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Is the IPP Prisoner scandal the next Mr. Bates vs the Post office?
IPP sentences were introduced in England and Wales by the New Labour government with the Criminal Justice Act 2003, as it sought to prove it was tough on law and order. They were put in place to detain indefinitely serious offenders who were perceived to be a risk to the public. However, they were also used against offenders who had committed low-level crimes.
Astonishingly, the sentence has led to some people spending 18 years in jail for trying to steal a coat or imprisoned for 11 years for stealing a mobile phone.
In 2012, after widespread condemnation and a ruling by the European court of human rights that such sentences were “arbitrary and therefore unlawful”, IPP terms were abolished by the Conservative government. But the measure was not retrospective, and thousands remain in prison. Sadly, many have taken their own lives.
The former supreme court justice Lord Brown has called IPP sentences “the greatest single stain on the justice system”. When Rt Hon Michael Gove MP was justice secretary, he recommended “executive clemency” for IPP prisoners who had served terms much longer than their tariffs. But he didn’t act on it. Lord Blunkett, the Labour home secretary who introduced the sentences, regrets them, stating: “I got it wrong.”
And more recently, Dr Alice Edwards, the UN rapporteur for torture has called IPP sentences an “egregious miscarriage of justice.”
Even the Justice Secretary Rt Hon Alex Chalk KC MP has also called them a stain on the justice system but the Government has so far refused to implement the Justice Committees recommendation to re-sentence all prisoners subject to IPP sentences.
CAMPAIGN FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE
Campaign groups & their families have been fighting to end this tragic miscarriage of justice for more than a decade and now a film posted online by campaigning lawyer and CEO of CAMPAIGN FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE Peter Stefanovic has ignited a storm by bringing the issue to wider public attention. It has already had over 12 million views online and the public’s reaction to it has been one of shock, outrage, and disbelief.
The Labour Party is still to clarify its position on this issue. However, in a letter written by Kevin Brennan MP- now Shadow Minister for Victims and Sentencing and sent to the then Secretary of State for Justice, The Rt Hon Dominic Raab MP in March 2023 he outlines a meeting with Bernadette Emerson, a constituent of his, concerning her husband in prison under an IPP sentence.
In the third paragraph, Kevin Brennan MP stated,
“It was the correct thing to do when the government abolished these sentences in 2012”, but as you will be aware there is a terrible legacy issue of injustice for those who are effectively serving a life sentence despite having been convicted of a crime that carried a fairly low tariff”.
Mr Brennan MP continued his letter:
“I know that the former Home Secretary Lord Blunkett who originally introduced the idea via the Criminal Justice Act in 2003 has accepted that the implementation of this has not worked as envisaged. I do understand concerns about a small number of prisoners subject to these sentences for whom there is genuine concern about reoffending, but this political imperative should not be used to incarcerate individuals in the criminal Justice system who have not reoffended and whose problems stem from mental health issues.”
Mr Brennan MP goes on to ask the question,
“What consideration has been given to retrospectively removing these sentences for those convicted prior to 2012?”
What Mr Brennan MP says is both welcome and not surprising given this tragic miscarriage of justice has sadly already taken many lives.
But the position of the Labour Party on this egregious miscarriage of justice is now in question.
On 6th December, during the second reading in the House of Commons of the Victims and Sentencing Bill, Chair of the Justice Committee, Conservative MP Sir Bob Neill, proposed “new clause 1” which would add a resentencing exercise to the Bill in line with the Justice Committees long standing recommendation. Sir Neill’s proposed amendment would help to end this accepted miscarriage of justice.
However, Kevin Brennan MP, surprisingly, given his letter just a few months earlier, opposed the idea, saying:
“Unfortunately, given the impact of the Government’s effective destruction of the criminal justice system, we lack the infrastructure and resources to keep the public safe, should his new clause be implemented immediately. Our priority is, and always must be, the safety of the British public. We are concerned that if new clause 1 were enacted without provisioning for significant improvements in probation and parole, we would potentially significantly increase the risk to the public and to the prisoners themselves.”
So where does Labour stand?
Surely the Labour Party can’t possibly be suggesting that “given the impact of the Government’s effective destruction of the criminal justice system” it plans to continue and perpetrate a gross miscarriage of justice? Was Mr Brennan perhaps referencing in December only the “small number of prisoners subject to these sentences for whom there is genuine concern about reoffending.”
HOPE FOR JUSTICE
Hope for justice at last now comes in the form of 2 amendments tabled in the House of Lords to the Victims & Prisoners Bill (161 & 167) by Lord Moylan which are backed by the Lib Dems and Green Party peers, and which have wide cross bench support.
Amendment 167 seeks to implement the Justice Committees recommendation to re-sentence all prisoners subject to IPP sentences.
Amendment 161 would require the state to demonstrate that a prisoner is still a risk to the public rather than, as at present, requiring the prisoner to prove the opposite.
Under the proposed amendment, they would be released unless the Parole Board “is satisfied that it remains necessary and proportionate for the protection of the public from serious harm that they should continue to be confined”.
Amendment is 161 is supported by Lord Blunkett, Baroness Chakrabarti & the former deputy president of the Supreme Court Lord Hope of Craighead. It’s also supported by the Bar Council, representing 17,000 barristers in England and Wales. This proposed amendment also appears to allay any concerns previously expressed by the Labour Party front bench.
This is finally a real opportunity to put right an egregious miscarriage of justice. But for the amendments, backed by both Lib Dem & Green Party peers (as well as many cross benchers) to succeed, Labour front bench support will be needed.
The question now is whether Keir Starmers Labour party will step up for justice and do the right thing or will we have to wait for ITV to produce another compelling drama series like Mr Bates vs The Post Office?
Joe Outlaw, an IPP: In his own words, part 1.
You may remember back in April 2023 a prisoner staged a 12-hour protest on the roof of Strangeways prison about the injustice of IPP prisoners. His name is Joe Outlaw, 37 years old and with 33 previous convictions. I was sent his story…
This is his story, in his own words
My story began in Bradford, Sunny West Yorkshire, and one of two children. The other being my sister Jill. At the start was a typical council estate life in the late 1980s. My Mom tried her best to bring us up as well as she could, but was cursed sadly by manic depression, what they now call bipolar. But this was not a fashion statement back then, it was dangerous and scary to witness. My Father was a gypsy from Hungary who never honoured his responsibilities as a father. Instead choosing to do a David Copperfield and disappear.
My sister was seven years older than me and would soon become my mum to be. By age three social services were involved and after one of my mom’s manic episodes, it was too dangerous for them to risk leaving us there. We were both placed on a full care order, which would cave the path years of painful memories I wish I could erase. Thankfully, they kept and Jill together in a wide range of foster parent, children’s homes and respite carers. Jill tried her best and I’m grateful for all the love she gave despite having to deal with her own sorrow as a young woman.
By the time she was 18 she had to leave me and that’s when I went off the rails. Constantly running away, and naively feeling more secure on the streets.
This stage of teenage growth embedded criminal dynamics to my survival and behaviour.
