the prison system. For women, thedisproportionate impact of incarceration on them and thechildren for which they are often primary carers oftenoutweighs the relatively minor benefit to society fromimprisonment.

SH: Is Britain a broken society and to whatdegree do you think prisons can contribute towardsaddressing social problems such as poverty,unemployment, family breakdown and anti-socialbehaviour?

EMM: I do not think Britain is a broken society butthere are a number of social issues that need to beaddressed. Clearly, we are in themiddle of a financial crisisbut for the majority of the population life is pretty muchas it has always has been, although our behaviour andperceptions can be affected by what we see in the media.The impact of prison varies depending on the length ofsentence served. For short-termers, particularly those whoare serving less than six months we are generally makingthe problem worse. Compared with the alternativecommunity punishment short-term imprisonment is bothexpensive and ineffective. For many being in prison is aproduct of the failure of the social and welfare systems inwider society — investing in prisons does not seem to bean appropriate response to this situation. In most cases itis too little too late. It was Tony Blair who spoke aboutbeing tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.We have seen the manifestation of being tough bymassive rises in the prison population with averagesentence lengths increasing. Regrettably, this has notbeen matched by being tough on the causes of crime.What we do in prison is right but its comparatively smallscale and it does not address the root cause. Prison is notthe place to tackle social engineering on the scalerequired to have a meaningful impact on wider society.That is a task for other central government departments.

SH: To what degree do you think it will bepossible to achieve a ‘rehabilitation revolution’,significantly reducing reoffending, given the currentsqueeze on resources?

EMM: I interpret this as simply maximising thechances of someone not re-offending post-release. Thereare some basic things the government could do toremove barriers that many prisoners encounter on release.The Rehabilitation of Offenders Act could be updated totake account of sentence inflation since 1974. Car andhousehold insurance could be made more accessible andaffordable to ex-prisoners. The difficulty with openingbank accounts is beginning to be addressed and thesystem of discharge payments is wholly in need offundamental reform. These things are not difficult to dealwith but they require the will to do it.

However, I think the government’s idea of the‘rehabilitation revolution’ is to pay organisations to reducere-offending. They will be paid by results and I suppose

Issue 193 29

Interview: Eoin McLennan-MurrayEoin McLennan-Murray is President of the Prison Governors Association. He is interviewed by Steve Hall,

former Governor of HMP Styal now working for SERCO.



this means that they take the risk. If they fail to deliver therequired outcome then they are not paid. I am concernedthat organisations will simply cherry pick offenders whoare more likely to succeed and leave those that are not. Inprinciple I support any approach that significantly andgenuinely reduces crime, even if this is not the publicsector, although I would want to be certain that there wasa level playing field between these organisations. One ofthe concerns I have is that the public sector is constrainedthrough over centralisation and control in a way thatprivate sector organisations don’t appear to be. Thismakes us less competitive. So, payment by result is atheoretical methodology for funding successful outcomeswhen government money is tight. This approach greatlyincreases the involvement of the third and private sectors.

SH: How do you think theactual prisoner experience hasshifted in recent years? How isit likely to change in the nextfew years?

EMM: I think that prisoners’experiences have certainlychanged for the better. Thedefining moment was the Woolfreport, which marked thebeginning of the decency agenda.There has also been a massiveinjection of funding inprogrammes, health andeducation and a response to the‘what works’ agenda which hasproduced a dramatic improvementin the quality of prison life. This is aproduct of additional investmentand improvement to regimes.Coupled with this has been theratcheting up of standards through HMCIP expectationsand responding to MQPL feedback. The combined effecthas undoubtedly led to an improvement in the prisonerexperience.

Conversely, as prison budgets come under increasingpressure as a result of the economic downturn we canonly assume that these improvements will now go intodecline.

SH: What do you regard as the biggestproblems in the prison system?

EMM: Over control from the centre andmanagerialism, although I think the reduction in budgetswill overshadow these factors. The rise in managerialismhas led to an organisation that is risk averse andhamstrung. This is holding back prison governors whohave a reform agenda or who want to make a difference.Combined with the overuse of custody and shrinkingbudgets the system is under real pressure and ultimatelythis may result in the progress we have made in recentyears being lost.

SH: What are the major obstacles to prisonreform?

EMM: For there to be reform there must be thepolitical will to deliver it and deliver it in the face of areactionary media and right wing antagonism fromwithintheir own party. These are obstacles to reform and therecent rhetoric from ministers is encouraging but has yetto be matched with action.

We sometimes go too far with the process of auditsand risk assessments and impact assessments, oftenlosing our sense of reality. Removing or reducing theseprocesses would allow us to get back to a reformingagenda.

SH: How do you see the idea of ‘The BigSociety’ impacting on prisons?

EMM: I am not really clearabout what is meant by ‘The BigSociety.’ I sense it is about gettinglots of different groups to engagewith the task of resettling prisonersand some of this engagementwould be voluntary and somewould be paid by results.I can remember a time when themajority of prisons were engagedon community activity of one formor another. In particular, theinvolvement of vulnerable groups,such as the disabled who wereable to come in to prisons to usefacilities while being helped byprisoners. This stopped when webecame risk averse. I realise thatthis type of activity is on the fringesof what the Big Society means buta return to this kind of approach

can only be a good thing.SH: Are there ways in which the charitable

sector and citizens can make a new and differentcontribution to prisons and rehabilitation?

EMM: I would be surprised if there was somethingnew that could be done. Charities and individuals havebeen working with prisoners for a long time now and weknow that there are many things which work. It is morean issue of sustainability. Many successful projects have alimited funding life. When the money stops the projectstops even if it was seen as successful. Payment by resultsmay be a potential solution to this age old problem.

SH: Prisons have an extensive system ofmanagerial monitoring and regulation, includingkey performance targets, audits, inspection andsurveys of staff and prisoners. Is this affordable ornecessary? Should prisons be the subject ofderegulation?

EMM:We have gone too far and created an overlybureaucratic and expensive service. In the past governors

30 Issue 193

There has also beena massive injectionof funding in

programmes, healthand education and aresponse to the‘what works’

agenda which hasproduced a dramaticimprovement in thequality of prison life.



were largely left to their own devices, they wereadaptable and flexible in their approach — they got thejob done. It is true that in this new culture we have beensuccessful at reducing escapes and improving outputs in anumber of areas but this is not to say that the resultscould not have been achieved by allowing governors tomaintain a degree of autonomy.

What this approach has produced is a new breed ofgovernors who are driven by a new form of performancestructure, whereas what we need is a greater balance andgreater autonomy. Prisons are now managed by aparticular formula rather than being led — people don’teasily fit into processes which can de-skill staff and lead tonarrowly defined approaches.

SH: What role should the commercial sectorhave in imprisonment?

EMM: The PGA has a position on this — we don’taccept that prisons should be runby private sector organisations.However we have to accept thatthe battle over whether or notthere will be private sectorinvolvement has been lost. Icannot say what will happen in thefuture and maybe we will need totake a more pragmatic position inthe future

SH: To what extent do youthink private sectorcompetition has altered theterrain of imprisonment?

EMM: We have to acknowledge that without theinvolvement of the private sector, and sometimes this isthe threat of privatisation, we would not have madethe improvements in the system that have been made.I realise that this has been a bitter pill to swallow. Forthe public sector this has also contributed to thenecessary pressure on the POA to reform and adoptnew approaches. This has certainly made us morecompetitive and puts us in a stronger position in futuretendering exercises. Now that there is a market inprivate prisons the government are unlikely to turnaway from it and are more likely to use it in other armsof the criminal justice system. The landscape haschanged forever and the best we can hope for is amixed economy where the public sector continues tobe the main provider.

SH: There are plans to freeze public sector payand make fundamental changes to pensions andemployee benefits. What impact is this likely tohave on existing prison staff and for the futureworkforce?

EMM: We are used to having annual increases andno one welcomes the loss of this. The reality is that we arelooking at the potential for redundancy and wholesale

transfer of jobs from public to private operation. Manywill think that in these times just having a job is afortunate position. This reality is permeating down andthe PGA has accepted the fact that there will not be a payrise for two years— this is a pragmatic response. Similarly,all our members have volunteered to give up first classtravel for the time being. The PGA membership, as amanagerial union, is far more understanding of the biggerpicture and why these things are happening, and are partin making this happen.

SH: How do you think industrial relations inprisons are likely to develop over the next fouryears?

EMM: Like pay, it will be difficult because of thepotential for loss of jobs. We have to be equally pragmaticabout this and do the best for members in this climaterather than resist the inevitable. It will be the POA and

their approach to this that will bethe dominant factor, not leastwhen this results in strike action. Itis always the PGA and its memberspick up the pieces from this. Nowthe POA and PCS will not take partin mutual discussions with us,which is disappointing. In theevent of one of the public sectorprisons being lost in the currentround of commercial competition,the POA have said that they willtake industrial action. Our positionwill not change and even though

our members are also affected, we will have to workthrough this and cooperate with the private sector toachieve this.

SH: How should prison professionalsmake theirvoices heard in the current debates about prisonsand imprisonment? Is anyone listening?

EMM: One of my roles is to improve relationshipswith other organisations in the criminal justice systemincluding unions and pressure groups that have a voicewithin the system. We are therefore looking to work inpartnership with these organisations in both ourinterests. Recently we have worked closely with boththe Howard League and Prison Reform Trust on shortsentences and indeterminate sentences for publicprotection respectively. We get our voice heard in themedia, although I think we can do more. We arelistened to when there is an inquiry and I like to thinkthat NOMS is listening a little more, although thislargely results from a number of legal challenges by thePGA. There is sometimes a sense that some of theNOMS Board have lost touch with the reality of work inprisons. We will continue to advocate joint workingwith the Board as we have a common aim of makingthe Prison Service better.

Issue 193 31

... we have to acceptthat the battle overwhether or not therewill be private sectorinvolvement hasbeen lost.


John Bowers spent a total of 15 years in prison forburglary related offences. He was released fromprison for the last time in 1991. In the build uptowards and following his release, he workedwith New Bridge, a charitable organisationworking with prisoners. He started working ontheir project to produce a national newspaper forprisoners. This started publication in 1991 and wascalled Inside Time. He worked successfully inestablishing and developing the publication andbetween 1996 and 2010 held the post ofCommissioning Editor. During that time thenewspaper has become established as the leadingnational publication for prisoners and hasexpanded from 24 to 56 pages, attracting manyprominent contributors He recently left the paperin order to take up a role undertaking lectures inschools and colleges on the realities of prison andhow to avoid becoming involved in crime.

