A look into the deterioration of UK prisons
After handing my phone to a prison official I am led through the labyrinthine corridors of HMP Norwich to a courtyard full of prisoners, some of whom I am about to meet. “Morning Miss,” the prisoners in the courtyard wave at the official accompanying me. She smiles at them as though they are her nursery class. Thankfully, I am largely ignored. We come to a waiting room with a brochure advertising the role of prison officer at Norwich HMP, which I grab from the table.
RECRUITING NOW: Interested in becoming a Prison Officer at HMP Norwich?
Salary: £20,961
Not a bad offer. I might be tempted if I didn’t know that so far this year there were a record 9,003 attacks on prison staff – up 26% from 2017 – with 892 classed as serious. On top of this, most HMPs had been forced to reduce their staff by almost 30%, an amount forecasted to increase. This was my first time in a UK prison, but it would not be my last. One of the inmates had spent three months in HMP Northumberland, a private prison run by Sodexo. During his stay, officers found 2.5 kilos of spice inside inmate prison cells. “It’s different every time you try it” said the inmate, who had been a regular spice smoker. “The first time it made me kind of buzzy and light headed, but good - a bit like weed but way more intense. The second time I was on my bed. It was mad, it was like my whole body was on fire. I never want to do that stuff again, I’ve seen people lose their minds on it.” It was later discovered in HMP Northumberland that two security alarms had been deactivated. On site, two officers discovered wire cutters along with a hole that had been cut into an inner security face. “There are a lot of times when stuff happens and I can’t react to it the way I want to,” an anonymous prison guard told the BBC after the spice was found. “Because there’s not the back up there to deal with it - I don’t feel safe. Ever.” A 2018 investigation found the number of staff found taking contraband into prisons in England and Wales had risen by 57%, according to Ministry of Justice. Spice, a product that looks almost identical to marijuana, is one of many recreational drugs that burrow their way under prison walls. There have been 27 spice-related deaths in the UK over the last two years alone.
A factor underlying the problems with all prisons in the is the increase in overall prison population. In the UK, as the prison population rose, the level of prison contracts handed out to private companies rose with it. We only need to take a cursory glance across the pond to remind us of the dangers of corporate-run jails. Between 1970 and 2005, the USA’s prison population grew by 700%. As of 2017, their current prison population stands at two million, meaning that 25% of the world’s prison population resides in the land of the free. This, in what some lobbyists view as an astonishing coincidence, coincided directly with the rise of private prisons, whose inmate population increased by 1,600% between 1998 and 2017. Investigations show that nearly 200 lobbyists have been hired by private prison companies in the space of eight years. For immigration removal centres alone – which in the UK are also privately operated - private prison corporations make a profit of 1.5 billion USD. Unlike most other companies, The Corrections Corporation of America doesn’t have to worry about strikes, or about paying unemployment insurance. All their workers are full time, and they never arrive late or stay at home because of family problems. Their alternative to the 25 cents-an-hour wage? A prison cell and a note of uncooperative behaviour.
In comparison to the notorious US prison system, one would think that the UK was doing relatively well. One would be wrong, as even though our prison population is significantly lower, we have a higher percentage of our population staying in private prisons. At 15%, the UK has the most privatised prison system in all of Europe, in addition to the highest imprisonment rate. If you are looking for any political party to shoulder the blame for this, you may be equally disappointed, as both the Labour and the Conservative parties share responsibility for pushing our prisons into corporate hands; primarily the hands of the three biggest prison companies operating in the UK: Serco, G4S, and Sodexo.
Serco, who runs HMP Lowdham Grange among others, received complaints from family members in the prison after a handcuffed inmate was thrown down stairs. Others were "pulled from cells and punched.” A forty-six-year-old female officer, one among many, was jailed for having sex with a prisoner while on duty at HMP Doncaster.
G4S fairs little better. Birmingham jail, a now infamous case, was stripped of G4S control after chronic riots caused nation-wide sandals. Their youth prison, Rainsbrook Secure training centre, was also blasted by regulators. Investigations found that one out of ten children in the jail were using heroin regularly, most of it smuggled in by the guards. 90% of the users had tried the drug for the first time in the prison. These kind of scandals pass under the radar time and time again and there are dozens examples I could list here. But, weary of desensitising the reader, I shall refrain from doing so.
Last but not least, Sodexo, the same private prison company responsible for the drug failures at HMP Northumberland, is also responsible for housing the UK’s largest population of Islamic extremists. Muslims account for 15% of Britain’s prisoners according to Parliament UK – a 50 per cent increase since ten years ago – despite being under 5% of the UK population. More alarmingly, according to freedom of information requests obtained by the MailOnline, one in five inmates serving sentences in Britain’s maximum security jails are Muslim. At Whitemoor prison, for example, 44% of the 447 inmates are Muslim. Whitemoor walls have housed such colourful characters as Guantanamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg, as well as Lee Rigby’s killers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. Officials say it is likely that Khalid Masood, perpetrator of the Westminster bridge attack in 2017, was radicalised during a spell in prison. Mark Ashdown, 52 and a friend of Masood, told the Telegraph: “When he first came out he told me he’d become a Muslim in prison and I thought he was joking. Then I saw he was quieter and much more serious. I gave him some cash-in-hand work for a few months as a labourer. He said he needed time to pray and read the Koran - something about finding inner peace.” Anti-terror think-tank the Quilliam Foundation warned UK prisons were ‘ripe’ to become extremist recruiting grounds. However, less than one per cent of the total Muslim prisoner population were convicted of ‘terrorism-related offences where the motivation stemmed from extreme ideology,’ suggesting that a rise in terrorist activity did not explain the over-representation of Islam within British prisons. The remaining explanation is that the high security prisons boast a high conversion rate, as coverts often swear-off drugs to showcase their new found belief, encouraging authorities to turn a blind eye. It should be noted however that prosecutors do not record religion, limiting the range of statistics available.
