Prisons Flashcards
What did legislative and penal policy changes lead to? what strategies did this require?
- more and longer prison sentences
- required adaptive and sovereign state strategies
What is the average prison sentence for indictable offences?
2008 - 31.7 months
2023 - 62.4 months
What did redefining success do?
- rise of ‘expedient managerialism’ to a ‘central emblematic position’ (Bennet 2016)
- commercialisation of justice: privatisation
What is punitive segregation and relocating and redefining responsibilities?
- the new penology (Feeley and Simon 1992)
How much did the prison population rise between 1990 and 2020?
70%
Key event in 1990
- strange ways riot/woolf report
- ‘expensive way of making bad people worse’
Key events from 1995 to 2000
- impact of prison works
- unlawful sacking of DG Lewis
- woodcock and learnt reports
Key event from 2004 to 2008
- Impact of CJA 2003
Key event of 2012
- impact of August 2011 riots
Key event of 2020
- impact of covid 19 on offending and CJS
Key event of 2023
- courts working through covid backlog
What was the 1980s ‘rolling back the state’?
- political desire to curtail power of trade unions and to import private sector practice and values into public sectors
What act privatised prisons?
CJ act 1991 s84 amendment
- 15 to 25 year contracts: ave £4bn
- service level agreements
What did the 2003 Carter report to NOMS 2004-2017 do?
- commissioning and contest ability for correctional services
- no public sector prisons built from 1992 until HMP Berwyn 2017
- lack of private sector interest in bidding for some prisons
Managerialism of prisons
- performance management and target setting, linked to resourcing
- key performance indicators, key performance targets, weighted scoreboard, star ratings, league tables
- HMIP expectations and inspections, MQPL survey for prisoners and staff, independent monitoring boards, national audit office, internal audits
What was the 2013 managerialism quote?
‘new ways of working’
Issue of managerialism?
loss of (experienced) operational staff 2010-2017
Key issues of privatisation
- allocation vs delivery of punishment
- promotion of competition and innovation: cheaper prisons or just cheaper staff?
- lack of transparency and accountability with the public
- prioritise profit motive over rehabilitation
What did key issues of privatisation bring due to the profit motive?
- reduced spending on welfare services such as healthcare
- over-incarceration
- cut costs by providing substandard conditions for inmates and offering lower wages and benefits for staff
What did Shaw 1989:51 state?
‘the opponents of privatisation have to be careful not to be defenders of public squalor’
Redefining success: Prison works?
reevaluation of the goals and outcomes of the prison system with an emphasis on rehabilitation, reducing recidivism, promoting equity
RS: percentage of reoffending if imprisoned for more than 1 year?
percentage of reoffending within 2 months of release?
- 63% if imprisoned for <1yr
- 49% within 2 months
RS: estimate of how many prisoners used drugs?
- 1 in 3 set using ‘bird killer’
- links to drug use and violence between prisoners, organised crime and staff corruption
RS: did offending behaviour programmes in prisons work?
- Key performance indicator for completion rates
- long term effects are unproven e.g. sex offender treatment
