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ANNA SMITH: So what state are Britain’s prisons in?  Well over the past year we’ve seen riots break out, violent criminals escape and 88 inmates take their own lives and on Friday a murder investigation was launched after an inmate died in a prison in Liverpool.  Well this morning, another measure from the government, a so-called crackdown on violence in prisons but is that what’s needed then?  In a moment I’ll be speaking to the economist, Vicky Pryce and to Frances Crook from the Howard League for Penal Reform for their views on that but first though I’m joined by the Minister for Prisons, Andrew Selous, who is here with me.  Andrew Selous first of all, this new measure that you’re talking about today, violence in jails is going to be met with tougher repercussions we’re told, a new crackdown on serious assaults on prison staff, so explain to us exactly what you are proposing.  

ANDREW SELOUS:  Well up to now we’ve had only a quarter of assaults referred to the police and that simply isn’t good enough and where there are serious assaults against prison officers or against other prisoners, our view is that these matters should go straight to the Crown Prosecution Service and where the court finds them guilty, extra time should be added to the end of a prisoner’s sentence and that hasn’t been happening in the past. Some sentences have been concurrent, at the same time, so we believe this is an important part of our armoury in cracking down on violence in prisons.  It’ll be a serious deterrent in fact to prisoners if we get the Crown Prosecution Service, prisoners and police working much more closely together which is what this protocol is about.

AS: How much violence is there in our prisons?  

ANDREW SELOUS:  Well there is of course too much violence, any violent incident is one violent incident too many but the point I would make actually is that the rate of violence in our prisons is actually lower than it was between 2006 and 2009 and the courts have sent 40% more people to prison for violent offences in the last decade so we have a very challenging prison population but we are doing a lot of things with this protocol, it’ll be a serious deterrent, it will put the victims first, it’s what the Prison Officers Association have been calling for for a long time and I’m delighted that we’ve delivered it today.

AS: As I said in the introduction, a murder investigation launched after an inmate died in prison in Liverpool, we’ve also had a number of inmates taking their lives, a rise in that number, we’ve had riots break out as well.  How do you explain it, how do you explain this violence?

ANDREW SELOUS:  We have had an increase in the prison population which we weren’t reasonably able to predict and the National Audit Office have …

AS:  Are too many people being sent to prison?

ANDREW SELOUS: Well that is a matter of course for the courts, our job within the Ministry of Justice is to provide prison places that the courts send to us.  I think the public rightly want to be protected from dangerous and violent criminals, we work very hard to try to rehabilitate them but what is not acceptable is for there to be attacks on hard working prison officers.  There hasn’t been a sufficient deterrent in the past and this new protocol where we get the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and prisons working really closely together will put the victims first, it will mean extra time on the end of a prisoner’s sentence where they are convicted for these sort of horrific violent assaults.  

AS: This is really a combination of our prisons being too full, too many people are going to prison and there simply aren’t the funds to manage the people in those prisons, the cuts have meant the staff just aren’t adequately in there in the right numbers, the right levels.  

ANDREW SELOUS:  Well we are committed to providing enough prison places for the people the courts send to us but we are recruiting 17000 prison officers. We have already recruited and trained 900 prison officers this year, there will be more coming early next year and that will bring us up to the full complement to deal with this unexpected increase in the prison population.  We’re taking other measures as well, many prisoner officers now have body worn cameras to capture vital evidence that could be used in court to prosecute, we’re doing a review of our violence reduction strategy, we’ll be giving new powers to prison governors early next year.   

AS: But a sobering report this week about prison suicides as well, the person who headed that review into prison suicides suggested that too many people were being jailed unnecessarily, some with mental health problems. Are you concerned about that, does that need to be looked at?  

ANDREW SELOUS:  Mental health issues are huge across society and many prisoners do have mental health issues.  The Secretary of State Chris Grayling made a major speech looking to improve mental health care within our prisons.  Prison officers save people from committing suicide every day in our prisons, they all carry cut down equipment, that never gets reported, but we do try very hard, we have an assessment in custody process to look after our most vulnerable prisoners and we are absolutely looking to learn how we can improve that even more.   

