Prisons, whether we like them or not, are an essential public service that have never been a priority when it comes to government spending. But when there is a long-term squeeze on funding from successive governments who have had no idea about the role prison officers and associated staff perform, there are seriously detrimental effects.
That is why it was absolutely essential this week that prison officers made their concerns known in the most public possible way, by taking protest action to highlight their concerns, laying bare the prison service’s darkest secrets for all to see. The court injunction to end the strike is another sad indictment of the conditions prison officers have to operate within. We have no formal way to pursue our grievances, no way of getting our concerns listened to, and a system that is designed to hide the facts and conceal the truth of the consistent failings in prisons.
It has been a failure of many governments not to invest appropriately in prisons. Attracting, recruiting and retaining the very best talent to work with prisoners in order to turn their lives around should be at the forefront of all considerations. The political merry-go-round of successive justice secretaries looking to make a name for themselves has either quickly made them, or in some instances quickly broken them.
So it is unfortunate that the most recent appointee to the role, Liz Truss, has taken over the helm at a critical stage in the ongoing failure of the prison system, with murder, violence, self-harm, suicide, riots and even escapees a regular occurrence. It is no wonder the public have demanded answers about how such failures have been allowed to happen.
Truss’s predecessors failed to bring about positive reform and predominantly preoccupied themselves with reducing the cost of a broken system, rather than taking the time to stop and listen to the core problems from experienced staff. This has left Truss the unenviable task of mending a system that’s in a state of disarray and deterioration. As she quite rightly says, there are no quick fixes.
A justice minister, however, has a sizeable number of interested parties who will seek to influence direction in the prison estate. For various reasons this can be unhelpful if the messages conflict with one another and do not create a clear picture. That is why it is essential that the running of the prison system is left to the experts in the field: the staff.
Many organisations have strong views on the number of prisoners that are locked up, the care they receive, the education and support needed to turn a prisoner’s life around. But the core role of security, discipline, control and order should never be interfered with by an outsider. Those on the outside may not always agree with how these services are delivered, but for prison officers to achieve them they must be supported in their methods and not demonised.
In recent years, savage budget cuts mean that over 30% of frontline staffing has been removed, and the net effect of this is a loss of control. The Prison Officers’ Association is a responsible trade union, and we have patiently tried to work with the government and our employers to bring about change that not only benefits our members but also improves the lives of prisoners and the general public alike, fostering safer, more viable institutions under increasingly impossible constraints.
Whatever your view of prisons and how prisoners should be treated, recent news stories have shown that none of what you expect to be happening inside is currently achievable. The system will need much more than the promised £100m a year to recruit and retain staff while bringing security, discipline, control and order back to prisons.