MB: How do you regard our relatively highnational imprisonment rate?

JB: I am reminded of a quote from WinstonChurchill who said that you can measure the civilisationof a society by how it treats its prisoners. A tellingcomment at the time and we would do well to revisitthat quote. I think the imprisonment rate is a reflectionon the British ‘retribution’ mentality. We love our poundof flesh; some people would bring back the stocks andthe gallows. This mentality is constantly fuelled bycertain sections of the media with their regurgitatedheadlines. Let’s try and leave slamming individualpolitical parties because I don’t think any of the mainparties have got anything to be proud of when it comesto our criminal justice system. When New Labour cameinto power there were 43,000 in prison. Now it’sdouble that number and according to projected figureswe are heading for about 95,000 by 2020. So whoeveris doing the projecting presumably is of the view that itwill get worse before it gets better.

MB: How likely do you think it is that this ratewill be reduced? How desirable do you think thisis?

JB: Until there is a noticeable shift in the mentalityof the general public, and politicians stop being sofearful of the tabloids, it is highly unlikely that we willsee a reduction. It is highly desirable that the prison ratebe reduced and Ken Clarke seems to have some goodideas. It is easy to be cynical and insist that nothing is

ever going to change. Let’s just hope that finally wehave a party that means business. I am reminded ofAnne Widdecombe’s comments a few years ago thatwhat this country needs is a system whereby prisonersget up, they are treated humanely, and they do aworthwhile job and earn money. Unfortunately, in thecurrent climate that is almost cloud cuckoo land. To meit is so blatantly obvious that what we need within thiscriminal justice system are men and women doing agood days work and earning a good days pay; gettingused to the work culture. Unfortunately, it took me a lotof years to get used to that culture because I had beenso entrenched in committing crime. When I talk inschools, I explain that crime is like a drug, it’s anaddiction. We have thousands of people who arebasically ‘crime addicts’, to add to all the otheraddictions they may have. They simply cannot stopcrime without suitable interventions. It is as powerful assmoking, drugs, drink or gambling. I couldn’t stop, Ineeded help; I needed to want to stop and so it is withthousands of men and women. From letters that I usedto get on Inside Time there are an awful lot of men andwomen who want to stop, yet they just don’t knowhow. They get discharged with £48.00 and in 2 or 3weeks they are back in prison again or they are back intheir old ways. It is almost an inevitability that they aregoing to go back, so how do we stop this trend, and isthat the Prison Service’s fault? Well I don’t think it isactually. The Prison Service does what it can. They takepeople from the courts and look after them withhumanity and care and then basically they pray. Theypray that these people will leave the gates and notreoffend, yet statistically they know that 6 out of 10will come back. With young offenders it is 8 out of 10.I find it appalling that the public don’t throw out TheSun and the Daily Mail and actually start thinking forthemselves instead of allowing their thought process tobe dictated to by the media.

MB: Do you think that Britain is a brokensociety and to what degree do you think prisonscan contribute toward addressing socialproblems?

JB: I don’t think it is a broken society, but it isbecoming ever more fragmented. How can prisonseffectively contribute towards addressing socialproblems when the damage has already been done? Allthat prisons can do is just ‘contain’ for a period and thentrust to luck. I think prisons pick up the pieces and do


Interview: John BowersJohn Bowers is an ex-prisoner and former commissioning editor for Inside Time.

He is interviewed byMaggie Bolger who works in HM Prison Service Training Services.



their best to glue people together again with whateverresources they have got at their disposal. We all knowthey just do not have enough resources. I think thePrison Service does its best with the tools that it is given.

MB: Ken Clarke wants a rehabilitationrevolution really, how possible do you think thisis?

JB: I think it is wonderful sounding rhetoric. Itsounds great doesn’t it? Yet they are cutting back onresources and spending. So how can you have arehabilitation revolution with even less money thanyou’ve had in previous years? Do we want a revolutionor do we just want an application of common sensefrom politicians — who should stop looking nervouslyover their shoulders at the media and wondering aboutthe vote. I do like the way thatthis new coalition is going abouttheir business and it all looksgood, but then it all looked goodwhen New Labour came topower and they said they weregoing to do away with privateprisons. Thirteen years later, whathas happened within the criminaljustice system? Has Labour gotanything to be proud of?Doubling the prison population istheir legacy. This ‘rehabilitationrevolution’ could sound reallystupid in a few years time. Theywill be saying ‘what revolution?’Lots of initiatives appear goodand politicians are wonderfulwith sound-bites andmeaningless rhetoric and I havehad a life-time of listening tothem. Ask the prison officer and ask the guy in cell C4in Wandsworth what has happened over the last fewyears and they will probably say they have cleaned therecess and the classes aren’t too bad, but plenty mightchange because of the cutbacks. So how can wepossibly move forward to this ‘revolution’ with lessmoney to spend?

MB: How do you think the prisonerexperience has shifted in the last few years?

JB: Very difficult to tell without actually being onthe landings. All I can do is quote from my experiencewith Inside Time and the hundreds of letters that it getsevery month. I think the general consensus is thatthings have changed for the better, but there is still along way to go, especially as far as this wonderful‘through-care’ and ‘after-care’ is concerned. Probation’smain function now is protecting the public, as opposedto looking after the prisoners’ welfare. Once upon atime I went to my probation officer for constructivehelp; now I’ll go and he will warn me to keep to the

conditions of my parole licence otherwise I will berecalled to prison. Personally, I just don’t see theprisoner experience changing that much. If you takewhatever the percentage of the Prison Service budgetis, then things are going to suffer and that includeslevels of activity, time unlocked etc.

MB: What do you regard as being the biggestproblems in the prison system?

JB: Inside Time gets a lot of letters about prisonofficers treating inmates with a lack of respect. I am notblaming prison officers entirely, because I think a lot ofprisoners have a terrible attitude towards prison staff.Time and time again I witnessed certain prisonerswhingeing about staff treating them in a certain wayand I used to say to these people, ‘hang on a minute,

how do you treat staff?’ I quiteoften saw new prison officerscome in, they smiled at prisonersand they were very respectfultowards them but then sixmonths later they were in withthe dinosaurs in the tea-hutscreaming about prisoners,because slowly but surely theprisoners had eroded therespectfulness out of them. Theyjoin the 60 year-old prison officerculture which is to bang them up... ’out of sight out of mind’. Itneeds an attitude shift both ways.Similarly, how can prison officersor prisoners work together in aplace that’s seriouslyovercrowded? I often describeprison wings as zoos, and thatisn’t any reference to animals, it is

a reference to the hustle and bustle of everybody goingat a hundred miles an hour but actually gettingnowhere.

MB: What do you see as the major obstaclestowards prison reform?

JB: Public perception, the media and thepoliticians’ stereotypical stance on what should be donewith those who are sent to prison. The publics’perception is to lock them up and throw away the key.What are prisoners doing with pool tables and plasmaTV screens? I regularly see this stereotypical view ofprisons and prisoners regurgitated. If only the publicwould stop and ask themselves why these people endup in prison in the first place? Let’s get them when theyare young and stop them from going to prison, and ifthey do end up in prison, what can the system do of aconstructive nature to bring down this rate of 60-70per cent re-offending? A lot of the public just shrugtheir shoulders and say it is not my problem, and to adegree I can understand that. If you have got your

I think the generalconsensus is thatthings have

changed for thebetter, but there isstill a long way togo, especially as faras this wonderful‘through-care’ and‘after-care’ isconcerned.


mortgage to pay, kids, job and your personal problemsto think about, why should you have to worry aboutcriminals and prisoners? In my view, you should think ...‘well, I should worry because this is one of the biggestsocial problems that we face’. Most things are solvablewith pounds, shillings and pence. The prison system issuffering through lack of resources. Yet if you doubledthe resources would this actually make a lot ofdifference? At the end of the day you are talking aboutshifting attitudes and perceptions, you are dealing withhuman beings. You are not running a business, but ithas become a business. In fact a couple of years ago Irecall a guy writing to Inside Time asking how manypeople were employed looking after prisoners. Thereare judges, magistrates, prisonofficers, administration staff, Istopped at a quarter of a million.This is a valid point, becauseprisoners keep a quarter of amillion people in gainfulemployment. Society doesn’t likecriminals and we don’t likepeople in prison and yet theyalmost have a vested interest inkeeping prisons. I fell for it for 15years and gave a lot of peoplegainful employment and havethey appreciated it?

MB: How do you see theidea of this ‘Big Society’impacting on prisons?

JB:What exactly is meant by‘The Big Society’? Can youenlighten me? This lovely phrase‘The Big Society’ is yet another Cameron sound-bitefrom his manifesto. However, if this ‘Big Society’ ideacreates an attitude shift it could well impact quiteconsiderably on prisons. When Labour came into powerthe prison population was 40,000 — now it is over80,000. Why does it need to be 80,000? Surely this ‘BigSociety’ should be aiming for a reduction to 70,000 andthen 60,000 and ultimately only keeping people inprison who really need to be there, not the mentally illand the inadequate.

Inside Time receives many letters from prisonerswho say they are fearful of release. They are beingreleased in a couple of weeks and should be ecstatic,but are not. They are thinking: ‘I have been fed andclothed, I have my friends, I have my tobacco and I havemy little routines — why am I going out there to facewhat can be quite a hostile and scary world?’

MB: Scary?JB: Yes, it can be very scary to a person being

released from prison. When I came out in 1991 I wastotally determined to go straight. I had lost much of mypowerful physique, yet fortunately that power seemed

to have shifted to my brain. What I have had since 1991is a very powerful mind that was determined never togo back inside. Apart from one or two friends and theNew Bridge organisation, I have done everythingmyself. I am determined that I am never going back toprison. Yet I don’t think that a lot of people in prison arethat mentally strong and so, to return to Cameron’s ‘BigSociety’, they need the ‘Big Society’ to help them.Instead of spitting in their face, prisoners need thepublic to say: ‘I will shake your hand. Tell me why youdid it and why you think I should trust you? Then I willgive you a chance’. We need to get through to societythat although a lot of prisoners have done some badthings, they are not necessarily bad people and when

does society say: ‘OK, you were abad person, you are not badnow’?

