Solid Foundations? Towards a Historical Sociology of Prison Building Programmes in England and Wales, 1959–2015
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12334 |
| Published date | 01 December 2019 |
| Date | 01 December 2019 |
| Author | THOMAS GUINEY |
The Howard Journal Vol58 No 4. December 2019 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12334
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 459–476
Solid Foundations? Towards a
Historical Sociology of Prison
Building Programmes in England
and Wales, 1959–2015
THOMAS GUINEY
Visiting Fellow, Mannheim Centre for Criminology, London School of
Economics and Political Science
Abstract: Between 1959 and 2015 the UK government embarked upon five major phases
of prison building in England and Wales. Drawing upon detailed archival research,
this article offers a historical sociology of prison building programmes. It traces the
evolution of prison building as a public policy concern and documents how this key site of
penal policymaking was interpreted, and contested, by policy actors who were themselves
embedded within deep institutional structures of power and meaning. It argues that
prison building has moved from the margins to the mainstream of penal policy, shaped by
strongly-held convictions about the liberal-democratic state, the competition for control of
finite resources and the complex ‘geography of administration’ that underpins the British
machinery of government.
Keywords: law and order politics; penal policy; prison; punishment
In November 2015, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne,
and Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, announced plans for a major prison
building programme in England and Wales. This £1.3bn investment was
lauded as a ‘once in a generation’ opportunity to modernise the prison es-
tate, delivering nine purpose-built prisons and refurbishing 10,000 prison
places by 2020 (Ministry of Justice 2015). As the Prime Minister would later
note, prison building was intended to provide the stimulus for ‘the biggest
shake up in the way our prisons are run since the Victorian times’ (Prime
Minister’s Office 2016); however, progress quickly stalled as short-term
operational requirements collided with broader strategic aims. Address-
ing the Prison Governor’s Association (PGA) in October 2017, the then
Chief Executive of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS),
Michael Spurr, revealed that following a rapid, and largely unexpected,
summer increase in the prison population, ‘I anticipate that we won’t
close any prisons this parliament’ (Guardian 2017). This development cast
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2019 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
The Howard Journal Vol58 No 4. December 2019
ISSN 2059-1098, pp. 459–476
doubt over a central revenue stream underpinning the prison reform pro-
gramme, leading one former Home Office finance director to describe
existing commitments as ‘unaffordable’ (Le Vay 2017).
These events have reopened long-standing debates over the cost-
effectiveness of imprisonment and the appropriate policy response to a
growing, and increasingly complex prison population (Hough, Allen and
Solomom 2008). Why has the UK government1consistently promoted
prison building as a cornerstone of penal reform? At a time of far-reaching
austerity why was HM Treasury prepared to authorise such an ambitious
programme of capital investment? How have prison building programmes
shaped, and in turn been shaped by, the long-term developmental trajec-
tory of penal policy in England and Wales? These questions invite greater
scrutiny. Building upon the theoretical work of Loader and Sparks (2004)
this article offers a ‘historical sociology’ of prison building programmes
that will trace the evolution of this little-understood public policy concern.
It will situate prison building within a broader penal policy framework
and consider how past political choices have shaped the prison system
we experience today. It presents a detailed historical excavation of the
five major phases of prison building in post-war England and Wales, be-
fore turning to the key sites of policy contestation which have come to
define the life cycle of prison building programmes in this jurisdiction.
Situating Prison Building Programmes
Prison building programmes defy simple analysis. Like many spheres of
penal policy,they are Janus-faced, at once embodying an administrative re-
sponse to sentencing practice, and an inherently political project intended
to (re)shape the scale, scope, and reach of the carceral state (Barker and
Miller 2018). As has been documented elsewhere (Newburn 2007), the
prison population in England and Wales increased significantly in the sec-
ond half of the 20th Century, with considerable growth reported in the
mid-to-late 1990s. Incarceration rates must be understood as one pillar of
a far broader penal apparatus (Garland 2001), however they are suggestive
of a deeper realignment in the political economy of crime. The broad con-
tours of this shift are well documented within the literature which draws
attention to the gradual breakdown of the rehabilitative ideal (Allen 1981)
and the emergence of a highly-politicised ‘penal populism’ which has fun-
damentally altered the contemporary penal landscape (Pratt 2007). Over
time, this punitive turn has driven an incarceration rate in excess of those
reported in other Western European jurisdictions with profound impli-
cations for a prison estate that has rarely been sufficient to accommodate
a growing, and demographically complex, cohort of prisoners (Cavadino,
Dignan and Mair 2013).
While assessments of estate capacity remain inherently problematic (see
King et al. 1980, pp.114–21) the certified normal accommodation (CNA)
metric can be used to construct a partial historical account of the prison
service’s official estimate of how many prisoners can be held in ‘decent
and safe accommodation’. CNA estimates reveal that the prison estate in
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