What the commentators said
Is it surprising that things have got so bad at HMP Birmingham, which was the first publiclyrun prison transferred to the private sector? “Not if you look into G4S’S history,” said James Moore in The Independent. The security contractor has been dogged by accusations of malpractice. Last year, nine members of its staff were suspended for mistreating detainees at an immigration detention centre. In 2015, there was another abuse scandal at a G4s-run young offender institution. The mystery is why the Tory government “still – despite all evidence to the contrary, despite Carillion and the problems that have emerged with its outsourcing peers – thinks it can save money by palming off state functions onto profit-driven corporations”.
This crisis isn’t about privatisation, said Isabel Hardman in The Spectator. It’s about a lack of funding – a problem that has affected the 102 state-run prisons in England and Wales just as much as the 14 privately run ones. As a result of swingeing cuts introduced since 2010, the entire criminal justice system “is crumbling”. In addition to prisons in disarray, we have chaotic courts and legal aid “deserts” in parts of the country where people simply can’t get the advice they’re entitled to. It’s odd that this “sorry state of affairs” has not received more attention. The lack of a proper outcry is down to the fact that “most people are much better able to imagine that they’ll need a clean, well-run hospital than a decent criminal justice system”.
Even “the dogs in the street” know that the current prisons crisis stems from the “criminally stupid”, austerity-driven culling of front-line jail staff, said Ian Acheson, a former prison governor, on Capx. Thousands of experienced guards have left the service since 2010, a loss barely mitigated by the recent recruitment of 2,500 new officers. Still, the arrival of Stewart as Prisons Minister is good news. In contrast to some of his predecessors, who too often focused on “lofty ideological abstractions” about penal policy, he wants to concentrate on basic operational issues, such as prisons maintaining tidy landings. He rightly recognises that a “clean, decent and ordered prison environment is a prerequisite for anything more hopeful”.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has dropped all charges against a chief inspector of South Yorkshire police at the time of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989. Norman Bettison was accused of misconduct in public office for allegedly underplaying his role in the incident and claiming that he had never “besmirched” Liverpool fans. He had been due to stand trial next year. But the CPS said that owing to two witnesses changing their statements, and a third having died, it no longer had a realistic chance of securing a conviction.