Bearing in mind that I havenot stolen a thing for 25 years, Iam still branded by a lot ofpeople as ‘that ex-criminal’, andthey don’t want to talk to me,they don’t want to know me.That’s not self-pity — that is aninescapable fact of life that I stillfind hard to live with. But a lot ofpeople still look at my record andstill compartmentalise me as atotally bad person who will neverchange. I can’t do anything in mydefence; a criminal has nodefence. You can’t try and justifycrime; you can’t condone whatyou did. Instead of kicking a

person while they are down, society couldmetaphorically help them up. Let’s hope that this ‘BigSociety’ idea works, or is it yet another sound-bite like‘rehabilitation revolution?’ I am available to theGovernment for sound-bites if they want, because Ihave got some crackers lined up!

MB: Are there ways in which you think thecharitable sector and citizens can make a new anddifferent contribution to prisons andrehabilitation?

JB: They have been making a good contributionfor years, but the problem is that a lot of prison servicepersonnel tend to view them with scepticism andcynicism. They are treated as ‘do-gooders’, whichunfortunately some of them are. They can’t make anew and different contribution; all they can hope to dois chip away and change attitudes. I often resentedgoing into prisons as part of the New Bridgeorganisation where there was a look of patronisingcontempt on the faces of certain gate lodge staff, as ifto say ... ‘here comes another bunch of do-gooders.These people will never change, don’t you


At the end of theday you are talkingabout shiftingattitudes and

perceptions, you aredealing with humanbeings. You are notrunning a business,but it has become

a business.



understand?’ At the time, staff didn’t know I was aformer prisoner. Unfortunately, some of them aremembers of the do-gooder brigade; I do have to saythat. They are people whose lives are perhaps lacking alot of things and they want to be appreciated in life —and so they gravitate towards perhaps one of the mostvulnerable sections of society, which are prisoners, andwho naturally lap up the attention. The charitablesector and ordinary citizens can make a lot ofdifference, although they do have to be viewed in adifferent light. They have to beviewed as people who can makea real change and real impact,not just do-gooders coming inonce a week and the ‘butt’ ofprison officers’ jokes in the gatelodge.

MB: Prisons have anextensive system ofmanagerial monitoring andregulation, including keyperformance targets, audits,inspection and surveys ofstaff and prisoners. Is thisaffordable or necessary?Should prisons be the subjectof deregulation?

JB: Over the years I havewatched this extensive system ofmanagerial monitoring andregulation and I think it hasbecome a bit too much. We arenot dealing with a multi- nationalbusiness, we are dealing withpeople; human beings. But ofcourse the Prison Service is now abusiness; it is run on businesslines. I think you do need targets,but we have now gone way over to the other side. It’sall about ticking boxes. Prisoners are pretty shrewd,they know which boxes they need to tick in order forthem to be able to progress through the system. So, itis almost a reciprocal arrangement whereby the PrisonService is saying: ‘we need you to help us tick a few ofthese boxes ready for the audits and inspections.Behave yourself and we will tick the appropriate box orboxes that will move you on’. When you say deliveringmore for less, it’s forcing people into a corner wherethey are almost panicking now to deliver a certainamount and then being told ‘thank you very much, butnext year you have got to deliver a little bit more withless resource’. Paperwork takes up a lot of the prisonofficers’ time. Is it necessary to have them scribblinghalf the day when they should be out on the landings?You need paperwork, of course you do, you needaudits, but it has just gone crazy.

MB: What role should the commercial sectorhave in imprisonment?

JB: I have heard people say for years it is notacceptable that shareholders or indeed anyone shouldprofit from human misery. My view is that it doesn’tmatter whether you are in a public or private sectorprison — you are still going to be miserable. You havehuman misery in both and if Doncaster, as opposed toWandsworth or Wormwood Scrubs, can actually say toprisoners, ‘we can give you housing and a job’, is there

anything wrong with that? If Iwas a shareholder in Doncaster orDovegate, or any other privateprison, I will get my dividend andmake a profit. Am I making aprofit from prisoners’ misery oram I making a profit from abusiness that is being run betterthan it was previously? If anypublic sector prison is being runon Doncaster’s level, then thewhole service would be far betterfor it. The public sector just doesnot have the money that Sercohas, so the thought of the publicsector ever getting Doncasterback is unthinkable. Has theprivate sector got an unfairadvantage? Should we be doingwhat Labour did and do a u-turn?Before they were elected, theysaid they would do away with allthe private sector prisons, andthen they doubled them in acouple of years. Should the ideabe to run 142 prisons on privatesector lines and invest more inthem? But, what are the return

rates for HMP Doncaster? Are they better than thepublic sector? I don’t know. Then there is theexperience of staff because those in private sectorprisons are paid less. A lot of them do not have thenecessary experience; so is it a case of the prisonersrunning these prisons? I suppose if it’s working atDoncaster, and the prisoners are having more say thanthey do in the public sector, what is wrong with that?Has the public sector got a lot to learn? Let’s takeDoncaster as our example. Has the public sectordinosaur been asleep for so long that it needed a goodkick from the private sector to wake it up and say ‘thisis the way forward ... we do have the experience ... weknow how to handle prisoners’, but do they? They getthe kid from Tesco and 5 minutes later he is wearing aprison officer’s uniform. It is funny in one respect, but ifthe kid from Tesco can come along the landing and talkto the guy in the cell, become friends, then that officer

When you saydelivering more forless, it’s forcing

people into a cornerwhere they arealmost panickingnow to deliver a

certain amount andthen being told‘thank you very

much, but next yearyou have got todeliver a little bitmore with lessresource’.


is going to benefit more than the officer that is bashingthe door in the prisoner’s face. All roads lead to respectand attitude. If the attitude is better in private sectorprisons, then I’m all for it.

MB: There are plans to freeze public sectorpay and make fundamental changes to pensionsand employee benefits. What impact is this likelyto have on existing prison staff and for the futureworkforce?

JB: It is the same for Prison Service employees orany other organisation. If you are going to freeze pay,you would hope that professionalism would overrideanger. However, it is almostnatural that your work wouldsuffer. You are not going to givea hundred percent. There is goingto be a lot of resentment. I don’tthink Prison Service staff willleave in droves, but I would bequite angry if I was in their shoes.How it will affect the future Ireally don’t know; I am not overlyqualified to talk about theconditions; that would be more aquestion for the affected prisonofficer to answer.

MB: How do you thinkindustrial relations in prisonsare likely to develop over thenext four years?

JB: For a lot of years it hasbeen like a game of footballbetween the two opposing sides.I think the POA must still live inthe dark ages and they use anyopportunity to advance the cause of their members. Inmy role on Inside Time, I have personally asked themover the years to clarify statements or to comment onissues and have not even been given the courtesy of aresponse. It’s almost as if they have got a sort ofarrogance about them that says we are not going toanswer that question because it is beneath us to talk toa prisoners’ newspaper. It would be nice to think thatindustrial relations would develop with these twoteams; the POA and management actually working intandem instead of against each other. They shouldboth be going for the same ends. I can’t see why thePOA need to be as obstructive as they have been inthe past. I say come out of the dark ages, sit down andwork together. If there are going to be problems withthe government’s spending review then you are both

going to suffer but you are going to suffer more if thisfriction continues.

MB: During your time as CommissioningEditor on Inside Time, what were some of theissues and concerns raised by prisoners?

JB: The paper frequently highlights constructivecomment from serving prisoners in relation to how theproblems within the criminal justice system can best beresolved. These are the people that know the problems,they live every day of their lives with them and I thinkpoliticians and the Prison Service would do well to readInside Time on a regular basis. Prisoners want to be

treated with more respect byprison staff — you treat us withrespect and we will treat you withrespect. Indeterminate PublicProtection is another massive boneof contention. It sounds great tothe public but the services aren’tthere to meet their needs. Theyshould have thought about itproperly. If the courts are going tosentence this amount of people toIPP then we need to have astructure in place to properlyaccommodate them. Other bigissues concern release,employment and accommodation.If you’ve lived a certain life, thenyou need support to developresponsibility. We talk of a ‘BigSociety’, but it doesn’t yet know it’sbrief. The issues concerning lack ofemployment and accommodationare as pertinent now as they were

in the 70’s and 80’s.MB: You’ve recently left Inside Time in order

to do more diversionary work with young peoplein schools and colleges. What contribution canoffenders or ex-offenders make to this?

JB: I am aware of deterrent initiatives withincertain prisons that allow young people to come insideand see for themselves what prison is really like and talkto serving prisoners. There is nothing like first-handexperience. Despite the current recession, perhapsmore ex-prisoners could be employed travelling roundschools to enlighten on the reality of prison life or todeter impressionable youngsters from embarking onlives of crime. It costs in excess of £40,000 a year tokeep a person in prison — so why not try to deteryoungsters from crime in the first place?


Despite the currentrecession, perhapsmore ex-prisonerscould be employedtravelling round

schools to enlightenon the reality of

prison life or to deterimpressionableyoungsters fromembarking on lives

of crime.



Until February 2007 Professor Rod Morgan wasChair of the Youth Justice Board (YJB) for Englandand Wales, a post from which he resignedfollowing disagreements with ministers overaspects of Government policy regarding youthjustice issues. Prior to that he was HM ChiefInspector of Probation for England and Wales,before which he was an academic researcher andteacher for 30 years. Professor Morgan hasauthored many books and articles on aspects ofcriminal justice policy ranging from policing tosentencing including co-editing the OxfordHandbook of Criminology and a similar volume onprobation. He has also held many posts at all levelswithin the criminal justice system includingmagistrate, police authority member, chairman ofa community safety partnership, Parole Boardmember, commission member, inspector,government advisor, expert advisor to the UN,Council of Europe and Amnesty International oncustodial conditions and the prevention of torture.He is also a community activist and campaigner,currently concerned with reducing thecriminalisation of children. He is a director ortrustee of half a dozen centres and voluntarygroups working on criminal justice issues or withyoung people in trouble.

PC: How do you regard our relatively highnational imprisonment rate?

RM: I deprecate it. I find it interesting that KenClarke is returning to Government as JusticeSecretary and made those speeches, one in July atwhich I was present, pointing out that when he wasHome Secretary in 1991 the prison population wasabout 42,000 and now is over 85,000. I take thesame view as Ken Clarke: that such a high populationis unproductive and unsustainable. I think it is difficultto say what the population should be but I see noreason why it shouldn’t be much closer to 42,000.The thing we know about this issue is that theproportionate use of imprisonment has risen for mostcategories of offenders, with the recent exception ofyoung offenders. If you compare like for like cases weare using imprisonment more and for longer than 10-20 years ago at a time when the crime rate andvolume of crime has significantly reduced. This is agrotesque waste of money. I want to see the policycentre of gravity shift towards community

interventions. My reasoning is that research showsthat use of custody is generally criminogenic. That is,you’re actually increasing the risk of reoffending.

