Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD on the urgent need for UK Prison Reform.

The UK has the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe. Norway, the lowest.

In the UK, around 60% of inmates go on to reoffend within a two-year period. In Norway, the rate is 20% after two years.

How do we account for this?

In England & wales, 47% of adults are reconvicted within a year of release. For those serving sentences of less than 12 months, this increases to 60%. For children & young people, reoffending rates rise to 75%.

In the UK, 75% of ex-inmates reoffend within nine years of release.

England has one of the highest occupancy levels in Western Europe - 104% on average (in some prisons, much higher). In Norway, prisons operate at a capacity of 73%.

England & Wales has an imprisonment rate of 153/100,000 of the population, France 96, Germany 89, & Norway, 57.

Norway also has one of the lowest overall crime rates on Earth, & has experienced a decrease in criminal offenses over the last decade: reported crimes declined from 82.8 to 58.2/1,000 inhabitants between 2009 & 2019.

In England & Wales, the crime rate is 77.6/1,000.

As well as having one of the lowest crime rates on earth, the Norwegian prison system is arguably the world’s best & most humane. In the 90s, they moved away from a punitive approach & sharply cut reoffending rates.

The UK prison population has risen by 74% in the last 30 years.

A place at maximum-security Halden prison in Norway costs about £98,000/year, whereas the annual cost of a prison place in England in Wales goes from around £40,000 to about £60,000 in a Category A prison - but reoffending by ex-prisoners costs UK society around £15BILLION/year.

The ethos of the Norwegian Correctional Service was reformed to focus much more on rehabilitation.

Prisoners, who previously spent most of their day locked up, were offered daily training & educational programmes, & the role of the prison guards was completely overhauled.

Norway ensures inmates get help to become better people. Prison guards are role models, coaches, & mentors.

The architecture of Halden Prison was designed to minimise the sense of incarceration, to ease psychological stress, & to put them in harmony with the surrounding nature.

Every inmate has their own cell, which comes with an en suite toilet & shower, a fridge, desk, flat TV screen & forest views, & sofas & well-equipped kitchenette in the communal common room.

In Norway, the punishment is just to take away someone's liberty. The other rights stay.

Prisoners can vote, they can have access to school, to health care; they have the same rights as any Norwegian citizen. Because inmates are human beings. They have done wrong, they must be punished, but they are still human beings.

Most of the prisoners at Halden maximum security prison leave their cells at 07:30 each morning & are at 'work' by 08:15. Apart from one hour's rest in their cells during the afternoon, to coincide with the guards' break, they are not locked in again until 20:30 at night.

The idea is to give prisoners a sense of normality & to help them focus on preparing for a new life when they get out. Many inmates will be released from Halden as fully qualified mechanics, carpenters or chefs. In Norway, all prisoners are released - there are no life sentences.

The maximum sentence in Norway is 21 years, but the law does allow for preventative detention, which is the extension of a sentence in five-year increments if the convicted person is deemed to be a continued threat to society.

Prisoners can undertake a range of qualifications, including the equivalent of A levels & professional qualifications, & at open prisons, degrees, Masters & PhDs.

Time inside Norway's prisons is used for a projected future outside. UK prisons tend to negatively effect prisoners.

Without opportunities, prisoners are just locked in a cage, & don't become good citizens.

Normalising life behind bars is the key philosophy that underpins the Norwegian Correctional service. This means providing daily routines & also ensuring family contact is maintained too.

Once every three months, inmates with children can apply to a "Daddy In Prison" scheme which, if they pass the necessary safeguarding tests, means they can spend a couple of nights with their partner, sons & daughters in a chalet within the prison grounds.

It's usual to have as many female prison guards as males - even in all male prisons.

It's normal to have women in society, so prisoners need to get used to & cope with that. They need to learn to respect not just the uniform but the person - often women - as well.

It takes 12 weeks in the UK to train a prison officer. In Norway it takes two to three years.

At the University College of the Norwegian Correctional Service, each year 175 trainees, selected from over 1,200 applicants, start their studies to become a prison officer.

In order to reduce or prevent exorbitantly expensive reoffending, prison officers need to be well educated.

Trainee prison guards study law, ethics, criminology, English, reintegration & social work followed by a years training in a prison, & then their final exams.

In the Norwegian system, officers are well paid, & learn how to deal with inmates, & how to avoid corruption & violence.

Students go to the UK to spend a day observing an English prison, & are always surprised by the noise, the crowding, & the relatively small number of staff.

In England, there were 12,181 prisoner-on-prisoner assaults in the 12 months to June 2021 (a rate of 155/1,000 prisoners), & 408 people died in
prisons in England & Wales in the year to March 2021. There were 10,213 assaults on staff in 2018, with 995 of those classed as serious.

Violence & death in Norwegian prisons is extremely rare.

In Norway, offenders learn from their time in prison, make retributions, & prepare for healthy reintegration back into society.

The goal is also to deter reoccurring offenses, & help offenders learn and grow as people.

