Last week the BBC treated us to their five-part drama "Criminal Justice", depicting our legal system as more concerned about personal and political victories than truth, and our prison system as one where criminals are in control, drugs flow freely, and violence is unrestrained. Monday Channel 5 screened "Banged Up", the first of its four "reality" TV shows set in a re-opened prison overseen by former Home Secretary David Blunkett.

The strength of the latter programme, to my mind, was not the "reality" of the ten young offenders who agreed to be locked up for ten days (with the provision that they were free to leave at any point - an option taken by one, who couldn't cope with being cooped up in a 12x7 cell, after just three hours and by another, whose addiction to alcohol forced him to seek a drink, after just two nights). Rather, it was the interwoven clips from interviews with former prison inmates describing the true nature of life in prison. This included reference to an incident included in the BBC drama, where drugs are hidden inside the bodies of dead pigeons and then tossed over the prison wall to waiting prisoners.

If it is common knowledge that drugs are more freely available inside our prisons than they are on our streets, that "80 per cent of those people received into prison were misusing a substance of some kind when they came in" (former chief inspector of prisons, Lord Ramsbotham, October 2007), and it is known that more than half of the estimated 135,000 people who pass through our prisons each year are believed to be problem drug users (i.e. use heroin or crack), one can but wonder at the apparent apathy of a government that thinks "The creation of drug free prisons is an expensive option and was not considered to be practical in the current resource climate." ⁽¹⁾

It is to be welcomed, therefore, that Justice Secretary Jack Straw has this week agreed to all of the recommendations made in Disrupting the supply of illegal drugs into prisons, a review led by David Blakey, a former Inspector of Constabulary and Chief Constable of West Mercia. These measures include the introduction of mobile phone blockers in high-risk areas to stop inmates using smuggled handsets and of hi-tech chairs, known as Body Orifice Security Scanners, to scan inside the body for smuggled contraband at every jail in England and Wales by next March.

Yet these steps only seek to address symptoms, not causes. Surely a bigger issue is why so many drug addicts (and, for that matter, people with mental health problems†) are being locked up in prison rather than receiving treatment. Even the government's own analysis now confirms what the Jubilee Centre has been saying since we conducted our research into relational justice in the early 1990s (see, for instance, our report Relational Justice). For, bucking the trend of 64 per cent of prisoners who are reconvicted within two years of being released, a government report into restorative justice schemes last month found that "offenders who participated in restorative justice committed statistically significantly fewer offences (in terms of reconvictions) in the subsequent two years than offenders in the control group." ⁽²⁾

Prisons are needed to punish and incapacitate serious and repeat offenders. However, it is also the duty of the prison service to look after those offenders "with humanity and to help them lead law abiding and useful lives in custody and after release." We can no longer go on locking up ever increasing numbers of offenders in ever more crowded prisons in isolation from their family and community support networks. It is time for a new approach to criminal justice. Surely providing proper opportunities for treatment and rehabilitation, and for education and training would be a better use of the £32,888 of tax-payers' money ⁽³⁾ that it costs each year to accommodate each of the country's 83,000+ prisoners?

† A recent prisons report suggested that 17% of prisoners have a psychiatric history and 50% of prisoners have primary or secondary mental health needs. It also quoted a parliamentary report that concluded the mentally ill are still being inappropriately criminalised, and that the structure of mental health services in prison is currently not meeting the full range of prisoners' needs. ⁽⁴⁾

Sources:
1. PricewaterhouseCoopers report to the Department of Health and Ministry of Justice, A Review of Prison-Based Drug Treatment Funding, December 2007, p.24.
2. Centre for Criminological Research University of Sheffield report to the Ministry of Justice, Does restorative justice affect reconviction?, June 2008, p.iii
3. Hansard: Prisoners: Per Capita Costs, 8 March 2007, Column 2162W
4. HM Inspectorate of Prisons, The mental health of prisoners: A thematic review of the care and support of prisoners with mental health needs, October 2007