PC: How likely do you think it is that this ratewill be reduced?

RM:Well the Government has to look for big savingsand you cannot save much money if you just reduce thepopulation by small numbers. All that happens is that yousave marginal amounts. Until we start closingestablishments we will not make the significant savingsthat Ken Clarke needs to make. I find it difficult to seehow he is going to do it. He can push existing trendsfurther with young offenders because, quite remarkably,the number of children and young people in penalcustody has reduced by about a third in the last 18months. It has come down from over 3000 to around2150. A number of factors have contributed to this trend,but we don’t really know which of the factors have beenthe most significant. Further, it’s difficult to see how KenClarke will achieve the same with the adult population,unless he undertakes some fairly drastic courses of actionlike executive early release, which will not be easy to sellpolitically. His immediate purpose seems to be to ‘talkdown’ the prison population. So far he has managed tostabilise the numbers. If he keeps up this rhetoric it willhelp because the use of imprisonment is affected by the‘mood music’ coming from the centre. However, until westart addressing the legislation for things like IPPs(Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection) it is verydifficult to see how significant population reductions, andthus expenditure savings, can be achieved. If theGovernment aim is to front load the savings, I don’t reallysee how it can be done in the short term. Theforthcoming Green Papers on Sentencing and theRehabilitation Revolution should give us more guidance. Ibelieve that the prison population will drop but it will beslow rather than dramatic.

PC: Is Britain a broken society and to whatdegree do you think prisons can contribute towardsaddressing social problems such as poverty,unemployment, family breakdown and anti-socialbehaviour?

RM: I think imprisonment has to be available forpersistent, serious offenders who do not respond totreatment and programmes. However, I don’t think Britainis broken. We do though have a significant problem withour dramatic wealth and income divide. With youthunemployment rates rising over the next few years this

Interview: Rod MorganRod Morgan is part-time Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Bristol and Visiting Professor at both

the London School of Economics and the Police Science Institute, Cardiff University. He is interviewed byPaul Crossey, Head of Security and Operations at HMYOI Portland.


divide will likely get worse. I heard the Chief Inspector ofConstabulary talking about crime and anti-socialbehaviour problems in Manchester on the radio thismorning and I agree the problems are fairly desperate insome communities. However, I don’t think that takingpeople out of circulation if they won’t respond to positiveprogrammes or opportunities has to take the form itcurrently does, particularly when dealing with youngoffenders. We can be more creative with what custodylooks like. There is need to engage the judiciary, to ensuretheir continuous involvement, with the ongoingimplications of sentences. In the case of young offenderswe have a provision on the statute book, section 34,which has not yet been used. Section 34 provides that acustodial sentence could, if the Secretary of Statesanctions it, be served in placesother than prisons. Places such asspecial schools or intensivefostering placements in thecommunity combined with limitson movement or liberty. I find itbizarre that we have no openestablishments for youngoffenders under 18. There is no‘half-way house’. We need to bemore creative with things likecontracts with offenders, that is ifyou do X you get privileges Y, toenable a more graduated process.My hope is that these creativemeasures come into place toreplace the black and whiteoptions we currently have.

PC: To what degree do youthink it will be possible toachieve a ‘rehabilitation revolution’, significantlyreducing reoffending, given the current squeeze onresources?

RM: It will not be achieved unless we significantlyshift the centre of gravity for spending. When I left theYJB we had a budget of roughly £460 million and about64 per cent of that amount went on the cost of custody.The amount that we could allocate to the YouthOffending Teams (YOTs) for community work waspeanuts. We must significantly shift this centre of gravityby getting the custodial numbers down. At a seminar Iattended recently representatives of the voluntary sectoragencies expressed concern that the money they receivefrom local authorities will significantly be cut over the nexttwo or three years. Their fears are well grounded becauselocal authority spending is going to be under extremepressure. There are lots of excellent mentoring schemesaround. I am President of one, Mentoring Plus in Bath. Itdoesn’t cost a huge amount but most of the scheme’sresources comes from the local authority who havesignalled a cut of up to 50 per cent because will likely

have little choice but to cut everything that is non-statutory. They are almost bound to do so even thougheveryone agrees that these organisations are reallypositive and in the long term lead to significant savings.They help prevent young people get into deeper trouble.The trick, therefore, will be to devise means of transferringsavings in custodial provision to community-basedpreventive services.

PC: How do you think the actual prisonerexperience has shifted in recent years? How is itlikely to change in the next few years?

RM: In some respects it is a lot better. When I beganwork as a research officer in 1968 in prisons, we werecomparing prison regimes in five establishments fromhigh security to remand conditions in local prisons. Our

local was HMP Winchester.Conditions there were a completeeye-opener to me. The remandconditions were appalling.Prisoners were locked up for 23hours a day in traditional Victoriancells, with no sanitation, three orfour to a cell. It was disgraceful.The people who got the bestconditions then were, ironically,the long term sentenced prisonersin the high security establishments.They weren’t subject toovercrowding whereas remandprisoners, supposedly subject tothe presumption of innocence,were. They got virtually nothingbecause it was argued they hadstatutory rights; they could bring intheir own clothing, they could

have food sent in, in theory they could even have winesent in although no one ever encountered it. In law theycould even employ people to clean their cells. I was partof the Woolf enquiry into the 1990 disturbances. Thingsthen were still quite bad in places like Strangeways (HMPManchester) with injustices about which prisoners wereseriously and rightly upset. Many of these conditions andissues have significantly improved. We are now muchmore decent and respectful in our treatment of prisoners.Basic standards have hugely improved.

On the other hand, however, we have become sorisk adverse that security concerns have been raised todisproportionate levels. We are not taking any risks withprisoners. These are mostly people who will shortly bereleased. If they are not given some responsibility thenthey will fail. High levels of security are also enormouslyexpensive. In some other countries things are verydifferent. On a recent study visit to Spanish youngoffender institutions I was struck by the almost completeabsence of perimeter security. The arrangements in Spainwould probably be regarded by many prison managers in


... everyone agreesthat these

organisations arereally positive and inthe long term leadto significant

savings. They helpprevent youngpeople get intodeeper trouble.



this country as a joke. But the evidence suggests that theSpanish authorities achieve a better response from theiryoung prisoners than we do.

Overall, our prison staff are today better trainedbut they work in this serious risk adverse climatewhich will only change if our politicians show the kindof leadership which has been so conspicuously lackingin recent times. The problems with IPPs for example,were the responsibility of one Home Secretary andsubsequent Home Secretaries failed to makenecessary changes. I thought at the time that KenClarke made some serious errors in the early 1990swhen he swept away, rather than fine-tuned, someimportant provisions in the 1991 Criminal Justice Act.But, paradoxically, he could bethe politician brave enough tomake the fundamental; changesnow required. I find it significantthat the person being mostquoted in recent months isBarrack Obama’s chief of staff,Rahm Emanuel, who said, ‘Wecan’t let a good crisis go to awaste’. I agree. We currentlyhave a really good opportunityto stop doing things we shouldnever have been doing in thefirst place. I’m more optimisticthan I am pessimistic. Thefinancial crisis will forcepoliticians to say that we have tostop doing certain things thatthey weren’t prepared to stopdoing during the penal armsrace of the last 10-15 years.

PC: What do you regard asthe biggest problems in theprison system?

RM:Without doubt the size of the population. Thiswas the issue that theWoolf enquiry wrestled with.Woolfelegantly described it as the ‘geological fault line’ runningthrough our penal system. This fault line is that the courtsmake the decisions about the use of custody but have noresponsibility for the consequences. And the peopleresponsible for the consequences have no control overthe uptake. That statement is not entirely true becausethe probation service has the opportunity to exerciselimited influence. But broadly it is true. Woolfrecommended that there should be a cap on thepopulation, and if prisons reached that cap then theSecretary of State should have to lay an order beforeparliament saying that they have reached the limit andcould not take more prisoners. This is similar to the UnitedStates where there court orders limiting the overcrowdingof certain institutions. This was practically the onlyrecommendation in the Woolf Report not accepted by

Government. Our main hope to address the prisonpopulation is now with the sentencing commission. Thiswon’t be easy. The big difference between here and othercountries is not the proportionate use of imprisonment. Itis the fact that we send people to prison for so long. It willbe difficult to reverse that without the Governmentexperiencing the wrath of the Daily Mailmaintaining thatthey have gone soft on crime. But the task of publiceducation must be undertaken. People are not madesafer in their beds at night by expanding our use ofimprisonment.

The next issue is that we need politicians to defendthe penal services when there are breaches of security andthings go wrong. Because if you’re doing constructive

things you have to take reasonablerisks. The public needs to be toldthat any system that doesn’t havethe occasional mishap isn’t doingits job properly. I was an advisor tothe Council of Europe Committeefor the Prevention of Torture (theCPT) which visits and inspectscustodial establishments. We werein Sweden in 1992 and went toSweden’s maximum securityprison. Within it they had a‘supermax’ unit in which somePalestinian terrorists were beingheld. Two or three of themescaped with a gun the day beforewe arrived. You can imagine thehoo-hah. The prisoners were notrecaptured for several weeks.What impressed me was that theDirector General of the SwedishPrison Service wrote an article thefollowing day in Sweden’s leadingnational newspaper admitting that

something had gone seriously wrong which would beinvestigated. But he also said that no prison should beescape proof. It could be. But it was his belief that a prisonthat was escape proof would not be humane. It wouldnot be civilised. It would not be the sort of prison hewould be prepared to run. I could not envisage that beingsaid in Britain. But the Swedish Director General wasbacked by his political masters We need a bit of that.

PC: What are the major obstacles to prisonreform?

RM: During six years in Whitehall I have had regularmeetings with ministers and most of them read the DailyMail and The Sun every morning. If they are gettingexcoriated in the popular press they get very twitchy. Iwant to see a bit of conspicuous political leadership andhonesty. Prison works, but only in a very limited sense.While prisoners are inside, not when they come out. Andmost of them come out very soon.

Overall, our prisonstaff are today

better trained butthey work in thisserious risk adverseclimate which willonly change if ourpoliticians show thekind of leadershipwhich has been soconspicuouslylacking in recent

times.