By fourteen social services basically gave up on me and I tell no lies when I say I was put in a B&B to live by myself, and no homes would take me. I was on a full care order until eighteen. Yet they lacked the support, guidance and interventions to raise me as expected. This happen twice, once in Shipley, West Yorkshire, and once in Wales at fifteen.
My criminality and reckless actions would continue for years.
I will say though, I was never a violent young offender. It was always nicking cars, motorbikes stealing etc. More a thief then a robber. I never sadly did manage to become rooted. I was always galivanting around the country, place to place. From twelve to nineteen life was an adventure, me a tent and a dog. Somehow, I always managed to pick up a stray for somewhere. I’ve always found animals and nature amazing. As a child I would find comfort and solace in beings alone in woods or on beaches. Just me and the pooch pondering life and all its confusions.
Well at age nineteen as destined, I get my first bit of proper jail.
Someone passed me an air rifle at a bus stop in the sticks in north Wales, and as he passed it to me, I generally shot him in the foot by mistake. I just grabbed the gun and the trigger was so sensitive, it popped and went off. I got three and a half years for that. But when I think back, I can barely remember it, it was just a life being in a children’s home, but I couldn’t run away and people were older, strange eh! Well to jump forward some years, by 23 I found love while I was travelling yet again. And for the first time in my life rooted in western-super-mare.
Despite being rooted my lifetime habits of survival were too deeply set.
To survive I sold weed, wheeling and dealing etc. and one night I was late in and my girlfriend at the time was arguing with me saying she was sick of me having my phone going off all the time, coming in late etc. She would take Valium on a night to sleep and said for me to take some and wind down, but I didn’t take any drugs like that back then. I had gone through all drug phases from young, except crack and heroin and by that time all I did was smoke weed. Well after some arguing, I just wanted to shut her up frankly, and I took three little blue tablets off her. Now little did I know that among the criminal knowledge, Valium are called Little Blue charge sheets, referring to their colour being blue, and the fact that people with criminal tendencies either wake up in cells, hence the charge sheet reference or they wake up surrounded by phones, money etc and not to have a clue how it all got there or what they had been up to obtain said items.
Needless to say, this inadvertently would be the little blue charge sheet that changed my life forever.
I do not remember a single thing of what I’m about to tell you and this is only what people have told me and information from statements etc. I took the tablets and drank some Southern Comfort, passed out, woke up and demanded more valium off my girlfriend. Once taken three more I then left the flat and went to a party. Where I stole a shotgun and shells, and then went into my local takeaway, where I went to every day by the way, and held it up at gunpoint. I left after being in this 60 seconds, and now rich with a grand sum of 200 pounds. Which by the way I would earn that in two hours selling weed etc. By the morning the police had come into my flat and arrested me. I woke up dazed and confused with a hangover from hell and realised I was in a police station. I had no idea how I had got there or why I was there. I got on the bell and ask them, and then I was told, I quote, you were brought in for armed robbery. I had no need to do what I did that night.
I cannot tell you why or what I did it for because I’ve been asking myself that for many years now.
I’m just glad I never hurt anyone that night. I’m trying to write to the shopkeeper through probation to ask for his forgiveness and do what I can to apologise. Any trauma I might have caused that night. Sadly, by the time I realised I needed to do this. It was too late. I was given an 18-year sentence for that on a guilty plea. So, the judge would have given me around 25 years for that. It was a determinate sentence without my guilty credit taken off. However, I was to become an IPP prisoner, so the 18 years would be halved, and a tariff would be put on it. I did appeal and got this taken to a 4½ year sentence. So, all I would have to do is keep my head down, do some courses and take the rehabilitation offered. I’d be out in four and a half, right?
I was like a lamb to the slaughter. Little did I know then the world of hate, pain, violence, despair, I will be thrown into.
On reflection now, it’s actually quite hard for me to put into words how I got to the place I’m at now physically and mentally. It’s not isolated to one place of fault or blame, there is so many different factors that contribute to the IPP crisis that I see today. Also, everyone is different, some can endure more than others. But the one thing that I am certain of is that it is the repetition of trauma that is most damaging. Trauma is trauma, we go through it and depending on what level of trauma one endures it’s about being able to deal with that, having the time, help, support and space to do so and heal.
The problem with the IPP is that every single thing needed to go through the healing process is not accessible and furthermore, over time we go through it again and again until we become a product of the environment, we can’t escape.
This trauma then becomes torture and the strangest thing of all is the people who create or enforce this way of life then take no responsibility for doing so. When a broken man sits in front of them they blame the man for indeed breaking.
Due to government cuts on prison staff, education, etc. wings are flooded with drugs, kilos coming in on drones on a nightly basis. An addict then comes to prison. But little does he know that he’s just swapping one drug house for another. And in this drug house, drugs are cheaper, and he hasn’t got to go shoplifting to get money to use. Then when he has a piss test, he is punished for using drugs. The prisoner estate covers everything up, they will portray that yeah, there is the problem, there always will be, but we’re working on it. When the truth is the whole system is burning with flame from hell, they have an obligation to provide criminals with drug free environments to progress, yet they will punish an addict for using drugs when it is the prison who has served it to them on a plate. It’s like telling an alcoholic not to drink but making him live and sleep in a bar. I’m sorry I’m digressing somewhat though. There is just so many systematic failures that contribute to the prison crisis that we live and see today.
As a normal prisoner, it is hard enough like I said at the start, but as an IPP is a soul-destroying environment to live in. Using a similar comparison as a drug addict, as IPPs we were told that under no circumstances can we get involved in violence. This is a big no no, yet the wings are some of the most violent places you have ever seen.
Do not let anyone fool you.
I have lived it and seen it for too long now. The things that I have witnessed are truly things of horror films. To be able to navigate yourself through this for years is so difficult. The social dynamics on wings is not the same as in the community. If faced with any confrontation, you only have three choices.
1. You submit and hope for the best, but now you are weak among your peers.
2. You stand your ground which can result in death or being slashed or stabbed.
3. Which is what the prison would expect you to do, go to staff and tell them. Now you’re a snitch and a target from everyone.
They are the only choice you have in an environment that is ever growing more violent and dangerous by the minute. I fear to see how things will be in years to come.
We as IPPs are put in impossible positions and as the years go by, the worse it gets.
And the more trauma we endure again and again. That in my opinion, is why so many IPPs now are suffering with PTSD, drug abuse, personality disorders, etc. The system has destroyed them and will continue to do so until people push for change.
There is only one resolution in my opinion, and that the Justice select committee had its spot on. Government needs to face facts and, on some level, admit what everyone else seems to know and that is that the system failed to rehabilitate them in the start, failed to rehabilitate during, and is failing to do so now 10 years after the abolition.
To the ones who remain that are sinking deeper and into hopelessness, freedom is indeed the only Saviour now.
I myself have luckily not let it beat me to the point of insanity or death, although some may disagree.
I decided to take a stand when it matters, when Dominic Raab knocked back the resentencing proposals.
Instead of letting it break me any further,
I commenced a roof top protest in Manchester that went viral on most social platforms.
It was costly to my so-called progression, but it was a sacrifice I had to take.
