Criminality thrives in our disgusting prisons. It’s our duty to revamp them

Any one of us could end up in a squalid cell, falling victim to the failed ‘lock and forget’ approach

At Christmas we are traditionally asked to remember those less fortunate than ourselves. So it perhaps bears recalling that, in the uncomfortable parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus explicitly equates one particular duty with feeding the poor, welcoming strangers, and helping the sick: the duty of visiting those in prison.

Most of us tend not to think or care much about prisons. They are at the bottom of spending priorities. Historically, providing a justice system was considered to be a core state function, but we don’t seem to see it like that nowadays, as the core job of the British state has become to tax, spend, and redistribute vast sums of money across society to more or less deserving recipients.

That is why we have the prisons we have. Whether you think their job is incarceration or rehabilitation, they are doing it badly. They don’t incarcerate effectively because they are full. The Government’s prison building programme, originally to allow some of the worst Victorian monstrosities to be closed, in fact barely keeps up with demand. That’s why Parliament is currently voting to suspend sentences of under one year.

Nor do they rehabilitate well. That’s not surprising, because our prisons are, to a disturbing degree, disgusting and dangerous places – often “incredibly squalid” as Charlie Taylor, HM Inspector of Prisons, said recently in an interview. If you doubt me, read his inspectorate’s annual report. “Violence [is] still too high in over two thirds of the prisons [we visited].” Prisoners spend long periods locked up and lack purposeful activity. There is “staff tolerance of low-level bad behaviour.”

Who is going to turn their life around in conditions like this? Call me a bleeding-heart liberal, but I don’t think this is good enough. Of course prisons should not be holiday camps. But they have to be somewhere that we can send people without a shudder. Spartan, yes, but civilised, and, crucially, controlled: places where the authorities are actually in charge, not testing grounds for a Hobbesian war of all against all.

The current Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk, I think understands the nature of these problems, but is hemmed in and can do little about them, as the consequences of past decisions are now being felt. Prisons lost large numbers of experienced staff in the Cameron-osborne austerity programme. We are now recruiting again, but it’s an unpopular job and some prisons have a rapidly changing cast of prison officers as young as their early 20s, with minimal training, expected to manage often aggressive and dangerous people.

Not surprisingly, levels of absence are high – nearly 40 per cent at Wandsworth when Daniel Khalife escaped earlier this year. Many prisons have not got back to normal after the pandemic and prisoners are still locked into their cells for extended periods. But even locking up doesn’t always do the job – HMP Bedford’s “urgent notification” last month was for failings including, “almost unbelievably,” as Charlie Taylor puts it, the escape of a prisoner under constant supervision.

The bigger truth is, of course, that prisons reflect attitudes to crime in society. In the 1950s, Britain had relatively low levels of crime and disorder. True, there are inconsistencies in the recorded figures, but no one can argue with the trend. In 1951 there were roughly 60 violent offences per day in the entire country. Last year there were more than 5,700 – nearly a hundred times higher. Overall recorded crime has been rising for a decade and is now at a new peak. We have learnt to live with levels of crime that would have astonished our grandparents.

We don’t have a strategy to deal with it. Instead, we choose to live with that crime and disorder, to allow people to commit many repeat offences with virtually no consequences, and then, when an individual finally passes a threshold, to dump them in squalor behind bars with no expectation the cycle will be broken. We shuffle the population in prisons to keep a lid on things and we pretend a failing probation service is working. We prefer to do this because actually dealing with the problem – trying to change the wider culture of impunity and disorder – is expensive and unpopular.

I think we should try to get a grip. Part of that will certainly mean sending more people to prison, not fewer, for short sentences and “minor” crimes. Unless people think they might actually end up in prison, there will be no deterrence. But they will come out again, and that’s why we can’t just consign prisoners to neglect, in the modern equivalent of Dickensian hulks. Not only does it give rehabilitation no chance, it is unworthy of us as a moral, civilised society.

Getting a grip also of course requires a state that gives a damn, a fully functioning police and courts system, proper levels of spending (which require spending cuts elsewhere, because we don’t want the tax burden to grow), and above all therefore measures to get the economy growing again. Zero growth means no new money for any government activity and in the end it means we can’t even maintain what we have. We can see the consequences of that around us every day now.

There is one other condition. It is that we should care about it. I know from experience that these concerns don’t excite the sympathy of people on the Right of politics. Prisons are not meant to be pleasant places, they argue. “Lock and forget,” and spend the money elsewhere instead.

I can’t agree. Lock, yes, but not forget. I’ve tried to explain why, but if these moral and practical arguments aren’t enough, please think of your own self interest. Any of us could end up in prison. Maybe you don’t think so – but if you drive a car then a few seconds’ inattention, and some bad luck, could see you in a cell. Or you might be like one of those entirely innocent sub-postmasters, victimised by someone else’s negligence or incompetence.

Visualise yourself consigned to a squalid Victorian cell, your only companions an aggressive cellmate and a poorly screened toilet, prey to the violent prisoners who are really in charge. Think on that and then, as St Paul wrote to the Hebrews, “remember those in prison, as though you were imprisoned with them”.

Prisons shouldn’t be holiday camps. But they should be somewhere that we can send people without a shudder