PC: Howdo you see the idea of ‘The Big Society’impacting on prisons? How do you see it impactingon young people on the cusp of entering custody?

RM: One of the great strengths of this country is itsvoluntary sector with which I have always been heavilyinvolved. I’m a trustee of several organisations that workwith kids in trouble. There is an enormous amount thevoluntary sector can contribute in partnership with thestate. I would like to see that better encouraged. It’s not amagic bullet and it won’t be easy because politicians tendto see the voluntary sector and volunteers as either a freegood or providing services on thecheap. That’s an error. You need totrain, support, debrief and nurturevolunteers for otherwise you don’tretain them. High turnover ofpersonnel is disastrous. This is trueof things like mentoring schemes. Ithink its really important thatoffenders who are likely to havemultiple problems, friendlessness,lacking in achievement,homelessness, joblessness, drugand alcohol problems — theyneed positive commitment andcontinuing relationships withpeople they can trust. Thevoluntary sector and volunteershave a huge amount to contribute.But it has got to involve a changein attitude by the statutoryservices.

Iain Duncan-Smith’s Centrefor Social Justice, from which a lotof this has come, invited me to joina working party on imprisonment.We produced a report entitledLocked Up Potential. Now I am ontheir working party on youthjustice. What is most complainedabout by the voluntary sector isthat the Prison and ProbationServices are like Fort Knox. There are so many obstacles.Like the over elaborate CRB checks. The Probation Servicein England andWales is different to that in Scandinavia orJapan. There you have professional case managers whodo not supervise most offenders but instead supervisevolunteers who supervise most offenders. There is a smallpool of professionals who allocate cases and support,train and oversee what the volunteers do. The volunteeris only paid expenses and is seeing just one or twooffenders. I always thought it a paradox that we havewhat likes to describe itself as the most ‘professional’Probation Service in Europe, yet we have the highestimprisonment rate. The point I’m making is that ourprobation service became so ‘professional’ that it almost

disparaged volunteers arguing that only ‘we’, theprofessionals, can do the business. I don’t agree. There isno shortage of volunteers if they are encouraged,supported and trained and I would prefer to see a servicemodel more akin to the Scandinavian approach. Thatwould represent what I think might be meant by the BigSociety. Probation officers and youth offending teamworkers don’t generally go to offenders’ homes anylonger and work out of offices that look increasingly likeprisons. It’s not a sensible approach.

PC: Are there other ways in which thecharitable sector and citizenscan make a new and differentcontribution to prisons andrehabilitation?

RM: In 1979, together withRoy King, I provided evidence totheMay committee suggesting keyprinciples for prisons. One of thoseprinciples was ‘normalisation’.Meaning that the Prison Serviceshould, when providing services toprisoners, wherever possible usethe same agencies as provide thesame services in the community forexample literacy programmes. Thisis tied up with the Woolfrecommendation of communityprisons, which has never beenimplemented. The normalisationprinciple has to some extent beenadopted. Medical services inprisons are now integrated withthose in the community. We couldhave more and better integrationgenerally if we could get thepopulation down so that prisonswere genuinely local with prisonersbeing held within, say, 30-50 milesof their community roots. I’d like tosee that happen so that the wallsof the prison could be more

‘permeable’. There are lots of inspirational people outthere in the community who could do valuabletransformative work with prisoners. I am a trustee of agroup called Dance United. We do contemporary danceprogrammes with young people. Not because we aretrying to produce contemporary dancers but because thedance routine is a metaphor for broader learning issues.How do you get kids who can’t read and write aged 15and who can’t concentrate or keep still to dance? Danceserves as a metaphor for discipline, concentration, focusand teamwork, all of which are essential to all workdiscipline and learning. All the results from theindependent evaluation suggest that kids who do theprogramme go back to education and progress to a


I think it s reallyimportant that

offenders who arelikely to have multiple

problems,friendlessness,lacking in

achievement,homelessness,

joblessness, drug andalcohol problems —they need positivecommitment and

continuingrelationships with

people they can trust.



different level. These are huge untapped resources of thissort that could all be part of the big society. But not on thecheap.

PC: On resigning from the YJB in 2007 you said‘We’ve got to invest more in early preventionwork,with children who’re starting to get into trouble,rather than locking up more and more youngpeople after the horse has bolted.’ How do youthink that preventative aim can be achieved?

RM: Paradoxically it is being achieved. I resignedbecause I fell out with ministers for two reasons. One wasthat the population in custody was rising when ministershad endorsed a YJB aim to get the population down. Ipleaded with Ministers to make speeches backing thatobjective. But they failed to do so. The second thing wasthat we were criminalising more and more children. Allother things being equal thenumbers being criminalisedincreased by about 30 per centduring my tenure. The principalreason was that the Home Officefixed targets for the police aboutoffences brought to justice. Thepolice tended to focus on theeasiest group to arrest andcriminalise; kids acting in groupson the street. I pleaded for that tochange and got nowhere. Youcould say I was a failure becausesince I resigned significant progresshas been made on both fronts —less criminalisation and feweryoung people in custody. Or youcould say that my message hasnow been learnt. That there was a lag effect. That senseeventually prevailed. The police targets have gone. I’mpleased at the progress, although it’s not that dramatic.We’ve got back to where we were in 2001. So we have along way to go to get to the same level as in the early tomid 1990s. I think my argument is being heeded andwiththis spending round I think both of those trends will betaken further, which I will welcome.

PC: Prisons have an extensive system ofmanagerial monitoring and regulation, includingkey performance targets, audits, inspection andsurveys of staff and prisoners. Is this affordable ornecessary? Should prisons be the subject ofderegulation?

RM: If you set a target people will invariably achieveit. But they will also stop doing things not measured. Forexample, time out of cell. Is something worthwhilebeing done while out of cell? The quality of that isdifficult to capture. Then there is the shaping of the datafor inspectors, which is why the Chief Inspector ofPrisons has set her own expectations. I remember duringthe Woolf enquiry that the data we had at the time

suggested that the regime in the affected prisons hadactually improved in the preceding two years. Youcannot be an inspector without realising there is ashaping of the books. This is not limited to the criminaljustice system. Overall, I am not opposed to targets. Butthey should be modest in number and we should bespending as much time looking at the quality ratherthan the quantity. The police targets were not entirelystupid. But the police got as many ‘brownie points’ forarresting and targeting kids engaged in anti-socialbehaviour as they did for spending vast resources overlengthy periods detecting and prosecuting organisedgangs of adult criminals. Not sensible. Another exampleis Devon and Cornwall. There the police trained all theirbeat officers in restorative justice so that if kids were outof control they could go and see the parents to make

sure some sort of restorativeprocess took place. However, theirofficers got no national ‘browniepoints’ for doing it. They weretrained in RJ, but little of it wasdone because it wasn’torganisationally rewarded. Targetsare fine if they’re aligned withdecent qualitative evaluation.

PC: What role should thecommercial sector have inimprisonment?

RM: I’m a pragmatist. Whenthe idea of the private sectorrunning prisons was first mootedby the House of Commons PenalAffairs Committee in the early1990s I was appalled and opposed

it. In retrospect I think the introduction of privatemanagement has brought benefits to the system as awhole, The Prison Officers Association (POA) was themost conservative and, recalcitrant union imaginable,opposed to all change, in the 1970s and 1980s. Prisongovernors then were frank that the problem of runningprisons was not controlling prisoners but controlling thestaff. That was why the May Committee was appointed.Those problems greatly reduced when the system wasopened up. Competition meant that the state sector hadto start matching the innovative practices of the privatesector. Further, the private sector tended to recruit seniormanagers from the Prison Service and those managersdidn’t want POA members. I’m not persuaded that weneed to push privatisation further, however. I favour themodel in most other countries of contracting outparticular services. That often represents ‘normalisation’.However, some of the best relationships in what I’ll callthe old Prison Service were between prisoners and tradeofficers. They knew their prisoners. They practiced andtaught practical skills. That was a really positive aspect ofthe way things used to be.

The police tendedto focus on theeasiest group toarrest and

criminalise; kidsacting in groups onthe street. I pleadedfor that to changeand got nowhere.


PC: There are plans to freeze public sector payand make fundamental changes to pensions andemployee benefits. What impact is this likely tohave on existing prison staff and for the futureworkforce?

RM: I’m not really conversant with current rates ofpay. But I don’t think people in the Prison Service areoverpaid. In some public sector spheres such as the healthservice, things have got out of hand and I think we aregoing to have to scale back some of the private sectorpractices that have been brought into the public sector.Bonus systems, for example, are generally invidious. Wewill all have to scale back and there will beunderstandable resistance. But I don’t think the pay of theDirector General is grotesque andgovernor pay rates seemreasonable. I understand that thenew Chief Inspector of Prisons isbeing paid less than the outgoingone. That’s probably the directionthings will necessarily have to goand I think it’s reasonable.

PC: How do you thinkindustrial relations in prisonsare likely to develop over thenext four years?

RM: They will probably be a bit turbulent. But it can’tbe worse than it used to be. I think calm will prevail. Idoubt big national strikes will happen. I don’t think we areGreece. We are closer to the Irish Republic and everyonein the public sector there has had huge cuts in salaries. Wewon’t go that far and I don’t think we will have a spate ofstrikes. All the evidence is that the public is supportive ofthe fairly stringent measures to get down public debt; theargument is about how fast it comes down.

PC: How should prison professionals make theirvoices heard in the current debates about prisonsand imprisonment? Is anyone listening?

RM: If you are immersed in the prisons world youpay attention to everything everyone is saying. Butprisons and prisons policy is pretty peripheral to theconcerns of the general public. I have always been astaunch advocate of strong professional associations.When I became Chair of the YJB, I went out of my wayto encourage the formation and strengthening of an

association of Youth Offending Team managers. Thisreversed the policy of my predecessor, Lord Warner, whoI think saw professional associations as trouble. My lineis that staff in the major public services need strongprofessional associations to enhance their self respectand develop their corporate identity. They know aboutissues relating to practical delivery and what works onthe ground. They should be pressing for sensible policydevelopment. So I deprecated the fact that the nationalassociation of chief probation officers (ACOP) forexample was pretty well lost when the Probation Servicebecame a national service. We’ve seen some idiociespromulgated by central management in some of our keyservices which might have been better resisted by senior

staff in a sensible, professional,well thought out way. So my viewis that local managers need aprofessional collective voice. If itcauses a bit of agro for the centrethen good because sometimesthe centre introduces measuresthat are daft, and the people whoknow how daft they are thepeople who have to implementthem on the ground. When itcomes to prison design, for

example, the people who actually work and manage onthe front line know better what is needed than mostprison architects. Likewise with shift patterns, and so on.I think a professional association is good to filter thatknowledge. There should be operational staffrepresentation on the key policy making groups. There isof course a danger you will get the restrictive practiceviewpoint. But if there is good quality centralmanagement they will listen and ensure that practicalexperience is represented at the top table in a coherentfashion. When I became Chair of the YJB I discovered,for example, that we required every YOT in England andWales to return mountains of data every quarter whichwere never analysed. Gathering and returning data iscostly. Unanalysed data represents organisational waste.It would have been better had those practices beenchallenged more effectively by YOT managers who werevery aware and annoyed about sending in data fromwhich there was no practical product.


