4) BUILD MORE PRISONS AND FEWER CRIMINALS WILL BE FREE TO COMMIT CRIME.
Right – But infantile in its content and aim. They’ll not be free to commit crime as long as they’re locked up, so, what does Mr Howard suggest, that we lock up a serial shoplifter for life? His lack of a grasp on reality knows no bounds really. It has to be said that the prison population expanded rapidly and dramatically under Howard’s guiding hand; but did he build enough prisons? What do you think? No, he gave us “Prison Ships” (see below) that wonderful export from the States. Under his guidance he kept banging them up (the Conservative version of “stack ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap”) and, as the prison population rose, the number of staff remained stationary; in 1993 it was 1.1 Staff to 17 prisoners by 1996 it was still 1.1 staff but now it was to 33 prisoners. Surely even someone as bereft of ideas as Howard could see this was a recipe for disaster; certainly Lord Woolf did when he published his “Inquiry into the causes of the Strangeways riot” in 1991. Howard? Well, true to form he dodged the bullet, used Derek Lewis as a scapegoat for the problems and came up with that slogan, “Prison Works” in ‘93’ (although, 'works in achieving what’ still remains to be answered). Woolf identified overcrowding as one of the most damaging features of prison life back then, and also concluded that the amount of time prisoners spend occupied in purposeful activity should be increased, and it was; now the prisoners had the luxury of taking part in educational and meaningful employment for 4.9 hours…………………………per week.
See, Howard’s “prison works” credo was a totally misread approach to a paper originally published by Martinson; in that paper, when Martinson wrote that, in prison, “nothing works” he actually meant it as a spur to find alternatives to this regime, a regime where nothing you can do for those prisoners whilst they remain in those degrading and debilitating surroundings works. But those with little intellect but big ideas (Howard must have been at the front of the queue when these attributes were handed out) who were seeking to impress the public and win office saw it as a green light to “get tough”.
So, with Howard banging on about building more prisons and now seemingly wanting to lock up every fourth citizen for dropping litter (see below) there’s a certain irony in Margaret Thatcher endorsing a white paper which stated that prisons were 'an expensive way of making bad people worse', a view also held by seven of Howard’s predecessors as Home Secretary (and a mass of Home Office research) but for some reason, not by Howard. Instead he gave us that gem of thoughtful plagiarism, “Prison sends a powerful message to those outside prison: crime doesn't pay”. And with that brash and easy statement he washes his hands of the responsibility, the causes and the results, and that sends an equally clear message to those who run our prisons; that we don’t care for them or their charges. By his methods we treat prisoners like livestock; doing nothing, learning nothing, promising nothing. A rise in the prison population doesn’t cure crime and you cannot build your way out of prison overcrowding.................unless you can get the Private Enterprise People involved that is. Howard's way is to hive off the prisons to your cronies in the business world, charge them a rate for doing it and, "Hey Presto", prison building, maintenance and staffing costs slashed - slap on back, well done Michael, cut taxes...... Howard loses sight of the fact that such ideas create the atmosphere in which poorly managed prisons run for profit become a breeding ground where badly supervised prison officers chalk up their level of job satisfaction by playing “Gladiators” or “Coliseum” with the inmates. So, with Howard’s ideas of tackling crime to the fore and a prison population rising to record levels under his guidance, how will Howard demonstrate his caring attitude to prisoner’s welfare?
Back in the 90’s when he was Home Secretary, did he build enough new prisons to hold the new inmates he’d crammed in for misdemeanours, increase the pastoral and educational structure in prisons, increase the pay, conditions and staffing numbers for the prison service as a whole, support the governors of those prisons in coping with this increase? In a word, ‘No’. So bad was the shortage of prison places people were kept locked up on those aforementioned prison ships (nice and cheap, that) which left prisoners sitting in cells for 23 out of 24 hours and receiving, in 1995/6 the grand total of 4.9 hours of education per week mentioned above; his methods doubled up prisoners per cell, injected a pittance in the social, pastoral and educational welfare of those prisoners (punishment, prisons are for punishment) flying in the face of research which showed reoffending could be slashed by 12 per cent if every prisoner had some form of education, ignored the increasing calls for extra manpower to cope with the overcrowding problems (that he’d created) from prison warders and governors alike, ignored the regular warnings of serious disturbances that were likely if the trend continued and obviously considered the rise in prisoner suicide rate, which according to the Home Office’s own figures shows a direct correlation between suicide rates and prison population, as a sign of his ‘success’. Anyone who can sit through a rise in one year, 1993/4 of the suicide rate in British prisons of 30% to 61 cases and not scratch his head and say, "Errrr, I think we might be getting this wrong, guys" doesn't deserve to be in charge of a whelk stall. And you know the most horrifying statistic to come out of the 93/94 prison suicide figures? Of those 61 cases 40% of them (that’s around 25 individuals) committed suicide whilst on remand…..know what “on remand” means? It means not found guilty of any crime……you know......like......innocent.
Think this is bad enough from a man who wants to run this country? Howard then compounds the felony of point 4 with a crassness only reserved for politicians on the make with point 5.
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