News 2020

Making the present look like paradise

Britain's prisons are too overcrowded and are failing in the crucial areas of moral reclamation and child suicide, according to a report released today.

The Prison Security and Youth Custodial Hospitality Organisation, a think-tank which includes representatives from all the major custodial contractors employed by the Government, based the report on a study of conditions in all Britain's prisons over the past five years.

During that time, the report says, overcrowding has reached "absolutely unacceptable levels". This is technically a disimprovement on the situation five years ago, when overcrowding was at "moderately unacceptable levels".

The report proposes that the problem be addressed by paying prison contractors on a simple unit-cost basis, whereby companies would be remunerated according to a mutually agreed price per prisoner, per day of sentence. The Home Office has previously rejected such schemes on the grounds that their adoption would "glamorise crime" by letting prisoners feel they were of economic value.

Overcrowding in some prisons, particularly those in which juveniles are kept on remand or for anti-social behaviour and National Discipline, has risen to such a level that little or no space is left for solitary confinement, the report says.

This means that the suicide rate among children and adolescents in prison has fallen considerably over the last five years, which in turn has exacerbated the overcrowding.

Moral reclamation contractors have attempted to address the problem by confining vulnerable or disturbed young people in cells where the probability of inmate over-assertiveness is likely to result in population reductions, but according to the report these measures have not been as successful as was initially hoped.

The Home Secretary has expressed "concern" at the findings of the report, but said this afternoon that the Government remains "firm, resolute and paternally masculine" in its intention to cleanse Britain of the scourge of juvenile crime and noisiness.