There should beoperational staffrepresentation onthe key policymaking groups.



Rachel Halford is the Director of Women inPrison and has held this post since July 2010.Rachel worked as the Resettlements ServiceManager for four years before becoming theDirector. Women in Prison was founded in 1983by a former prisoner, Chris Tchaikovsky, andworks to reduce the number of women in prisonand limit the damage which prison can cause towomen’s lives. It does this by supportingindividual women and by campaigning forgender equality in criminal justice policy andpractice. It is a national organisation whichworks with over 2,000 women each year.Services include providing advice and guidancefor women whilst they are in prison, and extendto through the gate support. This includespractical support such as finding housing,reuniting women with their children and helpingto source education and employment. They alsowork to empower women who have experienceof the criminal justice system to get involvedand campaign for change. More informationabout the organisation can be found atwww.womeninprison.org.uk

KH: How do you regard our relatively highnational imprisonment rate?

RH: For women it doesn’t need to be that high.There are approximately 4,200 women in prison atthe moment, and of those only about 1,200 need tobe there. We estimate there are about 80 womenprisoners who will probably never leave prison andthere are about 1,000 women there for public safetyand rehabilitation; but the rest don’t need to be thereand their sentences could be addressed differentlywithin a community setting. A huge number ofwomen are in prison for minor offences and pose norisk to the public.

KH: How likely do you think it is that thisrate will be reduced? How desirable do youthink this is?

RH: There has been a big push to reduce thenumber of women in prison. The Ministry of Justicefunding, £15.6 million, which came off the back ofthe Corston Report, has been put into women’scentres with a focus on supporting alternatives tocustody. In theory we should see a reduction in thenumber of women who receive custodial sentencesand are remanded, and perhaps more women who

are bailed, but that is all in theory. The likelihood willdepend on what happens with the spending review.There is a massive cut for the Ministry of Justice.There has been a suggestion that there will be lessprison spaces and a possible closure of some prisons,but on the basis that there are no empty prisons it ishard to see which ones they will close. The cuts willeffect probation staff and prison resources and thiswill have an impact on the running of prisons. TheCorston money was all about reducing the numberof women in prisons; it would be our hope in thelong term that we would see a large reduction in thenumbers of women in prison, but whether we willactually see this, who knows.

KH: Is Britain a broken society and to whatdegree do you think prisons can contributetowards addressing social problems such aspoverty, unemployment, family breakdown andanti-social behaviour?

RH: To an extent yes, I believe that it is. There isa real imbalance between poverty and the moneystructure within our society and with the new cuts itwill be even bigger. There is no middle groundanymore. With regards to the criminal justice system,people have no chance to change their lives andconsequently they end up on the revolving door ofthe criminal justice system. There is anintergenerational impact with families, for examplewomen from a low income family may resort to pettycrime such as shoplifting in order to make ends meet— she might then receive a custodial sentence andsubsequently her children could be placed in care andshe could lose her home. For these children there isoften no chance for them to get out of care. Withoutresources put into addressing the root causes ofpoverty this kind of family will never be given thechance to change. If they didn’t send women toprison then many of these social problems wouldn’texist for their families and the government wouldsave a lot of money. Women on longer sentences mayfind support with education and employment — butthis help could be provided in the community, wherewe would then be in a position to address some ofthe root causes of offending. It costs £53,000 peryear to send a woman to prison if she hasn’t gotchildren. If she has got children then this can rise to£70-80,000 per year. Alternatives in the communitycost about an eighth of this, the money saved could

Interview: Rachel HalfordRachel Halford has been the Director of Women in Prison since July 2010. She is interviewed by

Karen Harrison who is a Lecturer in Law, University of Hull.


be used to address some of the root causes ofoffending. Public perception of offenders also affectsthis — the government wants to stay in power and soI have huge concerns as to whether anything willdrastically change.

KH: To what degree do you think it will bepossible to achieve a ‘rehabilitation revolution’,significantly reducing reoffending, given thecurrent squeeze on resources?

RH: We have the sentencing review to come,and in order for anything to change it will need tocome from the top down. If that doesn’t happenthere will be no rehabilitation revolution. Our biggestconcern is whether within it,there will be gender specificelements. You can’t have arevolution which is genericbecause men and women havedifferent needs. It sounds goodat the moment, but I have tosay I don’t have a lot of faith.There is someone coming inwho has something new to sayand perhaps this will lead tofewer women being remandedand more alternatives in thecommunity. The Liberals said intheir manifesto that therewould be no sentences undersix months but where did thatgo? The other issue is, bearingin mind the cuts, whether thereare the necessary resources forthis revolution to go forward?And how do they convince thepublic? My hope is thatKenneth Clarke will come inwith something quite radical.We need gender specific services. We need riskassessment tools and programmes which have beendesigned for women specifically. The only currentexample of this is the CARE programme which hasrecently been accredited for women. This worksusing narrative therapy but importantly Women inPrison are involved as mentor/advocates and workwith the women for up to two years. Aconcentration on through the gate services whichhas helped to make this programme effective. At themoment of the 28 women involved in theprogramme, two have been recalled for breach oftheir license conditions, but none have re-offended.This is a massive achievement.

KH: How do you think that the actualprisoner experience has shifted in recent years?How is it likely to change in the next fewyears?

RH: I don’t know that it has. Since I startedworking for Women in Prison, there are perhaps moreservices available with more voluntary agencies beingallowed to work with the women in prison, soaccessibility to services has got better, but feedbackfrom the women would suggest that fundamentallynot a lot has changed. There is more emphasis onwomen specific services, prison and probation staffnow have training on how to work with womenoffenders and there is recognition of differences, butthere are no dramatic changes. Some lifers say it ismore difficult for them, regarding differentrestrictions. There is more emphasis on education and

employment when womenleave prison, but this doesdepend on what type ofsentence we are talking aboutas women receiving shortersentences are unable to accessthis support. We have seensome positive changes in theresponses to the voluntarysector working in prisons, buthow it will change in the futureI am unsure. There has been areal enthusiasm for looking atwomen in the criminal justicesystem, and as an organisation,in lobbying capacity it has beengreat that this has been on theagenda because of the Corstonreport. The funding madeavailable because of the Corstonreport, which we received someof, fed into community projectsand that has been fantastic, butwhen that funding comes to anend we do not yet know

whether we will be able to sustain this work.KH: What do you regard as the biggest

problems in the women’s prison system?RH: The fact that women are still there when

they don’t need to be there — that is the biggestproblem. If we accept that these women are there, ona day to day basis it is the lack of resources and thefact that there are still male prison officers working inwomen’s prisons. If you look at recent prison reports,for example the Holloway report, there are stillnumerous women reporting that they have beensexual advanced or assaulted. There needs to berecognition that women’s needs are different. Thisneeds to be fed through, so all women’s prisons arestaffed by women. This might sound radical ordramatic but if we are to make a difference and if wewant to ensure that women are not intimidated, asmany women come from backgrounds of domestic


There is moreemphasis onwomen specific

services, prison andprobation staff nowhave training onhow to work withwomen offendersand there isrecognition ofdifferences, butthere are no

dramatic changes.



violence and sexual violence, it is necessary. The keythings are resources and women staff. One goodthing is the links that prisons are now making withvoluntary agencies, it is moving in a really good way.

KH: What are the major obstacles to prisonreform?

RH: The initial cost and public perception are thebiggest obstacles. The public needs to be educated.They need to look at the issues, look at what thesewomen go through, look at the root causes andrealise they are not what the public perceive them tobe. They only see the horror cases like Baby P, thestories which sell newspapers stories. They don’t seethe stories of the other 3,750 women in prison. So itis about education. The biggest difficulty is definitelypublic perception.

KH: How do you see theidea of ‘The Big Society’impacting on prison?

RH:We are waiting for it toplay out. At the moment we areideally all going to worktogether, but there is a lack offunding in the statutory sector. Ihaven’t quite got my headaround where all of this moneyis going to come from in the‘big society’. Who is going tocontrol the money? Is theremore money available for thevoluntary sector or will it be thestatutory sector that will controlit? It is strange that statutoryorganisations now need us, thismakes us popular and that isgood but we are concernedabout the conditions that mightbe attached to this. Personally, I think the vision is abit of a cop out — let’s get lots of volunteers to dothe work. There is a lack of commitment. Cameronsays it’s a big society and we should work together,but if we consider the cuts which will affect youngpeople, and those on low income, does he reallythink that we will all be happy volunteering together?In light of the cuts and without further information itfeels as if the big society is about patronising us. Itfeels really controlling.

KH: Are there ways in which the charitablesector and citizens can make a new and differentcontribution to prisons and rehabilitation?

RH: We make a really valuable contribution atpresent. If we can continue with this, it’s aboutpartnership — working with statutory services andbringing it back to the women who we work withand who we work for, to be able to provide the bestpossible service which we can and a platform for their

voices. It’s about finances to enable us to maintainand increase what we are doing.

KH: Prisons have an extensive system ofmanagerial monitoring and regulation includingkey performance targets, audits, inspection andsurveys of staff and prisoners. Is this affordableor necessary? Should prisons be the subject ofderegulation?

RH: There is an impact on us. Because prison andprobation resources are so limited and they have thismass of targets it becomes more difficult for them towork with us because it is more work for them.Despite this, they do work with us and in someprisons we have great relations, but to establish thishas often taken time because they are worried about

what more work they will needto do. They are put underimmense pressure to achieveoutcomes with small amounts ofresources. It can also affect ouroutcomes.

KH: What role should thecommercial sector have inimprisonment?

