- Society Guardian,
- Friday February 2 2001
Two years into my job as director-general of the prison service, I will admit that there is an awful lot to do. Many prisons still need radical improvement, and there are a small number of which I am frankly deeply ashamed.
But to concentrate on the problems that dog the prison service, as the Guardian's series has done, is to ignore what has been achieved in Britain's jails. We are changing prisons - like Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth and Brixton - that have been successfully resistant to change for too long.
Of course, I would welcome an end to overcrowding. But this home secretary has provided me with the money to keep pace with the projected rise in the prison population. There is no impending crisis on prisoner places.
The bigger problem is that for too long, overcrowding has been an excuse not to treat prisoners properly. If people are going to be imprisoned, there is an obligation to make it a decent and constructive experience for them. I know prison regimes are still unacceptable and inhumane on occasions, but our governors now understand that we expect a lot more from them.
We had to reform our institutions so they were acceptable in 21st century Britain. That means being utterly intolerant of abusive prison officers, for example. If someone assaults a prisoner, I expect them to be dismissed. The service is more selective about who it employs, and staff are overwhelmingly committed to treating individuals decently. I genuinely believe, from speaking to prisoners and staff, that there has been a fundamental change in attitudes.
The prison service has two main jobs. Firstly, we have to keep people securely in custody. Only five years ago, there were about 300 escapes from prisons every year; with two months remaining this financial year, there have been only 11.
But most of us didn't join the prison service just to lock people away. We joined because we believed that people could be changed. And despite my lingering reservations about a small number of prisons, I believe we are finally managing to do that. Let me give three examples.
It used to be said that prisons were awash with drugs. Two or three years ago that was a fair comment. Today, by testing at least 5% of the prison population every month, we know that drug misuse has fallen from 30% three years ago to around 12% at the moment. We have invested £75m in the last three years on drug treatment in prisons, with another £88m to come - it offers a good chance for those who would find it hard to come off drugs in the community to do so while in prison.
The second area is the offending behaviour programmes. David Wilson in yesterday's G2 criticised these courses, arguing they were based on an assumption that criminals were somehow psychologically different from the rest of us. In fact, the programmes use established skills of cognitive processing (which are being applied very successfully in the field of mental health). And it is an fact that reconviction rates for those who have taken the courses are noticeably lower. Clearly they don't cure everybody, but they are having a significant impact on reoffending.
Finally, we are doing important educational work. A large proportion of Britain's prisoners have been permanently excluded from school, and two-thirds of them have very low levels of literacy and numeracy. This year, 60,000 educational qualifications will be awarded to prisoners, for many of them the first qualification they will ever have had.
I don't believe we have been brave enough as a prison service to deal with those problems that were not easily solveable. We have got to accept the fact that prison must be a humane and constructive place, not least because all but 23 of my population are going home some day.