For too long government have ignored or covered up the injustice of the IPP, so many agreeing with how wrong it was and how it should never have happened yet taking no action themselves to bring change. Cheap words is all.
Well, I took the choice to shine a light on it and not let them hide.
I did a 12-hour protest for not only myself and all those still on IPP, but for all them families of the 81 lost souls.
All them must be held accountable who contributed to the failures that led to them poor people taking them lives. Even if it is for 12 hours, the support and love that I have received since then, has been overwhelming, at times truly beautiful.
Well after that I was sent to HMP Frankland, where their intention to punish me for my activism was made clear by the foul things they did to me in that segregation. They refused to give me my special NHS diet that I had had for over four years due to my health, starved me, then one day while moving me cell, jumped on me and began assaulting me. I was stripped naked and placed in a box cell for hours on end. Right there and then, I decided, I was not going to take been treated this way. Days later I went out on the yard and managed to scale the wall. I then use a CCTV camera to break the cage roof and escape the seg, becoming the only man to ever escape a cat A segregation in the UK.
I then got my own back for the weeks of bully boy treatment and abuse by smashing the place to pieces. Then having a nice sunbathe in my boxers. This made the papers again, so now in eight weeks I’ve scaled 2 roofs and I’ve been in the press in countless papers. For this level of exposure,
I have now been sent to HMP Belmarsh unit segregation, where I stay totally isolated from everyone.
I get what I have done embarrass the prison state, but some would say it was a long time coming. I stand up for what I believe in and I know my values and principles. I should be proud of decency, respect, honesty, loyalty, humility, and dignity. It is the system that lacks in these principles, not me. In 13 years I have not once assaulted a member of staff yet I’ve been battered, stabbed, had my nose broken, lit split, teeth knocked out and that is just the physical abuse. Yet despite all this I shall keep my resolve.
My life now consists of exercise with four screws, a dog unit and I’m handcuffed and made to wear flip flops. Anyone would think I’m Bruce Lee. Some would say justified I’ll leave that up to you.
Since being here I’ve been subjected to over 170 full body strip searches in 14 weeks, sometimes four or more a day for three months. I was told all my visit rights had been stopped. Thankfully, they developed a change of heart and I now get visits. When will they let me back on the wings. I don’t know how long until I see a person’s face in this place that’s not a staff member, I also don’t know.
What I do know is that try as they might, my spirit will not be broken.
There is a movement out there that I am part of which gives me such strength and resolve. The other day I heard a man’s voice that I’ve never met being played to me down the phone by my girlfriend. This man spoke in a demo outside the prison about my story and all the IPPs, I love that, I felt through that voice I’ve never felt better. I was instantly elevated and overwhelmed. I used to feel lost, I used to feel lonely.
But now while I sit in the most lonely, isolated part of a prison system I am loved, I am supported, and I am strong.
But there are many, many more that sadly are not and for them I hope they find strength.
Kindness and love always.
Joe outlaw
Let’s end this injustice now, TOGETHER: IPP Scandal
The momentum is building, and more of society are becoming aware of the IPP Scandal, where prisoners can be languishing in prison with no end date to their sentence. Over 80 with an IPP sentence have taken their own life, their hope deferred time and time again. This sentence was abolished in 2012, but not retrospectively. Stories of those caught up in this tragedy in our justice system can be heard in a series of podcasts, by the Zinc Media Group. Click HERE for the link.
Sir Bob Neil MP has tabled an amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill to implement the recommendation of the Justice Select Committee to re-sentence all IPPs. In order for this to happen we need this amendment supported by the majority of MPs from all parties.
This is where we all can assist.
Firstly: click HERE to watch a film By Peter Stefanovic highlighting the injustice for those serving an IPP sentence. It has now been viewed over 2.5M times.
Secondly: repost this video and tag your MP. If you are not sure the name of your MP, click HERE to find out .
Thirdly: write to your MP. Below is a template produced by UNGRIPP, that can be used to encourage your MP to vote to accept the important amendment for re-sentencing.
Click HERE for the link and explanation of how to prepare and send, or copy and paste the sample letter below. Of course, if you do not have access to a printer or simply prefer to hand write letters, then feel free to use part of this sample letter. MPs pay particular attention to hand written letters.
{YOUR FULL NAME}
{YOUR FULL ADDRESS}
{YOUR POSTCODE}
{EMAIL ADDRESS}
{DATE}
Dear {MP NAME},
My name is {YOUR NAME} and I am a constituent of {YOUR CONSTITUENCY/AREA WHERE YOU LIVE}. I am writing to you because I would like to see changes made to the Indeterminate Sentence for Public Protection (known as the IPP sentence); a type of indefinite sentence given to 8,711 people between 2005 and 2013 for a wide range of major and minor crimes, and abolished by the Government in 2012. I have enclosed further information about the sentence, in case you are not already aware of it.
I would like you to take forward my concerns, set out below, by backing Amendment NC1 to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, proposed by Sir Bob Neill, Chair of the Justice Select Committee. The amendment, entitled ‘Resentencing those serving a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection’ would make provision a resentencing exercise carefully planned by an expert group. You can view the full amendment here: https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3443/stages/17863/amendments/10008642
In August 2023, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture stated the Government should urgently review IPP. They expressed ‘serious alarm’ about the suicides of people serving an IPP sentence (a concern recently echoed by the Prison & Probation Ombudsman), and stated that the sentence ‘violates basic principles of fair justice and the rule of law.’
As a member of the public, I am concerned that thousands of people are still serving an abolished sentence condemned by an international human rights body on torture. I do not think such a sentence has any place in our justice system. As you may already be aware, the IPP sentence was abolished because it was agreed to be unjust and ineffective. Thousands of people were given a life sentence for crimes that would never attract a life sentence today. The sentence was based on the premise that we can accurately predict a person’s risk of committing future crime; something that is complex, difficult, and flawed. It is a stain on the reputation of our justice system that thousands of people are still subject to an abolished sentence, and have served years longer than the time it was agreed they deserved as punishment. It is also reprehensible that their families and children continue to suffer the consequences. {IF YOU WANT TO, ADD YOUR EXTRA THOUGHTS ON THE SENTENCE HERE, AND EDIT THE ABOVE TO REFLECT YOUR VIEWS}
In 2022, the Justice Select Committee published a report on their inquiry into the IPP sentence. The report gives a damning indictment of a regime of indefinite detention that has caused widely documented harm, and departed from public notions of justice, fairness and proportionality.
The Committee concluded that even though there are ways to improve how the IPP sentence works, there is no way to truly fix it, and it is “irredeemably flawed”. Their main recommendation is a resentencing exercise. That means that everybody serving IPP would be individually resentenced by a judge, to a sentence available under current sentencing law, following the principle of balancing public protection with justice, judicial independence, and the appointment of an independent panel to implement the exercise.
I would be grateful if you would speak to the Secretary of State for Justice, Alex Chalk and request that he consider the proposed amendment, as well as advocating for it yourself. Shadow Justice Minister Ellie Reeves signalled in a Westminster Hall debate on 27th April 2023 that Labour will work constructively with the Conservatives in a cross-party effort on this issue.