RH: I find it very bizarre thata commercial company wouldwant to make money onimprisoning people. It doesn’t sitcomfortably with me at all.What happens if it becomespayment by results? We arelooking at what is going tohappen with local healthauthorities and payment byresults, for example with mentalhealth care. We work withwomen in HMP Peterborough

and HMP Bronzefield we have great relations with theprison and great access and we are able to providewomen with some really great services. But I don’tagree with the possibility of the commercial sectorbecoming so dominant.

KH: To what extent do you think privatesector competition has altered the terrain ofimprisonment?

RH: I don’t know that it has in the women’sestate because it has taken them a long time to comeup with anything that matches what was beingoffered by HM Prison Service. The staff theyemployed were not always trained as well as thosefrom HM Prison Service. It may be different now, butwhen they were set up it was appalling, especially forthe men who had no experience of working withwomen — for example a man who was previously asecurity guard who was working with women, it is allabout control and he has no idea about the needs of

I find it very bizarrethat a commercialcompany wouldwant to makemoney onimprisoning

people. It doesn’tsit comfortablywith me at all.


women. It is frightening. He has no idea about whatthey have been through.

KH: How do you think prison work inprisons is likely to develop?

RH: If the rehabilitation revolution comes intoplay and everyone has to go to work then industryare going to be very pleased with the cheap labour.Women can and do work for the whole day if theychose to and there is provision for them to work.Kenneth Clarke recently said that their wage wouldonly increase from £7 to £20 per week, as part ofthe rehabilitation revolution, and that every prisonerwould work. Perhaps this wassaid to change publicperception — look at what theoffenders are giving back. Hecould be politically paving theway for something else. Thepublic may see that offendersare feeding something backinto the economy and that theyare being paid a little bit ofmoney; but this isn’t good forthe women involved. It is like alabour camp. We need morework projects where womenget paid properly and pay tax.The money they currentlyreceive is an insult and isdegrading; it is like child pocketmoney. Also for many womenin prison it just reinforces theirbelief that they are worthless. Ican see where they are comingfrom and why they are doing itbut it will have an appallingeffect on women.

KH: How can Women inPrison get their voice heardin the current debates about prison andimprisonment? Is anyone listening?

RH: We feed into anything and everything wepossibly can. We write to politicians and newspapersand we feed into any review or consultation —although I have this horrible feeling that nobody everreads it and the decisions have already been madebut we have to engage with this. As mentionedpreviously we have, over the last few years, had aninside track because women were on the justiceagenda and as a consequence have had to do lesslobbying, however this has changed and we are nowactively lobbying for change. We have a service usergroup and it’s about policymakers hearing their voicesand this is really important. It’s hard to know whetherpeople listen. It’s horrendous that it took a largenumber of deaths in custody for them to listen the

first time around when the Corston report waswritten, but women are still dying in prison. We knowthat it takes something drastic and sad to happenbefore women are listened too. With the current cutsthis will make everything even harder.

KH: What progress do you think has beenmade since the Corston Report?

RH: There has been the money, which has beenfantastic. This is money which has gone intoalternatives to custody. We were lucky to secure twogrants. It has given us the chance to evidence thatthere are alternatives to custody for women. In

London we work with womenwho are on remand, on shortsentences or on license, they arethe hardest group to engage.We have worked with morethan 2,000 women this year,some of who are difficult toaccess and require an enormousamount of one-to-one work butit has been successful and it’sbeen great that we have beengiven the opportunity to provethat it can be successful. Therehas also been more emphasis onalternatives in the communitysuch as community payback, butWomen in Prison is not aboutpunishment and we won’t be,but it is better than prison.There are a few women’scentres but there are no smallcustodial units which BaronessCorston recommended. Thisappears to have been forgottenunless we need to prove that itworks first. Some women’sprisons are mansion houses on

lots of land, these could be sold and money could beused to set up small units.

KH: What other areas still need to beimproved in women’s prisons?

RH: The obvious answer is that most womenshould not be there, but apart from that it is aboutbeing able to access the services which they need. Itis about gender specific staff, accessibility toresources, but it’s about them not being there. If anyintervention needs to take place it can take place inthe community. It’s about women not beingseparated from their children. There are somemother and baby units but there are limited spacesand the process is very hard — there are lots ofwomen who have their children taken away fromthem when they are born. The problem is whatimprisonment perpetuates.


We need more workprojects wherewomen get paidproperly and pay

tax. The money theycurrently receive isan insult and is

degrading; it is likechild pocket money.Also for many

women in prison itjust reinforces theirbelief that theyare worthless.



KH: Do you think that women may beparticularly affected by the spending cuts?

RH: Most women will be affected, butparticularly those on low income, where often thewomen who will end up in prison come from. Insociety, generally, women would be affected morebecause that is what historically happens. So theobvious answer is yes.

KH: How do you think the changes in publicspending will affect the particular role oforganisations such as your own?

RH: I hope that what it will do is link us up morewith statutory services. At the moment we are fundedby London councils for a few of our projects. Some ofour projects may be stopped earlier than originally

agreed, this is a direct impact of the spending cuts. Itis difficult to know how it will work but I think it willbe based on more joined-up working. Going back tobig society I think the statutory sector will need towork in a more joined up way with us. For examplewe have a pilot criminal justice project in Manchesterwhich works with women in the courts and policecustody suites, and works with the women to helpthem secure bail, we also support them and providethem with a tailored support plan. We also, wherepossible feed into the pre-sentence reports which thiscan lead to a woman not being remanded. We’ve hadfantastic results in Manchester and we are now goinglive in London.



Book ReviewControversial Issues in PrisonsBy David Scott and Helen CoddPublisher: Open University Press(2010)ISBN: 978-0-335-22303-9(paperback)978-0-335-22304-6 (hardback)Price: £21.99 (paperback)£60.00 (hardback)

As the criminal justice systemexpands, so does the wholeindustry around it including theprovision of higher education andtraining. Criminology as anundergraduate subject has growndramatically as the future personnelof the police, probation, prisonsand other service providers grows.Along with this has come a growthin the number of textbookspublished in order to support anddirect those students. With so manyon the market, each publicationneeds to be distinct in order tosuccessful. The first question thatarises when reading this text book,written by David Scott and HelenCodd of the University of CentralLancashire, is what makes thisdifferent from any other textbookavailable at the moment? Theanswer to that question is clear.What makes this book different isthat rather than offering a soberand comprehensive text, itadvocates and justifies the abolitionof imprisonment.

Scott and Codd take on theirtask by using the medium of‘controversial issues in prisons’.They define a controversial issue ashaving three aspects. First, they aretopical and emotive, that is theyaddress concerns about prisonstoday and they arouse strongfeelings. Second, they revealcompeting interpretations —ideological, political andphilosophical beliefs about crime,justice and wider society. Third, they

question penal legitimacy and callinto question the use of prisons.The controversial issues discussed inthe chapters of this book includemental health; women in prison;children in prison; racism; self-inflicted deaths; sex offenders; drugtaking; and prisoners’ families.

Each chapter presents a casestudy examining the problems ofimprisonment. There is no attemptto provide a comprehensiveresource for the students readingthis book instead it has a clear andclearly acknowledged ideologicalintent. Whether or not the readeragrees with this perspective willvary, however, it is indisputable thatthis perspective deserves to beheard not only in mainstreamacademia but also in mainstreamsociety. There is no reason that anypolicy should be taken for grantedand accepted without questionincluding the use of imprisonment.Scott and Codd deserve to beapplauded for presenting their casewith such clarity and providing abook that is ideologically coherentand accessible to students some ofwhom will become future criminaljustice workers. It is throughplanting such seeds that they nodoubt hope that future harvests willbe reaped.

Some people working insideprisons might ask why they shouldread a book that advocatesabolition. The answer to thatquestion lies in a fullerunderstanding of what penalabolitionism is all about. It is not, assome many assume, an anarchicargument that prisons should beclosed and those who are violentsimply roam free to prey on theweak and those who break the lawsgo unpunished. It is instead anargument that is based on a deeperunderstanding of how crime andpunishment are socialconstructions. In other words

abolitionism questions both whatactions are defined as ‘crimes’ andwhat the purpose of policing andpunishment should be. Abolitionistsargue the prison populationincludes a disproportionate numberof people at the margins of societynot because they are inherentlymore criminal but because theirproblematic behaviour and theharms they cause are more likely tobe the defined as crimes. They goon to maintain that the harmfulbehaviour of powerful groups suchas fraud, tax evasion, pollution,health and safety breaches andstate crimes largely go unpunished.Abolitionists conclude that ‘crimeand punishment’ are constructswhich reflect and reinforce powerand inequality in society.Accordingly, the abolition of prisonsis part of a broader political andsocial position advocating a moreequal and fair society. The value ofthis book for those who work inprisons is to provide a resource thatconfronts them with a radicalcritique and challenges manyassumptions about the benefits ofprisons. Those who work in thecriminal justice system and exercisestate power should questionthemselves about what they aredoing and the harms they may becausing as well as celebrating thegood that they do. Only by askingthose difficult questions can weseek the truth about what we do.

In its final chapter this bookdiscusses abolitionist alternativeswhich for this reviewer raises aquestion about whether thestrategy adopted by abolitionists iseffective. At the moment they are aminority group: largely academic(although with some grassroots andpressure group support) whoseideas are largely discounted inpolitical and professional circles.This is due in part to those inpositions of power who are

Reviews



naturally resistant to any challenge,ignoring and marginalising radicaldiscourse. It is also due to thestrategies adopted by abolitioniststhemselves.

It is particularly significant thatoutside of a fairly limited circle thearguments can be difficult forpeople to understand. Whilst it isclear what abolitionists are against,it is not always clear what they arearguing for. Advancing a negativeargument can illicit some nods ofapproval but rarely moves people toaction. Also, abolitionists are attimes exclusive. In this book, and inothers by leading abolitionists,distance is always put betweenabolitionists and what they describeas ‘liberal reformers’ who want toreduce the use of imprisonmentand make prisons more humanebut do not necessarily try to take onthe whole social super-structure atthe same time. These are groupsthat by collaborating would gainstrength from each other. Instead, adivisive discourse exists whichseems to place a doctrinal purityabove practical change. Ifabolitionists are to more than avaluable grit in the shoe of societythen focussing on a positivealternative and making a few morefriends might not be a bad place tostart.

This book is an excellentintroduction to abolitionist thinkingthat will stimulate students andprovide them with an importantperspective. It also provides achallenge to prisons that isrecommended to currentpractitioners. This will beuncomfortable, will evoke strongemotional reactions and will leadthe thoughtful reader to ask somedifficult questions of the system andof their own role. That is a step thatmany are unwilling to take, butcarrying out the ultimate statesanction should never becomfortable or easy.