A report leaked to the Telegraph in 2016 found that Islamic hate literature was being distributed to inmates within UK prisons. The report is also said to have found that chaplains at some jails even encouraged inmates to raise money for Islamic charities linked to international terrorism. Muslim chaplains appointed by the Ministry of Justice – of which over 100 are currently employed - can earn up to £40,000. One of the UK’s largest prisons in which extremists are held is HMP Peterborough, ran by Sodexo. It is also the prison where activist Tommy Robinson was sent by UK authorities for mortgage fraud and attacked with ‘napalm’, a mixture combining boiling water and melted sugar, so termed because of the way it sticks to the burning skin. Common practice within prisons is to hold the victim and pour it down the throat. Mr Robinson survived the assault because of a tip-off by a fellow prisoner. He then asked prison guards to place him in solitary confinement for his own safety.
One solace my investigations have left me is the assurance that state-run prisons can still be just as bad as their private counterparts. My visits to Norwich HMP assured me of that. Privitisation, a word which leftist media has successfully transformed into a synonym for Tory, is itself a symptom of a more subtle condition. Peter Hitchens, in his book a Brief History of Crime, correctly points out that the majority of UK criminals are only given sentences after they have already committed multiple offences, asserting that a softer approach to criminal behaviour has led to the ineffective British prison system we all enjoy today. While no doubt a contributor, this leaves wanting an explanation for why more successful prison systems modelled on shorter sentences - like in Sweden, for example – have not become cesspools of drugs-taking and radicalism. Recidivism rates in Norway, where the maximum sentence is restricted to 21 years, were at 20% in 2005, compared to the UK’s rate of 59%. I believe a simpler cause is to blame. The UK absorbed a population roughly about the size of modern Sweden (9.9 million) between 1965 and 2010. The surge of cheap, ineffective and dangerous prisons was a foreseeable response from a government struggling to afford the running of its own schools and health service. Prisons, just like the prisoners in them, are not a nation’s financial priority.
The prison-merry-go-round can be summarised as follows: An increase in general population leads to an increase in the prison population. This puts strain on the cost of running the prisons, which the government tip-toes around by placing them in the hands of private companies. In order to guarantee the cheap costs, the private prisons cut corners and reduce staff. The existing staff are underpaid and undertrained, less able to cope with riots and self-harm. The underpaid and overworked staff turn a blind eye to drug taking in the prisons, with some workers taking bribes in exchange for their silence or cooperation. The drug problem boils over. Officials encourage religious conversion in order to disincentivise drug taking within the prison. The stricter the religion on drug taking, the better. Islam begins to spread within the worst of the prisons. Extremists take hold and conversion rates rise as prisoners join out of fear and intimidation. Once released, extremists like Masood polarise the general population, spawning hate related crimes on both sides. An increase in racial tensions, accompanied by lobbying incentives, leads to more crime and a higher volume of incarcerations. The prison population goes up, and so the government is forced to cut corners once again - and on it spins.
Despite the impenetrable failure of bureaucratic government to put a dent in the problem, independent charity seems to be succeeding where private buccaneering has failed. Norwich’s prison-led cafe, which I visited a number of times, is called Cafe Britannia. Currently, there are seven prisoner run cafes in the United Kingdom, two of which happen to be in Norwich. Its founder Davina Tanner has been approached by a number of prison officials about opening several new branches. According to their website, 80% of inmates who worked at the café have found work upon finishing their sentence, an impressive statistic when compared with the 74.8% likelihood of finding work after graduating from the nearest University. More and more HMPs are being encouraged to work with Mrs Tanner, who won an OBE for the project in 2015. Yet, it’s easy to forget that Mrs. Tanner is running a business. Turnover topped £1.6 million in 2016, and almost two-million by the end of 2017, largely due to the fact that the staff are paid ‘prison wages.’
Is charity involvement a realistic alternative to prison stagnation? Maybe. Maybe not, but it is difficult to imagine the situation worsening, and upon visiting Cafe Britannia, I found it hard to dismiss the idea. One staff member joked with two ladies in front about not being able to serve ice-cream because it was too cold. His deadpan delivery kept the joke going for a full five minutes, even waiting till the ladies were about to leave until bursting into laughter and bringing them their bowls. While such a jibe would have no doubt caused a mild controversy at a Costa or Cafe Nero, I couldn’t help thinking how I rarely saw staff members enjoying themselves as much in those establishments. With ice-cream, vegan options and cheap coffee, the place wasn't half bad. Perhaps Starbucks frapuccinos will one day be delivered by scowling inmates instead of smiling baristas fresh from university? It would make for a change of atmosphere at least. While not a quick-fix to all these problems, prison led cafes amid other projects may give the staff a much needed break, while at the same time training inmates to brew coffee instead of narcotics. And while it might not stop the merry go round, it might be slowed enough to give those on the ride a chance to climb down.
