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Titan Prisons – Lord Carter’s Big Flaky Idea
Lord Carter’s interview this week in the Guardian was very disappointing. It read to me like a load of ducking and diving around this crucial issue of whether or not the so called Titan prisons, holding at least 2500 prisoners, are going to benefit our society in any way. As far as answering his critics goes, he said very little.
The government have been persuing an expansion of the prison system almost from when they came to power in 1997, and have constantly been justifying it in a most disingenuous way. It seems to me that what Carter has done with this new plan, to provide accommodation for a further 20,000 prisoners at a capital cost of £2.3billion by the way, is to hand the government a sort of mandate to increase the prisoner population – providing reassurance that what they have been doing anyway is the right thing to do. The fact that Carter is very close to Justice Minister Jack Straw, (Carter was Straw’s best man at both his weddings) smacks of something unsavoury going on, especially since Carter’s recommendations following his review of offender management were taken up but failed to deliver what he and the governmemt anticipated. Isn’t it time for someone else to take a look at this?
And why has Carter been able to get away with coming up with all these big ideas and not having to present a single shred of evidence to support his recommendations? I know that the media and government believe that people generally are not really interested in prisons, other than the scandal stories and tabloid romps about cons having it too good – and maybe that’s why the government habitually behaves so irresponsibly in its prisons policy. It knows it can get away with it. But if people are properly informed about the reality of the issues I believe they would think very carefully indeed about how we use prison, and in particular about whether we really need a prisoner population of 100,000 plus. Please correct me if I’m wrong on this.
Having read your article in the Guardian I must confess that my first reaction was that I agree with your concerns over the building of Titan prisons.
Admittedly my knowledge of prison life is nearly 12 years distant since my retirement from the service but during my latter years a number of innovations took place which I feel are relevant.
One of the main changes came with the increased civilianization of the ancilliary services ie. catering, works, hospital etc. Whilst at face value this led to some improvements in the system it meant that in times of trouble there were fewer staff available to give immediate assistance.
At about the same time prisons were charged with keeping prisoners on association for the maximum number of hours manageable
Further, the staff attendance schemes were changed giving a lack of continuity, long hours and being attached to a certain group ie. residential, security etc.. This meant that staff on residential group would man the landings continually whilst on duty, but due to the vagarities of the attendance system not always on the same landing.
The end product of this was staff losing confidence in a number of areas. ie. Limited resources to come to their aid, not having up to the minute knowledge of the prisoners and dynamics of their landings and being in the most challenging environment in the prison on every occasion they came on duty.
Not surprisingly what developed in a number of occasions was staff were turning a blind eye to situations or standing back resulting in the essential interaction between staff and inmates deteriating creating more confrontation and stress and consequently an increase in sick absence.
Prisoners were also unhappy in that they prefer to know where they are with staff and much prefer the situation when they feel that staff rather than fellow inmates are in control
Very interesting ,I here you say but whats this got to do with Titan prisons.
Built as just one prison holding a large number of inmates I have no doubt that the scenario I have described will quickly occur resulting in loss of control, an American style gang culture developing and very little opportunity to assist with rehabilitation.
If however the prison is split into smaller differing category units each with its own dedicated staff presence then I can see some mileage in pursuing this.
This would give the opportunity to quickly deploy staff from more stable units to trouble spots thus giving staff at the sharp end increased confidence and offset the effects of increased civilianization.
Savings could be made by having one administration department for the prison, one catering dept. one gate one reception and possibly a single hospital unit.
The down side of this is that trouble in one part of the prison can lead to an escallation to other parts. I think this to be likely if all units carried the same category or type of inmate but less likely if there is a diversity.
The other major drawback I see to titan prisons is the large catchment area necessary to fill them which will have an impact on families of inmates having the opportunity for visiting and it should not be forgotten that thes people have committed no crime and should not be influenced more than absolutely necessary. Also if we are to integrate prisoners back into society then there is a strong need to maintain and reinforce family interaction .