AS: Andrew Selous, Prisons Minister, thank you very much indeed for joining us.  Let me pick up this debate now with my guests here in the studio, I’m joined by Frances Crook who is the Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform and by the economist, Vicky Pryce, who spent two months in a women’s prison last year after being convicted of perverting the course of justice and she has since studied the prison system and written a book, Prisonomics, on that subject.  Welcome to both of you.  Frances Crook, what is your reaction to what you’ve heard from the Prisons Minister?

FRANCES CROOK:  Prisons are grossly overcrowded.  You have more than 20,000 adult men who have to share a cell the size of a toilet, indeed with a toilet in it, and very little ventilation and as we saw last week, the Chief Inspector of Prisons said that hundreds of men at one of the biggest prisons have to spend almost all day, week after week, locked in a cell with a stranger and if one defecates, the smell is disgusting.  They don’t get out of the cell and these are young men who have lots of energy and you are just asking them to lie idle on a bunk for months on end and as one prison office said to me, if you treat people like that, they come out fighting.  So this is actually causing the violence that the Ministry is so concerned about.  

AS: Vicky Pryce, would you agree with that?  Frances paints a picture of prison life being very unpleasant, a lot of people say that’s the price you pay if you commit a crime.  

VICKY PRYCE:  I think at some point we have to recognise that punishment has to follow someone’s crime and that is absolutely true and I think this is what the Minister was trying to say as well, however I think we are putting far too many people – and you asked him that question – in prison when crime is in fact declining, has declined very substantially over the last twenty years and yet we doubled, under a Labour government as well, the number of people who have been sent to jail because we have extended the number and length of sentences, we have made many more offences now jailable and the result of course has been overcrowding.  At the same time, just recently of course, the funding pressures that are there have reduced the number of people very significantly, the services aren’t there to cope with the pressures that are there right now in the prison system.  

AS: Frances Crook, you’re nodding, why are we sending more people to prison?  Is this a response to what the public wants?

FRANCES CROOK:  No, I think it’s government policy.  The government has been talking up prisons.  When the coalition government came in in 2010 the then Secretary of State made it very clear he thought there were too many people in prison and he gave a strong message to reduce the use of prison and that happened.  At the same time he said prisons should be a safe and useful place where people went to work and had a busy day and that was happening.  In the last two years that has deteriorated to such an extent that as you say, two people a week are now taking their own lives, staff cuts are nearly half – half of the staff have gone out of prisons so one prison officer has to manage 150 prisoners.  It’s not safe.

AS: Okay, we don’t have very much time, so Vicky Pryce, you are an economist by training, you know that there are austerity cuts, what can be done about it?  

VICKY PRYCE:   Well we have to reduce the number of people being sent to jail and the rest of the money needs to be spent really rehabilitating people.  We are talking about a rehabilitation revolution, this way is not going to achieve it.  Sending people to prison makes them more violent, makes them actually commit many more crimes, when they come out they do then reoffend at the cost to the economy between £9 and 13 billion a year, it makes no sense. The alternatives, which means that people reoffend a lot less, whether it is community services or other types of punishment if you would call them that, particularly when treating the people who are vulnerable, with mental health issues which shouldn’t actually result in people going to prison.  

AS: Frances Crook, is rehabilitation adequate in our prison system?

FRANCES CROOK:   It is not happening at all.  In fact prisons are making things much worse, people are dying every week in prisons and there is crime in prisons.  As the Minister has said, he’s had to take emergency measures because there is so much violence in prisons against staff and that is appalling.  We should be protecting staff and we should be protecting the community and preventing people becoming victims by dealing properly with these people who have committed crimes.  

AS: Frances Crook and Vicky Pryce, we must leave it there, we appreciate your time though, thank you.