No wonder gangs run amok

THE British state is increasingly failing in its duty to protect the public. A sense of lawlessness and fear is sweeping across Britain. Violence is soaring on the streets, police are grossly overstretched and the prison system is sliding into crisis.

Nothing more graphically captures this breakdown in order than the dire situation at Birmingham prison, which, until yesterday, was run by the private firm G4S. In a dramatic move, the Government has taken over the management of the jail, as G4S staff had effectively lost control.

In a coruscating report that forced the Government’s hand, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke, revealed that the prison is now an arena of ‘ appalling violence and squalor’, where inmates carry out assaults and indulge in drug-taking ‘with impunity’.

Brutality

Effectively, violent offenders are in control, while staff are so frightened of attacks that they lock themselves in their offices when they should be out on patrol.

The Chief Inspector was also damning about the Ministry of Justice, which he accused of ‘ institutional inertia’ in failing to monitor the jail.

The mess could almost be a metaphor for the authorities’ loss of nerve in the face of criminality. Tragically, this case is hardly unique.

Labour has been trying to exploit the fact that the jail was run by the private sector, but ideological point-scoring is irrelevant. For the reality is that the entire prison network — whether in public or private hands — is rife with overcrowding, drug abuse and simmering brutality.

One key reason for this crisis is the heavy cuts that have been imposed on the prison workforce over recent years.

In 2012, there were 29,660 frontline staff in our jails. By 2016, this had fallen to 23,080.

That year, the then- Justice Secretary Liz Truss admitted prison officers were spread ‘too thinly’. The Government then announced that an extra 2,500 officers would be recruited. But the damage had already been done, with a climate of bullying and intimidation becoming pervasive.

An all-too-heavy price is now being paid for the failure to provide adequate resources to prisons. Inmates and staff alike are suffering from the culture of deepening anarchy.

Self-harm among prisoners is rampant, with 46,859 incidents in the 12 months to March 2018, up 16 per cent on the previous year and a record high. In the same period, there were 364 assaults per 1,000 prisoners, compared to 190 assaults per 1,000 prisoners a decade earlier.

Just as disturbing is the growing aggression towards staff, who suffered 9,003 assaults in the year to March 2018, up 26 per cent on the previous year and, again, a record high.

In this atmosphere of cuts and oppression, rehabilitation becomes impossible.

Peter Clarke has said that it is common for a teacher attending a prison to give a lesson to inmates, who often have low levels of literacy and numeracy, to find that none of them turn up because of a lack of staff to provide the necessary escorts and supervision.

The classic answer from the Left is to advocate a curtailment of the prison population by using alternatives such as sentences in the community.

They say incarceration does not work, as it is cruel and just serves to create a ‘university of crime’. Many argue that offenders are really victims of society, whose descent into crime is driven by poverty, inequality or poor mental health.

They say many need support, rather than punishment.

But this is just political dogma for which there is no evidence. On the contrary, the only guaranteed way to prevent reoffending is to put criminals behind bars. Socalled community ‘punishments’ have little impact, as they are not only too soft, but allow offenders to roam free.

It is true that short sentences of a few weeks or months are ineffective, with reoffending rates reaching nearly 60 per cent, but surely that is an argument for longer terms, not greater leniency.

Nor is there anything particularly harsh about the number of people sent to prison here, as campaigners pretend. In the context of our present crime rate, our levels of incarceration are in line with the European average.

In fact, our soft justice system means it is actually quite hard to end up inside. A recent study by my own think-tank Civitas demonstrated that last year, just a third of all criminals convicted of violence went to jail. Incredibly, even half of those with 11 to 14 convictions avoided a prison term.

There is no need to be hesitant about using prison as a weapon against crime, as long as it is well-resourced, so that it promotes discipline and rigour, rather than anarchy.

In the early Nineties, Michael Howard as the Tory Home Secretary defied the Establishment orthodoxy by ordering a tougher penal approach, encapsulated in his warning: ‘If you don’t want the time, don’t do the crime.’ The result was a surge in the prison population and an unprecedented fall in the crime rate.

Mayhem

New Labour adopted the same approach, driven by the concerns of workingclass voters, rather than the hand- wringing, politicallycorrect theories of Leftwing academics.

But, sadly, the trend has been reversed by the Tory-led governments since 2010 — not because of any anti-prison doctrine, but because of the demands of austerity.

Reducing the fiscal deficit was necessary, but it should not have been implemented at the expense of the fight against crime — especially not when some other budgets, most notably foreign aid, were treated as sacrosanct.

Crime should have remained one of the Government’s key priorities but, sadly, neglect has been the recent theme. We see the results in the mayhem on the streets and in prisons.

In fact, the Government’s failure only illustrates how effective jail can be as a public guardian. Over the past year, the prison population has dropped from 86,388 to 83,165 and this has been accompanied by a spike in violent crime. In the past year, knife crime in the capital was up by 16 per cent.

Catastrophe

The prison service must have increased funding to improve recruitment and, if necessary, build more jails. More money is needed for the police, too, whose numbers have been slashed by more than 20,000 over the past eight years.

The police’s senior ranks can be accused of many failings, including poor management, warped priorities and excessive politicisation — highlighted by their obsession with diversity and hate crimes.

But, in their defence, they simply do not have the numbers to carry out many basic tasks, such as arrests and investigations. That is why some 90 per cent of all crime does not result in anyone being charged or brought to court.

Given the violence in our society, the police’s critics, with some justification, demand a return to foot patrols and stop-and-search. But the numbers are just not there.

Along with the Birmingham prison catastrophe, the current blood- soaked crime wave, epitomised by incidents such as the senseless hammer attack on a mother and daughter in Greenwich, London, on Sunday — shows we are in the middle of a national emergency.

We cannot continue with the penurious policy that is damaging the very fabric of our society. For the sake of our own protection, Britain’s prison and police services must be expanded.