The upcoming proposed amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill is a window of opportunity to rectify the wrongs to a sentence that has been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights, the Prison Reform Trust, the Howard League, Liberty, Amnesty International, the former Home Secretary who introduced the sentence (Lord Blunkett), and the former Lord Chief Justice Lord Brown who has called it “the greatest single stain on our justice system”. Your help on this matter is crucial.
If you are unable to address this personally, I would like to request that you escalate my letter to the relevant Minister or department. Please do keep me informed of any progress made. I look forward to hearing from you.
Yours faithfully,
{YOUR NAME}
Finally: remember to show your support on social media for those campaigning hard for the vital change in re-sentencing all those trapped within the IPP sentence.
Thank you
TOGETHER we can end this injustice.
Public reaction to the IPP Scandal
On Monday 20th November, Peter Stefanovic, CEO, Campaign For Social Justice, said in a short film:
“Imagine a country where a man has spent 18 years in jail for trying to steal a coat or imprisoned for 11 years for stealing a mobile phone – sentences described by the United Nations as egregious miscarriages of justice it’s unthinkable & it’s happening in this country NOW”
Peter was referring to the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence, that has been described as “a stain on British justice” and was abolished in 2012.
This short video Peter put out on social media (X) has been viewed over 2.5M times. This is astonishing and shows the public reaction of shock, outrage, and disbelief.
On 28th September 2022, the Justice Select Committee, chaired by Sir Bob Neil MP, published a report calling for the Government to re-sentence all prisoners subject to IPP sentences. Unsurprisingly, Rt Hon Dominic Raab MP, the then Secretary of State for Justice, rejected this stating re-sentencing:
“could lead to the immediate release of many offenders who have been assessed as unsafe for release by the Parole Board, many with no period of supervision in the community”.
Then once again, a new Secretary of State for Justice, Rt Hon Alex Chalk KC MP even after the intervention from Dr Alice Edwards, United Nations special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, still refused to re-sentence those on an IPP sentence.
An amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill, tabled by Sir Bob Neil MP to implement the Justice Select Committee’s recommendation to re-sentence all IPP’s will be considered by the Government shortly. This must be supported by the majority of MPs from all parties.
The latest podcast from Trapped: The IPP Prisoner Scandal Episode 9 entitled Set up to Fail, tells the stories of two women, Nicole and Madison on a life licence, both of which served a sentence way beyond their original tariff. Even after release, many on an IPP sentence feel that they are set up to fail and are constantly walking on eggshells. This episode also relays the story of the tragic suicide of Matthew, having been released since 2013. In a letter, he wrote:
“I am stuck in a never-ending cycle of which suicide is quite possibly really the only way out. Asking for help will go against me, not asking for help will most likely kill me”.
Many have lost hope and have taken their own lives.
The IPP sentence is breaking people, and the overwhelming support from the public to end this sentence cannot be ignored. The Government will only be held to account if the public makes its views known.
So many people think “well what can I do?”
My response to that is:
Contact your MP in writing and ask them to support this amendment.
Watch the film.
Listen to the Trapped podcasts.
Inform those around you of this cruel and inhuman sentence.
Prisons make more problems than they solve
Recently I watched again the movie ‘Erin Brockovich’ about a woman determined to get justice. My brain became filled with questions but instead of going to bed I decided to write and to capture what was in my head.
How many times will I have to read reports from the IMB, from the Inspectorate, from the PPO, all saying the same thing year after year?
How many more times will I have to read about the misery in prisons, the terrible food, the conditions that prisoners live in?
How much longer will I have to read about self-harm, deaths in custody, suicides and not just of prisoners?
How many more campaigns will I read about from organisations trying to better the system, yet very little ever changes?
Are there too many individuals and organisations wrapped up in “Prison works” and patting those on the back who are “heroes” or something. Meanwhile, watching this space carefully, it appears to me that senior members of HMPPS are beginning to jump ship.
Ministers come and ministers go but, looking at reality, I wonder what they are actually doing to bring to an end the misery and violence within our prisons. Yes, I say our prisons because our taxes pays for them. It’s like pouring money into a black hole.
Oh, and what about Rehabilitation?
What about Education?
Yet still we build more warehouses and more warehouses that don’t work, have never worked and I doubt will ever work in the future. And for what reason? Just this week the new Five Wells prison has come under scrutiny, missing the mark in many areas already just a year after it officially opened. Shortages of food, availability of drugs, turnover of staff, all this causing deficiencies reasoned away simply as “…considerable challenges that come with opening a new prison”.
We read about other prisons where those imprisoned for sexual offences have not had the opportunity to address their issues and their crimes are released back into society, homeless. Others who were given an IPP sentence languishing in their cells, not knowing when or if they will even be released. And also those imprisoned under joint enterprise.
We are making more problems, not solving them.
Despite what some people say, In the last 5 years I have visited many prisons. For example, I have delivered training to Custodial Managers and Prison Governors (Wandsworth), twice eaten at a restaurant in a prison (Brixton-Clink), attended an art exhibition in my local prison (Writer in Residence, Warren Hill), observed courses (Chrysalis, Oakwood), celebrated with prisoners on completion of their courses (Stand-Out, Wandsworth) and many more opportunities to talk with Governors. I have seen for myself some of the issues facing staff and prisoners.
Surely there is a better way.
If all we can do is build more prisons.
Prisons boast “we have in-cell technology” as though it’s like something from another planet.
Prisons boast “we have in-cell sanitation” as though it’s a gift when this should be standard.
Almost a year ago a Judge told me that even though they sentence people to custodial sentences, they had never set foot in a prison themselves. I sent a quick message there and then to put them in contact with someone I knew who could help change that.
Prison should be the last resort, and only for those that are a danger to society. Yet, there are people in prison who are there because it is deemed a safe place.
Prisons are not safe, not for prisoners and not for staff. If you don’t believe me then please do some research.
Overworked, underpaid and inexperienced staff working in difficult conditions.
Conditions deteriorate whilst the population increases.
In August 2019, I accepted an invitation from Rory Geoghegan to a speech on ‘Reducing Violent Crime’ hosted by the Centre for Social Justice. Rory gave me a copy of a paper he had co-authored with Ian Acheson called ‘Control, Order, Hope: A manifesto for prison safety and reform’, three things which in my opinion are severely lacking in our prisons. Rory had contacted me the previous September for my view on a key recommendation concerning IMB’s for this paper, as you can imagine I was pleased to read:
“Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs) have a role to play, to “monitor the day-to-day life in their local prison or removal centre and ensure that proper standards of care and decency are maintained. In the wake of utterly unacceptable conditions across so many of our prisons, there must be questions about how effective IMB’s have been at ensuring standards of safety and decency have been met.”
Recommendation 59: Government to consult on the role and effectiveness of Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs) to help ensure that they can play their vital role within the wider system of prison governance, early-warning, and accountability.
