Can we build our way out of the prison crisis?
| Published date | 01 March 2008 |
| Date | 01 March 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550507088687 |
| Author | Lol Burke |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Can we build our way out of the prison crisis?
In December 2007, Lord Carter published his review on prisons – ‘Securing the
Future: Proposals for the Efficient and Sustainable Use of Custody in England and
Wales’ (Carter, 2007). The review is a response to the 60 per cent increase in the
prison population that has occurred since 1995 despite an overall reduction in
recorded crime over the same period – a reduction which is also mirrored across
many western nations. The document can be seen as a realistic acknowledgment
of the need to plan and provide more prison spaces in an ageing estate. Current
forecasts suggest that planned increases in capacity are unlikely to meet the
growing demand for prison places in the short, medium or indeed long-term. As
such, this building programme could be yet another failed attempt to address
those far too frequent occurrences when the UK prison system becomes perilously
close to overcapacity. While the report suggests increases to the prison estate, it
fails to provide an unequivocal commitment to the increased use of community
sanctions, which would encourage policy makers to develop a transparent strategy
to reduce not only the projected but also the present adult prison population. The
underlying social, economic and political factors which have led to record levels
of imprisonment are largely ignored in the review and crucially the report fails to
address the fundamental question: ‘Why in the United Kingdom do we incarcerate
more of our citizens than just about all of our European counterparts?’
The review offers an essentially managerialist solution to the overuse of custodial
measures in the United Kingdom. It envisages that much of the capital costs of
building new prisons can be achieved through efficiency savings and more effec-
tive commissioning through contestability (competitive tendering). The ‘headline
grabbing’ recommendation of the review has been the proposal to build three
‘Titan’ prisons holding up to 2500 prisoners. It is intended that these new additions
to the estate will mainly hold adult prisoners, though females and young offenders
could be held within designated segments of the establishment. The review could
therefore be criticized for prioritizing economies of scale over the operational diffi-
culties inherent in managing such large institutions and the need to properly meet
the needs of specific groups of prisoners such as women and young people.
The introduction of contestability was central to the earlier report by Lord Carter
(Carter, 2003) which led to the creation of NOMS (The National Offender Manage-
ment Service). Ominously, leaked reports of the Organisational Review of the
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Probation Journal
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Copyright © 2008 NAPO Vol 55(1): 5–8
DOI: 10.1177/0264550507088687
www.napo.org.uk
http://prb.sagepub.com
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