To minimize an institutional environment that would make re-entering society more difficult, prisons in Norway aim to offer a life that is as close to that on the outside as possible.

In the UK, the often barbaric institutional conditions seem designed to inhibit rehabilitation.

The Directorate of Norwegian Correctional Service website states: “in accordance with the principle of normality, progression through a sentence should be aimed at reentering to the community. The more institutionalized a system is, the harder it will be to return to freedom.”

Here’s a reminder of Norway’s prison population/100,000 people, compared with other countries globally:

Norway – 57
Japan – 62
Finland – 75
Germany – 89
France – 96
Netherlands – 128
Kenya – 130
Spain – 144
England – 153
Brazil – 193
Russia – 615
USA – 737

While the indicators of a successful justice system have yet to be universalized or even properly defined, there is no doubt that Norway seems to be doing something right, due to its comparatively significantly lower incarceration, crime, & recidivism rates.

Currently, despite Government rhetoric, there is *no* evidence that increasing imprisonment reduces crime.

While 'restorative justice; has delivered promising results, right now, sentences are going up, but reoffending rates aren’t going down.

theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2…

UK prisons are full of marginalised people, who struggle to function, & who exhibit problematic behaviour.

The criminal justice system is very expensive in fiscal & in human terms, & is ill-equipped to address, let alone alter the problematic behaviour.

transformingsociety.co.uk/2021/11/18/the…

In the UK, running prisons & probation for profit is a consequence of the deregulation & marketisation of the justice system: the state’s function under neoliberalism is to develop an institutional structure which supports private profit & the free market.

https://twitter.com/docrussjackson/status/1441327477154979847?s=20&t=0QcYCwv6QKc7FLrdST8Eig

Here's a candid & harrowing #THREAD by Edward Henry QC, who in 2021 submitted to a judge in Reading that current conditions in British Prisons were 'worse than as documented by Michael Ignatieff within Pentonville in the 1840s'.

#PrisonReform

https://twitter.com/edwardhenry1/status/1470211903553253378?s=20&t=0QcYCwv6QKc7FLrdST8Eig

In 202, Boris Johnson said: "We cannot allow our prisons to become factories for making bad people worse."

In 2012, the Justice Secretary banned prisoners from receiving books from relatives or friends. The ban was ruled unlawful in December 2015.

transformingsociety.co.uk/2020/02/04/out…

Worsening economic conditions means incarcerating huge numbers of poor, undereducated, or mentally ill people in inhuman conditions, where rehabilitation is almost impossible. In 2018, there were over 40K cases of self harm.

Reoffending costs £15bn/year.

theguardian.com/society/2018/f…

Having cut police numbers & dramatically increased crime, the @Conservatives are now putting our brave & under-resourced prison officers at risk, & deliberately destroying lives.

This is shameful, cruel, inhuman, unethical, & without even an economic rationale.

#StopVotingTory

The Tories have strategically deflected, distorted & ignored evidence on prisons, legitimising & reinforcing the central role of prison in the underfunded criminal justice system, despite strong evidence of its inefficacy.

In 2018, we had 7,000 fewer prison officers than 2010.

In 1972, a conversation took place between prison reform activist Michel Foucault, & Gilles Deleuze, in which they discussed what Foucault called "the most frenzied manifestation of power imaginable", the prison.

libcom.org/library/intell…

The @Conservatives know sounding tough on crime gets votes; they delight in the the social, emotional, mental & fiscal harm prison causes.

They want us to believe prisoners are either born evil or choose to be evil, & ignore the wider societal conditions that give rise to crime.

The Tories think compassion & empathy are signs of weakness, when the opposite is true.

They have deliberately manufactured a situation where the poor, weak & disadvantaged are ruthlessly exploited & scapegoated, to help ensure societal division & maintain ideological dominance.

Britain is dangerously close to a point of no return.

The Govt's breathtaking lies, rule-breaking, corruption, divisive rhetoric & draconian legislation seems deliberately designed to harm as many people as possible, while protecting the interests of the rich they represent.

Please support these #prisonreform organisations. 🙏

@PRTuk @TheHowardLeague @LCPReform @cjalliance @Justiceprisons @PrisonWatchUK @ButlerTrust @HumanRightsCtte @undercovergov @JusticeGap @PenalReformInt @LongfordTrust @Justiceprisons @ForwardTrust @ICPRtweet @GriffinsSociety

Facts from Govt sources which chart the extraordinary rise in UK prison numbers in our overcrowded prisons over the last twenty years, inflation in sentencing, the social & economic consequences of overuse of custody, & the impact of deep budget cuts.

prisonreformtrust.org.uk/Portals/0/Docu…

Everyone wants there to be less crime. Everyone wants to live in a community where children grow & succeed.

Far-reaching & wide-ranging, the @TheHowardLeague’s work is aimed at reducing crime & making communities safer, with fewer people in prison.

howardleague.org/our-work/