Source: page 64 and 65 https://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/library/control-order-hope-a-manifesto-for-prison-safety-and-reform
As you can see here, and elsewhere in The Criminal Justice Blog, I have been consistently calling this out for years. The IMB has never been able to ensure anything; if it had then it has completely failed in its remit, as evidenced by the decline in the state of prisons in England and Wales.
Now the prison estate is running out of space, police station cells are on standby, not-so-temporary prison accommodation is being installed as ‘rapid deployment cells’.
Yet still we fill them.
What on earth are we doing?
When will a Secretary of State for Justice make a stand, be decisive and finally bring some control, order and hope into our prisons?
~
The watering down of prison scrutiny bodies
I want to concentrate on two scrutiny bodies: His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) and the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMB).
It appears that both have changed their remit to compensate for the ineffectiveness of their scrutiny. Are they trying to improve something, or are they trying to hide something?
Does the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) want these bodies to obfuscate the facts of the state of prisons? The dilution of scrutiny results in degradation of conditions for your loved ones in prison, staff and inmates alike, both in the same boat.
His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP)
Website https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/
HMIP inspections have routinely issued recommendations to prisons where failure in certain areas needed to be addressed and in cases where it is possible for issues to be rectified or improved. Applying the healthy prison test, prisons are rated on the outcomes for the four categories below:
- Safety
- Care
- Purposeful activity
- Resettlement
Since 2017, if the state of a prison is of particular concern an Urgent Notification (UN) has been issued. This gives the Secretary of State 28 calendar days to publicly respond to the Urgent Notification and to the concerns raised in it. There have been twelve Urgent Notifications issued so far, and the details from the latest urgent notification for HMYOI Cookham Wood, for example, is uncomfortable reading:
“Complete breakdown of behaviour management”
“Solitary confinement of children had become normalised”
“The leadership team lacked cohesion and had failed to drive up standards”
“Evidence of the acceptance of low standards was widespread”
“Education, skills and work provision had declined and was inadequate in all areas”
“450 staff were currently employed at Cookham Wood. The fact that such rich resources were delivering this unacceptable service for 77 children indicated that much of it was currently wasted, underused or in need of reorganisation to improve outcomes at the site.”
Source: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2023/04/HMYOI-Cookham-Wood-Urgent-Notification-1.pdf
However, the Inspectorate now have a new system where recommendations have been replaced by 15 key concerns, of these 15, there will be a maximum of 6 priorities. On their website it states:
“We are advised that “change aims to encourage leaders to act on inspection reports in a way which generates real improvements in outcomes for those detained…”
Source: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/about-our-inspections/reporting-inspection-findings/
One of my concerns is whether this change will act as a pretext to unresolved issues being formally swept under the carpet. A further concern is what was seen as a problem previously will now be accepted as the norm. As a consequence how will the public be able to get a true and full picture of the state of the prisons?
Will there be a reduction in Urgent Notifications?
I think not.
Or will the issuing of urgent notifications be the only way to get the Secretary of State for Justice to listen and act? In my view, issues that would previously have been flagged up during an inspection are more likely to disappear into the abyss along with all past recommendations which have been left and ignored.
Could it be said that this change of reporting is a watering down of inspection scrutiny that you expect of the Inspectorate?
Before you answer that, let’s look at the IMB.
Independent Monitoring Board (IMB)
Website: https://imb.org.uk/
Until very recently, the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) website stated that for members: “Their role is to monitor the day-to-day life in their local prison or removal centre and ensure that proper standards of care and decency are maintained.”
But looking at the IMB website today I have noticed that they have changed their role. Instead, it now states that members: “They report on whether the individuals held there are being treated fairly and humanely and whether prisoners are being given the support they need to turn their lives around.”
Contrast that with what the Government website http://www.gov.uk displays, where you will find two more alternatives to what the IMB do:
- 1st. “Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs) monitor the treatment received by those detained in custody to confirm it is fair, just and humane, by observing the compliance with relevant rules and standards of decency.”
Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/independent-monitoring-boards-of-prisons-immigration-removal-centres-and-short-term-holding-rooms
The first is a large remit for volunteers as there are rather a lot of rules to be aware of. I’m sure the IMB training is unable to cover them all, so how can members be required to know if the prison is compliant or not.
- 2nd. “Independent Monitoring Boards check the day-to-day standards of prisons – each prison has one associated with it. You don’t need specific qualifications and you get trained.”
Source: https://www.gov.uk/volunteer-to-check-standards-in-prison
This checking comes across as a mere tick box exercise, which it certainly should not be. Again, I question whether IMB members training is sufficient. What they say and what actually happens is another example of the absence of ‘joined-up’ government.
In point of fact, the IMB has never been able to ensure anything; if it had then they have completely failed in their remit, as evidenced by the decline in the state of prisons in England and Wales. Clarifying their role is an important change, and one I have been calling out the IMB on for years.
Could it be said that this change of wording is a watering down of monitoring scrutiny you can expect of IMB members?
To help you answer that, you may also need to consider the following:
Although the IMB has become a little more visible, I still have to question their sincerity whether they are the eyes and ears in the prisons of society, of the Justice Secretary, or of anyone else?
The new strapline adopted by IMB says: “Our eyes on the inside, a voice on the outside.” Admirable ambition, and yet compare that with the lived reality, for example, of my being the eyes on the inside and a voice on the outside, which was exactly the reason why, in 2016, I was targeted in a revolt by the IMB I chaired, suspended by the then Prisons Minister Andrew Selous MP. For being the eyes on the inside and a voice on the outside I was subjected to two investigations by Ministry of Justice civil servants (at the taxpayer’s expense), called to a disciplinary hearing at MoJ headquarters 102 Petty France, then dismissed and banned from the IMB for five years from January 2017 by the then Prisons Minister, Sam Gyimah MP.
If the prisons inspectorate have one sure-fire way of attracting the attention of the Secretary of State for Justice in the form of an Urgent Notification, then why doesn’t the IMB have one too? Surely the IMB ought to be more aware of issues whilst monitoring as they are present each month, and in some cases each week, in prisons. Their board members work on a rota basis. Or should at least.
And then of course there is still the persistent conundrum that these two scrutiny bodies are operationally and functionally dependent on – not independent of – the Ministry of Justice, which makes me question how they comply with this country’s obligation to United Nations, to the UK National Preventative Mechanism (NPM) and Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Cruel Inhuman of Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT), which require members to be operationally and functionally independent.
In 2020, I wrote: “When you look long enough at failure rate of recommendations, you realise that the consequences of inaction have been dire. And will continue to worsen whilst we have nothing more compelling at our disposal than writing recommendations or making recommendations.”
and: “Recommendations have their place but there needs to be something else, something with teeth, something with gravitas way beyond a mere recommendation.”
As a prisons commentator I will watch and wait to see if the apparent watering down of both of these organisations will have a positive or detrimental effect on those who work in our prison environments and on those who are incarcerated by the prison system.
As Elisabeth Davies, the new National Chair of the Independent Monitoring Boards, takes up her role from 1st July 2023 for an initial term of three years, I hope that the IMB will find ways to no longer be described as “the old folk that are part of the MoJ” and stand up to fulfil the claim made in their new strapline: “Our eyes on the inside, a voice on the outside”.
