Piles of rubbish scattered all around, cockroaches, broken windows, graffiti covering the walls, bloodstains on sheets, no light, filth and squalor everywhere, overcrowding, inmates sharing a 12ft by 12ft cell with an unscreened toilet – this is nothing but the current state of jails in Britain. To top it all, overcrowding is adding to the woes. Needless to say, the place is stinking.
The British prison population has been increasing rapidly in recent years and prisons are struggling to keep up with the rising demand.
Prison overcrowding is one of the key contributing factors to poor jail conditions around the world. It is also arguably the biggest single problem facing prison systems which, if not contained, can lead to riot, rooftop protests, attacks on officers, malfunctioning of the prison system, increasing cost, and at worst life-threatening consequences.
According to Lord Woolf, the former lord chief justice, overcrowding is the cancer that destroys everything in a prison, and the system is bursting at the seams. The jail population has doubled in 20 years to about 85,000 and this country now has the highest imprisonment rate in western Europe. More than a quarter of prisoners live in overcrowded prisons, with many doubled up in cells made for one.
The number of staff employed in the public prison estate has fallen by 30% in 5 years – there are 13,730 fewer officers looking after nearly 1,200 more people. In 2000, there was one officer for every 2.9 prisoners; by the end of March 2014 this ratio had increased to one for every 5.3.
Mark Icke, vice-president of the Prison Governors's Association, says: “In a number of prisons, prisoners are now locked up for 50% more time than they used to be and that makes it harder for them to be rehabilitated.”
Another fallout of crowded prisons is rise in violence. There were 267 deaths in custody in the year to September, an increase of 14% on the previous year. Of these 95 were suicides and 7 were homicides.
Nigel Newcomen, the prisons and probation ombudsman, says: “The number of self-inflicted deaths has zoomed and there has been 60% increase since January. There is a troubling degree of mental ill-health and suggestions that staff levels have had an impact.”
The pressure is becoming unbearable for some senior staff. A survey of members by the Prison Governors' Association found that 61% had suffered stress-related ill health and 42% would consider changing jobs if conditions don't improve.
Lord Woolf believes that the prison population could be halved without risk to public safety. “At the time of my report, it was 42,000 and falling. We have got to educate the public that longer and longer sentences don't achieve anything,” he said.
At Wormwood Scrubs, there is no light, everything is broken, prisoners are locked up for 23 hours a day.
The fundamental problem is overcrowding, says Nick Hardwick, the chief inspector of prisons. “There are more people in prison than we can afford. We should look at length of sentence and whether some people need to go to prison at all. It is important if people break the rules, that there is a penalty but I don't think our only option for punishment should be prison. We need to make the dividing lines less hard so you don't necessarily do your whole sentence in prison, you could do a community sentence or tagging, or you come back at weekends,” he says.
The jail population religion-wise:
* There were 33,655 Christian inmates in 1991 which increased to 42,449 in 2015.
* There were 1,959 Muslim inmates in 1991 which rose to 12,622 in 2015.
* There were 151 Hindu inmates in 1991 which rose to 448 in 2015.
* There were 307 Sikh inmates in 1991 which shot up to 751 in 2015.
The jail population gender-wise:
* Till September 2015, there were 81,998 male inmates and 3,888 female inmates.
The jail population ethnic group-wise:
* There were 56,825 White inmates in 2005 which rose to 63,252 in 2015.
* There were 4,564 Asian or Asian British inmates in 2005 which increased to 7,007 in 2015.
* There were 862 Chinese or other inmates in 2005 which increased to 982 in 2015.
The jail population – British and Foreign nationals:
* The number of British inmates in 2001 was 58,732 which rose to 75,010 in 2015.
* The number of Foreign national inmates was 6,926 in 2001 which increased to 10,442 in 2015.
The jail population offence-wise:
* The number of inmates imprisoned for sexual offences was 3,109 in 1991 which rose to 5,064 in 2001 and 11,738 in 2015.
