Prisonomics

by Pryce, Vicky

  It was a real joy after Holloway to be in a place with no lock-ups. The reports I received later from the girls at ESP, who had been transferred from closed prisons around the country, suggested that some prisons were worse than others. This is supported by the ‘Measuring the Quality of Prison Life’ survey that the prison service carries out periodically in all prisons in England and Wales. A report to the select committee on home affairs in June 2004 detailed how prisons vary most in terms of treating prisoners with dignity and respect, as well as offending behaviour programme and resettlement provisions.54

  Ex-Holloway girls generally had good memories of the prison but I realised from talking to those who came to ESP from other closed prisons that at times the lock-ups were quite horrific. When there were new arrivals in ESP you could in fact tell the girls from one particular prison in the Midlands some two-and-a-half hours away, as they tended to look more pasty faced than others and positively cowed in my view – uncertain where to go, huddling very close together in the groups they arrived in, finding comfort in close proximity with each other in the first few days. I heard one girl who finally came out to the open area saying to the others how weird it was to step on grass for the first time in ages. That was sad. I was told that on many days in that private jail they got no more than ten minutes on the outside and couldn’t go out if there was any sign of rain as the guards didn’t want to get wet. In the middle of this cold winter we were having, they had a number of instances where the heating didn’t work for a few days in a row. I idly speculated whether they had hit their heating budget early and were saving energy to ensure they didn’t get over it. On the other hand there were compensating factors, like a better education programme, but the girls all reported being unable to eat the appalling food and a number had lost a huge amount of weight or even arrived with illnesses that had not been treated properly. Interestingly, research so far suggests that private prisons are generally either much worse or much better than public sector prisons. There are large differences particularly in levels of staff professionalism, organisation, consistency and staff–prisoner relationships.55

  As soon as we arrived at ESP I rang all the kids and my lawyer to give them the good news and the first visit on the coming Sunday was booked for me straight away by Les on reception. ESP allowed visits every weekend rather than every fortnight as had been the case in Holloway, and three adults and three children under eighteen could come in either on Saturday or on Sunday. In contrast to Holloway, I was allowed my handbag with all its contents, as well as my toiletries and most of my clothes from my suitcase, which miraculously survived the M20 van transfer. I would be staying in a dormitory room with friendly roommates, a proper carpet and a wooden moveable bed. The other dorm residents immediately helped me find a soft pillow, duvet and duvet cover, and towel and bathrobe, and I was settled in very easily. One of the ladies, over sixty, told me that at her former closed prison she had requested an extra blanket and pillow, as she was entitled to at her age. After three weeks of asking she received the pillow and not the blanket – it may have been the blanket and not the pillow, but either way, frankly, that’s shocking. And then another great revelation. The food here was edible – but more than that. As we had arrived so late, we were rushed to the evening meal and discovered battered fish and chips and mushy peas and pudding with custard and fruit – and all this in a wood-panelled dining room with great views of the Kent valleys. It was a far cry from what we had left behind. Of course, as an open prison for low-risk prisoners, East Sutton Park is rather unusual in many ways.

  I knew very little – in fact nothing – about East Sutton Park when I arrived. If I had researched it beforehand, I would have seen the November 2012 report by Nick Hardwick, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons.56 He describes East Sutton Park as ‘an unusual prison’. He is right of course. It is a Grade II-listed, sixteenth-century country mansion with a farm attached to it, overlooking the rolling Kent countryside. It is also one of only two women’s open prisons. As a prison its impact is believed to be a very positive one, providing, as the report concludes, ‘unusually good outcomes for both the women it holds and the public as a whole’.

  I would also have been reassured by his conclusion that ‘East Sutton Park is a very safe place’. There are ‘supportive reception and induction arrangements’ and ‘very little bullying’. The report also states that ‘illicit drug use was virtually non-existent’. I never witnessed any on the premises although there were a small number of instances while I was there when residents abused the system on their days out and were generally caught and sent back to closed conditions. Nick Hardwick also found that ‘the general environment was impressive but living conditions for most women in small and cramped dormitories were very poor and the lack of privacy caused tension’. I can vouch for that. But on the plus side ESP provided residents with worthwhile external work and lots of training opportunities in the community to help prepare women for release. There were still issues to address, which I discovered and document in the book later, ‘but East Sutton Park provides a safe and decent environment for the women it holds’.

  First impressions had indeed been good. Very important for me was that I was allowed to make phone calls to thirteen different approved personal numbers and seven solicitor numbers. I still found it restrictive but it was a luxury after Holloway. In some private prisons, such as Lowdham Grange men’s prison in Nottingham, enhanced prisoners enjoy landline access in their rooms. Nick Hardwick commented that although ‘women were appreciative of the opportunities they had to maintain contact with their families … it was still not possible to receive incoming calls from their children and the continuing ban on the use of mobile phones in the prison was hard to justify’. I have to say that in discussions with the lifers, some of whom had gone in before the latest mobiles and smartphones became so popular, I found that they had great difficulty adapting to them once they were able to use them out on visits.

