Truss: Extra 2,500 officers to be deployed as part of reforms to prison accountability
The Government is embarking on a programme to reverse the cuts in prison officer numbers amid mounting concern over rising reoffending rates.
Nov 3, 2016
By Nick Hudson
The Government is embarking on a programme to reverse the cuts in prison officer numbers amid mounting concern over rising reoffending rates.
Justice Secretary Liz Truss plans to recruit an extra 2,500 prison officers to ease staffing shortages in jails at a cost of £104?million.
Unveiling a White Paper on prison reform, Ms Truss claims the new recruits should help to reduce attacks on staff and prisoners.
Under a series of new measures, prison governors could be sacked and replaced if they fail to meet new standards under the Government`s “legal duty to intervene”.
The backdrop to the announcement saw the Justice Secretary meet for talks with the Prison Officers` Association (POA) after dire warnings that jails are at risk of descending into a bloodbath.
Frontline staff is down by 25 per cent since 2010. Steve Gillan, of the POA, said proper staffing levels were needed if officers not inmates were to be in charge of jails.
Concerns also came from prisoners on the inside, with one inmate at London`s Pentonville telling the BBC that knives are flown in by drones and razors are melted into toothbrushes to make weapons.
The Howard League for Penal Reform, while welcoming the Government reversing previous decisions on cuts to staffing, is sceptical on its “commitment to lower prison numbers and reduce overcrowding”. It fears a mistake to try to “build” a way out of the problem.
The Labour Party denounced the proposals as a “blatant PR stunt” unless comprehensive plans to address staff cuts were made.
Targets are to be set for reducing reoffending. Offenders will be tested for drugs on entry and exit from prison as part of sweeping reforms aimed at halting the rising tide of violence and substance abuse across the estate in England and Wales.
In the last six years since the coalition government came to power and then a Conservative administration continued its reform policies, prison officer numbers have fallen by a quarter from around 25,000 to 18,000 with the extra officers promised today only partially restoring staffing to the levels seen before 2010.
The decline in staffing has come even though the prison population has risen by around 40,000 since 1993 to more than 85,000.
Ms Truss announced: It is absolutely right that prisons punish people who commit serious crimes by depriving them of their most fundamental right liberty. However, our reoffending rates have remained too high for too long.
So prisons need to be more than places of containment they must be places of discipline, hard work and self-improvement.
They must be places where offenders get off drugs and get the education and skills they need to find work and turn their back on crime for good.
Her speech stressed the levels of violence and self-harm in UK prisons are “totally unacceptable”, promising: “I am determined to turn the tide. For without safety there can be no reform.
“If prisons are places of drugs, gangs and violence, this will spill out into society.
“I believe that creating prisons that are centres of reform is the logical choice for anyone determined to build a safer society and deliver more efficient public services.”
Half of offenders in England and Wales go on to commit another crime within a year of release, costing society an estimated £15?billion a year.
In particular, reoffending rates among young criminals are at their highest level for more than ten years.
She added: “As the number of first time offenders re