And drop the misleading title “Independent.”
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Photo: Pexels / Jill Burrow. Creative Commons
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A Conversation With: Simon Israel: Giving People A Voice.
A couple of months ago, I travelled to Edinburgh to interview Simon Israel, Former Senior Home Affairs Correspondent at Channel 4 News.
I braced myself for the weather and arrived by train in a storm where an umbrella proved completely useless. Yet within half an hour a rainbow welcomed me to my stay at The Royal Scots Club. I invited Simon to join me there and what a wonderful opportunity we had to talk and have lunch together.
FS: How did it all start?
SI: I studied maths and logic at Aberdeen University. I hated it, but I did it. Whilst there I got involved in the student newspaper and I thought it was wonderful. No rules.
I came out of university and thought I’m going to be a broadcast journalist in radio. Commercial radio was booming, so there were loads of jobs out there. I did 3 months at the National Broadcasting School, Soho then started off in local radio. I then arrived in London LBC IRN and was there for an awful long time, maybe too long, probably. Working in local radio I really had a brilliant time. I went all over; India, South Africa, Bosnia during the war, Kenya, and various places in Europe. I did lots of things.
Then ended up at ITN – pissed off the editor in radio who suggested I might want to go to another department.
I went to Channel 4 and said, “I know nothing about TV.”
“Ok, we will take you,” they said.
I knew a lot about journalism and stayed at Channel 4 for more than 25 years. I loved the ethos of Channel 4 News, that is where I think I fitted better than anywhere else.
FS: When I have listened to your reporting, there are very few what I call Happy Stories.
SI: No, I don’t do happy stories, well, I’ve done one or two but not very many. I drifted into the area of Criminal Justice and Policing, and it is not a world of happy stories; it never is really.
FS: So, you have focused on injustice.
SI: I think that was a very key theme, it manifested itself in various ways.
I came back to this idea that of giving people a voice that would struggle to get one.
I dabbled in politics, but nothing in politics is secure for very long. Everything is a moveable feast in politics, and I found that difficult as I needed a set of actions that I can build on. That’s a fact, that’s a fact, that’s a fact. I cannot build on X has got an opinion, or X tells me this is what is going on.
FS: Does that prevent people accusing you of bias?
SI: They can accuse me of bias – I can only be biased if I skew things so much that I’ve distorted the story. I try very hard not to.
This is the world of entertainment – radio-television, so it is not the same as newspapers as its dependent on pictures. In radio I felt much more secure because you could tell things straight.
My idea was if the person stopped watching or listening within the first 5 or 10 seconds, however long the rest of the piece was, I would have lost the whole point of why I was doing it. So, I was conscious all of the time however long or short the report was, I had to keep their attention.
FS: I suppose it is like that with writing a book you have got to keep people’s attention.
SI: You have to keep them going to the end, they have got to be interested, outraged, sad or anything that can sustain their attention throughout the whole thing. It’s not about whether you liked it or not, might agree or disagree with it. I think you get to the end to allow a justifiable thought about whatever it was that I was reporting on.
Someone would say “I watched you, but I got distracted after a few minutes, then I failed didn’t I.
FS: Do you go back and listen?
SI: I could have gone back in post-mortem style.
Most of the stuff I do people were interested in, they are interested in grim stuff. I’ve been told by an editor:
“Make them cry in front of the camera.”
I said, “Excuse me.”
I can see where the editor is coming from, and you can learn to some extent. There is an element of manipulation sometimes because you know what sort of questions might produce, for example a tear. I know that sounds weak, you do try and avoid as there’s a tendency to say I am here because I am praying on your emotions, I’m not here to give you a voice or find out a different view to what’s happened.
So to that classic question “How do you feel?” How would I feel being asked the same question?
I interviewed Mina Smallman in her house. I broke the story along with Vikram Dodd, we both had different sources.
I had sat on the story for 2 or 3 days, because I couldn’t get a second source. There was a risk other people knew what I knew. I always have to have 2 sources; they might not necessarily know the same things, but they have to share the knowledge (some agreement in what they know) that something happened.
In the process, the Met Police behaved appallingly, they wouldn’t confirm or deny anything. They wouldn’t give us a statement until we said we are running this tonight and the Guardian are running it too. We will just say you refused to comment.
We turned up at her doorstep to deliver a letter saying what we knew and the person at the door said Martin Bashir was there with a camera and she is not talking at the moment. Mina Smallman knew Martin Bashir (Religious Correspondent editor) as she was in the clergy at Chelmsford Diocese.
It took me many months to persuade her to talk to me, partly because of what she was going through, losing her daughters, the way the Met Police had treated her and the trial etc. at that time the investigation was still live. God knows what was going through her mind.
FS: When you have to cover stories such as that, where does your strength come from, family, colleagues?
SI: No, no. I don’t know. It comes from 30 years of experience. I don’t know, I’ve never been asked that before. You just do it.
I like to think I am very sensitive to other people’s emotions. I realise that many of these interviews are not easy for them. Easy for me; I just ask the questions, pack up and leave. If they have agreed to do one then somehow, they manage to find the strength from somewhere.
FS: So, you give people a platform to be able to speak?
SI: Yes, I’ve watched interviews where some get others to speak in quick 20 second terms. But to engineer answers out of people to me is wrong. It’s not my job to tell people how to answer the questions. I’ve watched interviews where they have asked the interviewee to leave off bits.
I can’t do that.
I’m not here to try and engineer people into saying things that are convenient to me.
FS: When you interviewed me in 2017 that never came across. You asked the questions fairly sensitively, managed to get the main points over and it fitted with the story.
SI: You gave a very good interview, I didn’t tell you how to do it, I didn’t tell you how to answer the questions.
I did a story over a period of time on student suicides, that was really difficult as I have attended enough inquests to understand the utter vacuum created by someone who has killed themselves. The family find it nigh on impossible to come to grips with something like that.
When someone has been killed by another, there is a focus on the other person, trial – justice – truth. But in suicide it’s a completely different world and the self-blame and anguish constantly thinking “I should have done something”.
Families tend to throw themselves into campaigns, a way of managing their own conscience, I think.
FS: To try and raise the issue so that others can be prevented from going through the same?
SI: Yes, there are limited positive ways of moving on.
When you interview you can’t ask “how much do you blame yourselves for…” and even if you got an answer would it be a fair answer anyway?
Unless someone has left a note or have explained in detail why they got to the point they have, it doesn’t stop people thinking.
If I had known…
I would have made sure…
I would have done this…
Their own memory can become distorted because they did all those things anyway.
In reporting on efforts to get justice, you have to be minded that people see justice and tragedy in different ways, so they need to be handled in different ways.
You sub-consciously learn if I am really honest the ways to try and allow people to have the freedom to say what they want to say, yet make sure you are still independent. To be fair to a story is trying to figure out where in a vague sense the truth is – that sounds a bit worthy. You go for what you think or may come closest to the truth. That’s part of your role as a journalist. You may not find the truth; you would be naïve to think if you did. It you get closer to it, that’s as good as you can do really.
