Two important prison inspection reports were published last week. One received widespread media attention due to the astonishing nine-fold increase in use of force to restrain teenagers. The other, largely positive, report of adult male prison, HMP The Mount, slipped under the radar somewhat.
Both reports call attention to the corrosive impact of prison overcrowding on the welfare of prisoners. At HMP The Mount, inspectors were disappointed that the prison had to resort increasingly to doubling up prisoners in cells intended for single use - a direct consequence of need for space following the public disorder sentencing. Already, across the prison estate the trebling or doubling up in cells is rife; around a quarter of prisoners are sharing cells meant for one person. As the Conservative party noted whilst in opposition, this means thousands of prisoners have to sleep in a room containing another prisoner's open lavatory.
In last week's report of Ashfield young offender institution, the chief inspector of prisons squarely linked the levels of young prisoners feeling unsafe to the fact that the prison is running at near or full capacity.
This is by no means a new phenomenon. Successive criminal justice experts have expressed concern about prison overcrowding, powerfully described by Lord Woolf, a former Lord Chief Justice, as a "cancer" at the heart of the prison service. Deeply worrying, a 2004 report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights raised concerns about the link between prison overcrowding and self-inflected deaths in custody.
Some people will say that the answer is to build more prisons. But history has shown that overcrowding and the overuse of prison are two interlocked crises; we cannot simply build our way out of this mess. Between 2003-4 and 2008-9, for instance, expenditure on prisons increased by nearly 40% in real terms. In spite of this relentless expansion, overcrowding remained a persistent feature of the system. When the prison population more than doubles in two decades, it is time to look at the supply side rather than simply finding 'better' ways to manage the influx.
The government will soon publish new proposals for improving community sentences. While this is welcome, will it be enough? The real challenge is to ensure community sentences are used where possible instead of custody, rather than deployed as an additional means of punishment. For example, far too many vulnerable women and people with multiple needs are still being locked up who pose no threat to the public. In 2010, a record 25 parents in England and Wales were jailed for allowing their children to be truant from school. This is an inappropriate use of prison, and judging by the response to this article on the Daily Mail website, it is not what the public expect prison to be used for either.
Equally, many people with drug or alcohol addictions are being imprisoned who could receive far more appropriate and effective treatment in the community. Currently 75% of prisoners who say that they had a drug problem before custody go on to reoffend within a year of release. This is a policy that is failing victims, communities and families.
Ensuring the provision of effective community sentences, important as this is, may not prove sufficient to tackle the crisis without also curtailing the overuse of prison - increasingly deployed in an attempt to 'solve' societal and community problems. Community sentencing reform should therefore be part of a wider strategy that challenges the over-reliance on custody and looks to solutions within local communities, such as restorative justice, local drug courts and women's centres. Until a fundamental rethink of prisons policy is undertaken, overcrowding will remain a critical issue.