  Naturally, the media started writing that I had moved to a cushy prison with special privileges like flat screen TV, Jacuzzis and tennis courts. The other residents found it hilarious and we started searching for all these ‘mod cons’. The main issue worrying the women there was their loss of freedom and their separation from their families. That they were treated humanely was in my view just as it should be. But even I was astonished to discover that Friday night was karaoke night in the pool room between 8.30 and 10.30 (which I went to on my first night), Saturday night was bingo night, for which you had to pay a fee (50p block fee from your wages for a number of games if you wanted to take part – practically everyone did – and run by the residents), and bedtime was 11 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on the weekends. It was a far cry from the Holloway, Peterborough and other closed prisons’ lock-up time, which forced you to be a hermit and not socialise – an attitude that hardly helps when you are out there again seeking re-employment or trying to reintegrate. The right-wing call for tougher regimes forgets one fact: for these women losing their liberty and their families is the most horrific thing to happen to them.

  A lovely girl from Indonesia, who I will call Aanjay, came from Peterborough and immediately threw herself into working life at ESP: she was up at 5.30 to serve breakfast for two-and-a-half hours, then after a short break carried out kitchen duties for three hours, then another three hours in the kitchen before serving supper and finally a very brief break for dinner herself before spending the rest of the evening doing people’s hair, nails and eyebrows, giving massages and the like. It wasn’t that this was necessarily her métier – she had a sociology degree from the London School of Economics. Yes, it made her popular with all the other residents who queued to have their hair and makeup done before their home visits. It was, as she confessed to me, the only way to stop her thinking about the five children and her (rather handsome) Italian husband she had left behind. On the few occasions she joined us in the drawing room, all talk would be centred on how she could persuade t
he governor to allow her to go out and see her eldest daughter, aged fifteen, who was due to have a major knee operation just around the time I was leaving ESP. Nothing preys on the mind of these women more than things like this. They didn’t tend to classify prisons by the treatment they received but what regimes they could undertake to pass the time faster and push them closer to seeing their loved ones again.

  Family relationships and support is recognised as a significant factor in reducing the risk of reoffending by providing a platform for the offender to make positive and valuable changes towards rehabilitation. An investigation by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) stresses the importance of keeping close contact with the family to reduce reoffending (by as much as 39 per cent), to avoid depression and self-harm, and to improve children’s well-being.57 Maintaining contact with children and families through visits, telephone calls and letters not only ameliorates the painful experience of separation but enables women to adjust more effectively to prison life. Research in America examined the determinants of female prisoner misconduct and found the number of visits and phone calls a prisoner received reduced rule-breaking behaviour, thereby allowing the woman greater opportunities to respond more effectively to rehabilitation and treatment programmes, and offering a greater chance to avoid reoffending on release.58

  The National Offender Management Service’s (NOMS) Reducing Reoffending Delivery Plan identifies seven pathways to reduce reoffending and this includes maintaining prisoners’ relationships with children and family.59 Researchers in the US have gone so far as to say the family ‘is probably the most important weapon we have in fighting crime. Prisoners who receive visitors, maintain family ties and are released into a stable home environment are more likely to succeed in leading productive, crime-free lives.’60 A reduction in reoffending of course has significant costs implications for wider society.

  A study undertaken by the New Economics Foundation examined the economic impact of work undertaken with prisoners and their families by the Prison Advice and Care Trust. The Integrated Family Support Programme (IFSP) seeks to support prisoners’ relationships with their families by providing assistance with visits (including help with arranging and facilitating visits and intermediary work between prisoners and their families to build bonds), support to families (including emotional support, advice and referrals) and resettlement support. The study ‘reviewed the work of the IFSP over a one-year period with 794 prisoners at HMPs Swansea, Wandsworth and Styal, and was based on a proposition derived from analysis by the Ministry of Justice that the odds of reoffending within one year of release from prison were 39 per cent higher for prisoners who had not received visits from a partner or family member while in prison compared to those who had’.61 The estimated cost-benefit of reducing reoffending over a one-year period through the IFSP work with the 794 offenders and their families was £1,063,529.62 This was based on a conservative estimate of avoiding the costs of an offender reoffending only once during the year. The costs saved would be significantly higher if cases of multiple reoffending were avoided.

  With a stable home and family network so important, the value of being able to return home after serving time cannot be overestimated but, as has been noted, many women lose their homes as a result of imprisonment and are released despite uncertain availability of accommodation or housing. The Wedderburn report in 2000 found that of the women it interviewed, ‘half of the mothers nearing release were not expecting to return to their previous accommodation and almost four in ten had lost their homes.’63 A 2002 report by the Social Exclusion Unit showed that around one third of female prisoners lost their homes and possessions.64 The Home Office found that ‘during the period 2006–08, 44 per cent of female prisoners reported that they would have a problem finding accommodation on release’.65 This would suggest that moving prisoners to places where they lose contact with their family because they are too far away makes little sense.