Jamie Bennett is Governor ofHMP Morton Hall.

Book ReviewTurning the corner: Beyondincarceration and re-offendingBy Anton Shalupanov andRushanara AliPublisher: The Young Foundation(2010)ISBN: 978-1-905551-15-6(paperback)Price: £10.00 (paperback)

Trial and error in criminaljustice reform: Learning fromfailureBy Greg Berman and Aubrey FoxPublisher: The Urban Institute Press(2010)ISBN: 978-0-87766-767-4(paperback)Price: $26.50 (paperback)available from USA only

These two books focus oninnovation in criminal justice. WhilstTurning the corner looks to thefuture with ideas about improvingthe effectiveness of rehabilitation,Trial and error in criminal justicereform looks to the past and thelessons that can be learned andapplied. Together they set out theopportunities and pitfalls andprovide important ideas for policymakers and practitioners.

Turning the corner wasproduced by Anton Shalupanov,Programme Leader for justiceinnovation at the YoungFoundation, and Rushanara Ali,Associate Director of the YoungFoundation and now a Labour MP.Their work focuses on developingnew ideas aimed at reducingreoffending. They propose threekey innovations that they argue willhave a beneficial impact. The first isthat innovation should be morewidely encouraged and developed.They suggest that this could bedone by establishing anindependent UK Centre for JusticeInnovation. This Centre would workwith a small number of projects anddesign, pilot and evaluate them. Inthis way they would be a source ofnew ideas and practices. The

second area is the development ofsocial impact bonds, whereinvestors support projects aimed atreducing reoffending and receive areturn on their investment basedupon the results. Although it is notclear what appetite there will be inthe market for this practice, it is atleast an attempt to attract newfinance into approaches aimed atreducing reoffending rather thansimply expanding control. Thisinnovation has already been takenup and is being piloted at HMPPeterborough as part of thegovernment’s ‘rehabilitationrevolution’. The third area that theauthors focus on is barriers toreleased prisoners gainingemployment. They propose somesignificant changes to currentpolicy, including a more limitedapproach to criminal records checksand the requirement to declareconvictions. They also proposeimproved transitional support frommentors and potential employers,helping released prisoners tosuccessfully move from prison intoemployment.

This book poses somechallenging questions and proposessome imaginative new ideas. Theseare largely ideas that could go withthe grain of current politicalthinking. The idea of social impactbonds is already being piloted andthe encouragement for innovativeapproaches is also being embraced.As a result, the Young Foundationand the UK Centre for JusticeInnovation are organisations thatcould gain traction and becomeincreasingly important in shapingpolicy and practice.

The second book, Trial anderror in criminal justice reform, hasbeen written by Greg Berman andAubrey Fox, both of whom work atthe Centre of Court Innovation inNew York, an organisation thatpromotes, develops and evaluatescriminal justice projects and is themodel for the proposed UK Centrefor Justice Innovation. They takefive case studies in order to draw


lessons about the ways in whichprojects can fail and use this inorder to understand how to avoidthis in the future. The projects arevaried and include initiatives aimedat reducing gun crime and tacklingdrugs. In all of the cases there wassome success although this wasoften followed by subsequentfailure. The authors draw eight keylessons from these experiences,including the importance ofworking with local cultures, politicsand organisations, being realisticabout expectations and successcriteria, being reflective and payingattention to detail.

The case studies in this bookare fascinating and mostexperienced professionals willrecognise the potential pitfallsdescribed and will have seenpromising projects undermined bysimilar mistakes. The mostimportant contributions that thisbook makes, though, are inthinking about creating structuresthat foster and support innovation.The first issue that comes out clearlyis that in an innovativeenvironment, projects are allowedto fail. Innovation is a process oftrial and error, ideas need to betested out and experimentsconducted before workingsolutions are found. This is animportant issue for developmentssuch as social impact bonds wherefailure risks significant financial lossand there is therefore the possibilitythat an initiative aimed at fosteringinnovation actually results inproviders playing it safe. The secondissue is that innovation is oftensmall scale and localised. Thishighlights that professionals needboth the discretion and theresources in order to develop andtry new ideas. It also highlights thatinitiatives are often successfulbecause of individuals, the localcontext and the communityresponse and this cannot always bereplicated consistently on a largescale. Innovation is thereforesomething that is best developed

on a small scale and that aproliferation of diverse approachesis more likely to be successful thansearching for large scale nationalprojects to provide a magic bullet.

These two books are a richand valuable source of new ideasand are recommended to policymakers and practitioners. Theirapproach is timely and in manyways they are in tune with thedirection of travel in governmentpolicy. However, they alsodemonstrate that in realising thoseaims there are significantchallenges and that professionalswould do well to learn thoselessons of the past before seekingto implement emerging new ideas.


Book ReviewCrisis and change in the Britishand Dutch Prison Services:Understanding crisis-reformprocessesBy Sandra L. ResodihardjoPublisher: Ashgate (2009)ISBN: 978-0-7546-7549-5(hardback)Price: £55.00 (hardback)

The global credit crunch andthe subsequent recession have ledto the role of the state in providingservices and what citizens canreasonable expect to beprofoundly questioned. In the UKthe coalition government hascontinually reiterated that thechanges in public spending thatare required to reduce the deficitare going to fundamentally alterthe nature of the public sector. Inother countries too there havebeen dramatic reverse of policydirection in order to respond tofinancial imperatives. In relation toprisons, both California and NewYork, previously at the forefront ofmass imprisonment, have sought

to reduce their prison populationsand seek alternatives both by usingnon-custodial penalties andinvesting in high crimeneighbourhoods. Such a policywould have been unthinkable onlya few years ago.

In this book Sandra L.Resodihardjo of Leiden University,analyses how institutional crisescan drive fundamental change,drawing upon the experiences ofthe Dutch and British prisonsystems in the 1990s. During thattime, the British prison systemexperienced first the widespreadriots of 1990 and the Woolf reportthat called for a more humaneprison system balanced betweensecurity, control and justice. Thiswas followed by the high profileescapes of category A prisonersfrom Whitemoor and Parkhurst in1994 and 1995, which led to thepriority of “‘security, security,security”’. During the years 1992-3, the Dutch system alsoexperienced a spate of escapes andincreasing pressure on prisonplaces. This led to theabandonment of their one-prisoner-one-cell policy and theintroduction of more secureregimes.

Resodihardjo describes thesereforms in terms of a drasticdeviation from existing structureand changed the paradigm ofimprisonment. They also cameabout as a result of crises whereinstitutional failures led toincreased political, media andpublic scrutiny. These failures areanalysed in this book andResodihardjo illustrates how thenormal constraints to change fellaway as the crises intensified.These barriers include individualinterests and resistance,organisational routines, cultureand values, and political concernsincluding policy inheritance andresources. She also illustrates howchanges are pushed forward byentrepreneurial action asindividuals seek to capitalise upon




the opportunity for change andshifts in the policy makers’approach as they seek to respondto intensified calls for action.

This book provides excellentdescriptions of the crises thatengulfed the Dutch and Britishsystems during the 1990s.Although the events in the UK willbe familiar to readers, those in theDutch system will be less so, butare no less riveting. The book alsomanages to provide a scholarlyanalysis of the process of changewhich is interesting both from ahistorical perspective and in

understanding contemporaryevents. Where the book gets mostinteresting is where it touchesupon why some reforms could bedescribed as socially and politicallyprogressive, such as the Woolfreforms, whilst others, such as theDutch reforms, could be describedas regressive. Here, Resodihardjohighlights both the importance ofindividual actors, who impose aclear sense of direction, and thestructural factors such as theprevailing political culture andpreceding public discourse. Whilstthere is more that could be

discussed about these issues infuture research, this book opensthe way for that exploration.

This book that will be ofinterest to those who lived andworked through the tumultuousperiod of the 1990s, but equally ithas value to those who are seekingto understand where the prisonsystem is now and how it maydevelop in the immediate future.


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Prison Service JournalIssue 193

Purpose and editorial arrangements

The Prison Service Journal is a peer reviewed journal published by HM Prison Service of England and Wales.

Its purpose is to promote discussion on issues related to the work of the Prison Service, the wider criminal justice

system and associated fields. It aims to present reliable information and a range of views about these issues.

The editor is responsible for the style and content of each edition, and for managing production and the

Journal’s budget. The editor is supported by an editorial board — a body of volunteers all of whom have worked

for the Prison Service in various capacities. The editorial board considers all articles submitted and decides the out-

line and composition of each edition, although the editor retains an over-riding discretion in deciding which arti-

cles are published and their precise length and language.

From May 2005 selected articles from each edition are available in the Resource Centre of the HMPrison Service website. This is available at www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk

Circulation of editions and submission of articles

Six editions of the Journal, printed at HMP Leyhill, are published each year with a circulation of approximately

6,500 per edition. The editor welcomes articles which should be up to c.4,000 words and submitted by email to

[email protected] or as hard copy and on disk to Prison Service Journal, c/o Print Shop Manager, HMP

Leyhill, Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, GL12 8HL. All other correspondence may also be sent to the Editor

at this address or to [email protected].

Footnotes are preferred to endnotes, which must be kept to a minimum. All articles are subject to peer

review and may be altered in accordance with house style. No payments are made for articles.

Subscriptions

The Journal is distributed to every Prison Service establishment in England and Wales. Individual members of

staff need not subscribe and can obtain free copies from their establishment. Subscriptions are invited from other

individuals and bodies outside the Prison Service at the following rates, which include postage:

United Kingdom

single copy £5.00

one year’s subscription £25.00 (organisations or individuals in their professional capacity)

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cheque made payable to ‘HM Prison Service’ to Prison Service Journal, c/o Print Shop Manager, HMP Leyhill,

Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, GL12 8BT.


This edition includes:

Interviews with:

Crispin BluntParliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Prisons

and Youth Justice

Juliet LyonDirector of the Prison Reform Trust

Nick HardwickHM Chief Inspector of Prisons

Richard GarsideDirector of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies

Michael SpurrChief Executive of the National Offender

Management Service

P R I S O N S E R V I C E

OURNALJ


Crossey, P. (2011) Interview: Rod Morgan, Prison Service Journal, 193, 37-42

Documents

Transcript of Crossey, P. (2011) Interview: Rod Morgan, Prison Service Journal, 193, 37-42