I have covered a lot of prison deaths where I found things utterly appalling and wandered off thinking “why can’t I get the public to care more about this than they do”. Gaining public sympathy is a real uphill struggle even when I have seen things that are so outrageous and I’m going, “why aren’t they the responsible all banged up?”
FS: Where’s the accountability?
SI: That’s my argument, it effects the system so much that they are so used to being too avoiding that the politician is the same “I’ll get no votes…”. Most of these people in prison will come out and end up being someone’s neighbour at some point… SO GET THEM READY.
I appreciate prisons have been in crisis for years, this isn’t new today. But we’ve done that classic thing where we park that world in a layby and just shrugged our shoulders.
FS: Do you believe we live in a punitive society?
SI: We live in a society full of cowards, utter cowards, can’t stand up and say “do you know what, this can’t happen anymore”
When you look at the Children’s Commissioner stand up because they know they will get an audience and so people will listen when they shout. But once someone is 18 and someone stands up and says exactly the same thing, people will stop listening and that’s ridiculous. It’s not rational really, it’s absolutely ridiculous.
FS: You are working with Frances Crook at the moment – a commission – what is this and what is its aim?
SI: Her background is essentially a Labour one. Frances took me to lunch and asked if I would like to be on this panel looking at the relationship between the Executive and the voter. Essentially the shape of democracy, but it was also designed to fit in with the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II, the start of a new monarch and the idea that, somehow or other, there had to be a better way of holding the Executive to account following the recriminations over Boris Johnson and his government, basically. So, because Britain doesn’t have a constitution in reality, it was designed to look at what a better system could have for holding the executive to account.
But how do you hold the executive to account when they go off piste and create all those walls you have to climb and moats you have to cross where you go “Drawbridge is up, you cannot come in”?
I get the point.
You come back to the journalism; the unelected part of the journalism is not really just to call people to account but to change things.
I was always trying to do stories to be a factor in trying to change the thing that wasn’t right. I have done that once or twice; I know I have. It’s not that I have moved mountains, but I’ve improved the lives of people of individuals, so that makes it worthwhile to me.
An example was the Cherry Groce case. I have to say legally, was accidently shot by a police officer in a raid on her home looking for one of her sons, who wasn’t there, this sparked the 1985 Brixton riots. She was paralyzed and ended up in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. In that room where she was shot was her son Lee aged 11 years.
A police officer was put on trial and was acquitted. After Cherry’s death, in 2011, the pathology report linked the shooting and the kidney failure that led to her death. This in turn triggered an inquest. Cherry had lived longer than what was expected, and the trial had never addressed the circumstances on how his mother came to die.
I was at Channel 4 at the time and received a tip off about the pending inquest. I contacted Lee to ask if he would be willing to talk. He said, “I’ll get back to you”. He never did, and I never saw any write up of this inquest.
About a year later he called me, “I think I need your help.”
“The police have a secret report which they won’t let me see, damming of the Met and I can’t get legal aid for the inquest, which has been delayed. All the other parties have QC’s, and they won’t give me legal aid.”
I said we are going to do a story, I did a piece which was well received. To force things to happen a petition was put up on change.org and once the story was out the signatures increased to 120,000. We had started the motion and the Lewisham MP got involved by banging on the door of the legal aid agency and managed to get Lee legal aid.
Lee got his unlawful killing verdict, the Met had to release the report and the man that shot Cherry came to give evidence.
Lee walked away saying “That was for my mum, I got it”.
The head of the Met apologised face to face and the family were paid compensation as the original money paid out was to cover only up to 10 years as that was the estimate of how long Cherry would live after being shot. She lived 16 more years with the financial burden on the family.
In 2020, Lee Lawrence won the Costa Biography Award for his book “The Louder I Will Sing: A story of racism, riots and redemption”.
In Brixton Square there is a huge structure put up by the Met Police to honour the life of Cherry Groce.
So I made a difference.
FS: What makes you laugh?
SI: Children make me laugh, I love children, their humour is instantaneous.
FS: What makes you cry?
SI: I’m not sure loss does, I lost my dad, but didn’t cry, quite a long time ago. Will I cry if my Mum died? Not so sure, not because I don’t love them or care about them.
I sometimes cry out of frustration and sometimes out of appreciating someone’s hurt. The sheer inhumanity of it all. I cried in Rwanda when we picked up a desperately injured child and took them to hospital. I think I cried out of the sheer chaos of everything, and this manifested itself on this poor child who had no control over anything. I had met them for half an hour max.
I manifest my emotions that are linked to other people’s emotions I think, whoever that might be rather than my own.
I’ve led a fairly happy life; I haven’t suffered really in any shape or form that I can say is relevant to anything.
I had a great childhood.
I had a great education.
I had a relatively great career, maybe I didn’t get all the way to the top, but that didn’t matter. I got to do what I wanted to do and still do.
You look back and say, “I can’t really grumble.”
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Photographs used by kind permission of Simon Israel.
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IMB Soap Opera
Is the IMB like liquid soap?
Not the wonderful clear stuff which has a beautiful fragrance and an antibacterial effect on everything it touches.
No, not that.
More like that gawd awful stuff you find in greasy dispensers at motorway service station toilets, where hygiene means tick boxing inspection sheets on the back of the door. Its colour an insipid artificial pink like slime from old boiled sweets left too long in the sun, and its smell nauseous like cat sick.
But it is its opacity that irks me.
Designed to deliberately obfuscate, smother and shroud all that has any proximity to it, you never truly know whether it has any cleansing properties at all.
I neither like nor trust opaque liquid soap.
I happily tolerate the clear stuff, so long as it really is clear and totally free of nasty microbeads, creaming additives and fake foam.
It would have been far better for the IMB if it had been a bar of soap. At least you know where you are with a bar of soap. Visible, tangible, relatable, practical, and likeable. A bar of soap has these and many other qualities about it which reassures me of its fitness for purpose.
From the moment it is unwrapped and placed at the side of the sink, its very presence reassures you. Sitting there unblemished and ready to serve, a fresh bar of soap exudes a sense of personalised attentiveness and an unwillingness to be corrupted by falling into the wrong person’s hands.
I don’t think it is too much to ask that a bar of soap is fresh and that I am the first person to use it. There are some things that are unacceptable to pass around.
Even if we were to believe all they tell us then, at best, IMB would resemble a remnant of used soap, cracked and old. Once so full of purpose, now degraded in the hands of multiple ministers and permanent secretaries. Put on the side, its usefulness expended but its stubborn existence more a token gesture of monitoring rather than an effective part of the hygiene of the justice system.
It is an exhausted specimen of uselessness despite what its National Chair, Secretariat, Management Board would have you believe. They justify their own sense of importance with the sort of job roles that place them on a pedestal. But in reality it all just smacks of self aggrandizement; as they say in Texas – “Big hat, no cattle.”
Where once I bought into this whole parade, now I see it for the parody that it is. Where once I was pleased to serve, now I call out the servitude that the system enforces on those who work within it.
Where once I would write the annual reports, now I challenge the pointlessness of recording observations and making recommendations, an utterly futile exercise because there was never any intention by the Ministry of Justice to do anything about them.