  This is especially a problem given the small number of women’s prisons: there are 118 prisons for men compared to only thirteen women’s prisons (and in Wales, there is none of the latter). Data for 2009 showed that the average female prisoner was being held 55 miles away from her home. In 2009, around 753 women were held more than 100 miles away.66 A 2002 study from the Social Exclusion Unit found that only around half of the women in prison who had lived or were in contact with their children before they were sent to prison received visits from their families, compared to 75 per cent of men.67 That is hardly surprising given that a 2006 study by the Revolving Doors Agency based in Styal prison found that 70 per cent of mothers who had been sent to prison had had their children taken away from them.68 Many girls in ESP told me that the visiting costs were prohibitive for families hoping to visit them in prison. Fortunately, for those who have passed their Facility Licence Eligibility Date (known rather amusingly by the acronym FLED) and are able to visit their families, the prison covers their travel costs – at least while the girls are not in paid employment during their prison sentence.

  The practicalities for families of travelling long distances to remote prison locations by public transport can be challenging, more so with small children or where there are no visitor centres at the prison to provide refreshment and facilities after a long journey. At Drake Hall prison in Staffordshire the only facility for visitors is a waiting cabin outside the main gate.69 Where children are being cared for by family members who have work or other childcare responsibilities, or where children are in the care of the local authority, it may be extremely difficult for these carers to facilitate and support prison visits. Timings of the visiting schedule can negatively impact upon the number of visits a prisoner receives. In Holloway the visits were every fourteen days and held in the middle of the afternoon – hardly the best time of the day. I was lucky in ESP as the visits occurred each weekend and you could pick a Saturday or Sunday slot. However, in general, evening and weekend visiting slots remain rare across prisons as this does not coincide with the prison regime and weekday daytime slots are difficult if family members are at school or work.

  Women prisoners have commented that the prison environment is unsuitable for children and some elect not to have their children visit at all.70 Uniformed officers, routine searches, security measures and visits in large halls where women prisoners are not allowed any physical contact with their children can undoubtedly be bewildering and intimidating for young children. Recent efforts within the prison estate to make prisons more family focused and child friendly, such as the introduction of family days, have reportedly fallen victim to budget cuts.71

  As a consequence, many women endure their prison sentence isolated and without any familial support. A prison governor recounted the different experiences of men and women upon release. ‘Most men were met at the gate by a welcoming party: partner, friends, drink. Almost all women walked alone from the prison gate.’72

  Some of the latest government proposals for reforming prisons and improving rehabilitation do include recommendations for having special units for women attached to men’s prisons. But experts say the drawbacks may offset the benefits, something that will be discussed later.

  This problem of being distant from family can also act as a disincentive to go for paid jobs, which are so important for ensuring the move back to the outside world goes smoothly. At times the cost of the fares to and from the job, and the loss of subsidy for home leave (particularly important for those with relatives far away), may be more than the payment the girls receive. The initial excitement at applying and then securing a job with a much better wage than the jobs within the prison quickly dissipates when the girls realise how much of the wage they will actually retain. Income tax is subtracted (though they may be able to claim this back at the end of the financial year) and roughly 40 per cent is retained by the prison, something introduced by the Prisoners Earnings Act, implemented in September 2011, to go towards victim support.

  Being able to care for your relatives is, of course, cruc
ial even when inside. I was saddened when I heard that Mandy, a lovely South African girl who also sat at my table and who has four children to care for, was recently sent back to a closed prison and is facing more fraud charges because, possibly in desperation, she did not inform the authorities that her employer on the outside had moved her from a volunteer to a paid member of staff, and she had continued to receive all the benefits while not paying dues to the prison.

  Inevitably over the next couple of months I got to know many women reasonably well and most just wanted to tell their stories. I was astonished how many felt they were not guilty and complained that they were given the wrong advice by their solicitor. And many had been remand prisoners or on bail, sometimes for quite an extended period, before they were sentenced. In many instances it seems they had become so depressed by this state of affairs that they had lost all strength to carry on fighting. Using the Freedom of Information Act the BBC asked for and received figures in late May 2013 which showed that there were 57,000 people on bail, with 3,000 or so, a number of them women, on bail for more than six months. As I spoke to people in ESP, a number of the women there were in jail for fraud. Although the violent crimes category for women has the highest number of offenders in it of all categories if looked at individually, the percentage of the total crimes that are violent remains small. Women generally tend to commit non-violent crimes like fraud, and cases take time to be examined properly because they are usually complex.73 This may go some way to explain why 16 per cent of the female prison population at the end of June 2013 was on remand, in comparison to only 13 per cent of male prisoners.74