A fresh bar of soap has an impressive versatility about it. It can give you clean hands, yes, but it can go a lot further than that. It can be carved, shaped and fashioned into an object of extraordinary beauty.
Some people serving their time in prison surprise me when they produce such intricate objects crafted from something as humble as a fresh bar of soap; an allegory of their own lives, in some cases I have known. Arguably a work of art to be admired and cherished.
Whereas an old, cracked bar of soap has no such versatility or value, and does not merit being kept.
If you can’t wash your hands with it, you should wash your hands of it.
In its present form, the IMB needs to be replaced.
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Should inmates be given phones?
Offenders who maintain family ties are nearly 40% less likely to turn back to crime, according to the Ministry of Justice. With secure mobiles being rolled out in prisons we ask…
Should inmates be given phones?
This was a question posed to me back in November 2021 by Jenny Ackland, Senior Writer/Content Commissioner, Future for a “Real life debate” to be published in Woman’s Own January 10th 2022 edition.
Below is the complete article, my comments were cut down slightly, as there was a limited word count and reworked into the magazine style.
Communication is an essential element to all our lives, but when it comes to those incarcerated in our prisons, there is suddenly a blockage.
Why is communication limited?
It is no surprise that mobile phones can serve as a means of continuing criminal activity with the outside world, as a weapon of manipulation, a bargaining tool, a means of bullying or intimidation.
But what many forget is that prison removes an individual from society as they know it, with high brick walls and barbed wire separating them from loved ones, family, and friends.
There is a PIN phone system where prisoners can speak with a limited number of pre-approved and validated contacts, but these phones are on the landings, are shared by many, usually in demand at the same time and where confidentiality is non-existent. This is when friction can lead to disturbances, threats, and intimidation.
Some prisons (approx 66%) do have in-cell telephony, with prescribed numbers, monitored calls and with no in-coming calls.
Why do some have a problem with this?
We live in an age of technology, and even now phones are seen as rewarding those in prison.
If we believe that communication is a vital element in maintaining relationships, why is there such opposition for prisoners?
In HM Chief Inspector of prisons Annual report for 2020, 71% of women and 47% of men reported they had mental health issues.
Phones are used as a coping mechanism to the harsh regimes, can assist in reducing stress, allay anxiety and prevent depression.
Let’s not punish further those in prison, prison should be the loss of liberty.
Even within a prison environment parents want to be able to make an active contribution to their children’s lives. Limiting access to phones penalises children and in so doing punishes them for something they haven’t done. They are still parents.
Who watches the Watchdog?
The website for the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) states:
“Inside every prison, there is an Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) made up of members of the public from all walks of life doing an extraordinary job!
You’ll work as part of a team of IMB volunteers, who are the eyes and ears of the public, appointed by Ministers to perform a vital task: independent monitoring of prisons and places of immigration detention. It’s an opportunity to help make sure that prisoners are being treated fairly and given the opportunity and support to stop reoffending and rebuild their lives.”
Anyone can see this is a huge remit for a group of volunteers.
IMB’s about us page also states:
“Their role is to monitor the day-to-day life in their local prison or removal centre and ensure that prisoners and detainees are treated fairly and humanely”
Another huge remit.
For those who believe they can make a difference, and I have met a few who have, the joining process is quite lengthy.
Once you have completed the online application form, bearing in mind you can only apply to prisons which are running a recruiting campaign (that doesn’t mean to say there are no vacancies in others) the applicant is then invited for an interview and a tour of the prison.
So, what is wrong with that you may ask?
At this point NO security checks have been done, so literally anyone can get a tour of a prison, ask questions, and meet staff and prisoners.
This is surely a red flag.
And then there is the ‘interview’.
Two IMB members from the prison you have applied to and one from another prison take it turn in asking questions. It is basically a ‘tick box exercise’; I know this because I have been involved myself, sitting on both sides of the table.
It is based on scores, so if you are competent in interviews, you will do well. With IMB boards desperate for members it means that as long as your security check comes through as okay, you will have made it on to the IMB board.
However, no references are required to become a prison monitor. NONE.
A red flag too?
One of the main problems I encountered was that if the IMB board member comes from a managerial background they will want to manage. But the IMB role is about monitoring a prison and not managing it. I have seen where members and staff have clashed over this.
Well done, you made it on to the board, what next?
Back to the IMB website:
“You do not need any particular qualifications or experience, as we will provide all necessary training and support you need during a 12-month training and mentoring period”
The first year is the probationary year where you are mentored, accompanied, and trained. To be accompanied for this period is unrealistic, there are insufficient members having neither the time nor resources to get new members up to speed before they start monitoring.
In addition, induction training can be between 3-6 months after joining and can be said it is at best haphazard.
As reported Tuesday by Charles Hymas and others in The Telegraph newspaper, and citing a set-piece statement from the MOJ press office, “a spokesman said that although they had unrestricted access, they were given a comprehensive induction…”
I beg to differ; the induction for IMB board members is hardly comprehensive.
I believe this needs to change.
For such an essential role, basic training must take place before stepping into a prison. Yes, you can learn on the job but as we have seen recently, IMB members are not infallible.
Membership of the IMB is for up to 15 years which leads to culture of “we’ve always done it this way”, a phrase all too often heard, preventing new members from introducing fresh ideas.
What if something goes wrong?
Not all IMB members have a radio or even a whistle or any means of alerting others to a difficult situation or security risk. If for any reason you need support from the IMB Secretariat, don’t hold your breath.
The secretariat is composed of civil servants, MOJ employees, a fluctuating workforce, frequently with no monitoring experience themselves who offer little or no assistance. I know, I’ve been in that place of needing advice and support.
What support I received was pathetic. Even when I was required to attend an inquest in my capacity as a IMB board member no tangible help was provided and I was told that IMB’s so-called ‘care team’ had been disbanded.
From the moment you pick up your keys, you enter a prison environment that is unpredictable, volatile and changeable.
As we have seen this week, an IMB member at HMP Liverpool has been arrested and suspended after a police investigation where they were accused of smuggling drugs and phones into prison.
This is not surprising to me and may be the tip of the iceberg. IMB board members have unrestricted access to prisons and prisoners. As unpaid volunteers they are as susceptible to coercion as paid prison officers.
Radical change needs to be put in place to tighten up scrutiny of, and checks on, members of the IMB when they visit prisons either for their board meetings or their rota visits.
In 4 years of monitoring at HMP/YOI Hollesley Bay I was never searched, and neither was any bag I carried. In over 10 years of visiting prisons, I can count on one hand, with fingers to spare, the number of times I have been searched. When visiting a large scale prison such as HMP Berwyn I only had to show my driving licence and the barriers were opened.
Whilst the situation at HMP Liverpool is an ongoing investigation and whilst the outcome of the investigation is not yet known, I do urge Dame Anne Owers, the IMB’s national Chair, to look urgently at the IMB recruitment process, at the IMB training and at the provision of on-going support for IMB board members.
Complacency has no part in prisons monitoring.
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The Criminal Justice Blog 