Former prison governor Ian Acheson had a front-row seat to the collapse of His Majesty’s Prison Service and his new book, Screwed, is the inside story. Catch how he would fix it in this Q&A.
What interested you in the criminal justice system originally?
Quite a few of my extended family were in uniformed law enforcement, so I grew up with that sense of camaraderie under pressure on the border in Northern Ireland so that must have had something to do with it. But I’m going to disappoint those who think that I joined the prison service out of an acute sense of social justice; I had some quite spectacular career misfires and I needed the money. But one thing that did strike me about the Accelerated Promotion Scheme for graduates and that finally hooked me into my first proper career was: an unusual sentence in the recruitment blurb that said this was a career where you could ‘find out about yourself’. A prophetic invitation!
What was the most shocking thing you encountered as Governor?
Waste. The waste of time, opportunities and lives in places that ought to be where human potential is rescued. Nobody ever forgets the first dead body they see in a prison: the trauma of staff who were too late to save that person; the sense of failure that you could have and should have seen this coming; the quiet that settles on a wing as the news spreads from door to door; the pitiful sight of a young man or woman devoid of life and dignity lying in a dingy cell, surrounded by their meagre possessions and far from those they loved or who loved them. That never leaves you and it never should.
Who or what has been the catalyst for the declining standards of British prisons?
The default answer to this is always about resource cuts. This is a suitable but insufficient charge sheet. The austerity cuts and the efficiency savings that drove them from 2011 onwards were made in Westminster but implemented by Whitehall. The effect over the next six years was to cull frontline prison staff by 26 per cent against a rising prison population, an act so catastrophically stupid and dangerous it should haunt those complicit in carrying it out for ever. The reaction in 2017 was emergency recruitment, when the government recognised (without ever admitting) this colossal folly. This has thrown hundreds of hastily and poorly trained youngsters into places they leave almost as fast as they are being recruited. It means that regimes cannot run and education, training and offending behaviour programmes are the exception rather than the rule. It means prisons in the control of gangs or disfigured by antisocial behaviour that isn’t dealt with because officers are too scared or too few to impose control. It means an epidemic of easily available drugs that destroy rehabilitation. Poor leadership and overcrowding aggravate the situation massively.
You suggest that the crisis within the prison system is not unfixable. How so?
Crisis means opportunity. If we have a change of government, those in shadow Cabinet positions must begin addressing the multiple failures they have inherited in a law enforcement agency that is barely worth the name, now. A few fixes…
- A fundamental review of the prison service senior management. Leadership is a massive problem from top to bottom, but reform starts in the C-suite. There are far too many bureaucrats doing far too little. Either put them in uniform on the front line or let them go. Create a slimmed down executive with Governors at the top of the organisation, not buried under layers of useless red tape.
- Jettison all the useless pilots, processes and KPIs distracting officials and driving Governors to distraction and replace them with one interim objective: to restore safety, order and control in prisons.
- Equip frontline staff properly to do their jobs, with fit-for-purpose uniforms they are proud to wear as crown servants. At the moment, I’ve seen better-dressed staff at discount airlines. It is disgraceful that tools to protect staff from endemic violence are deliberately held up or tied to absurd conditions by officials without the remotest idea what it’s like to deal with the brutality of frontline prison life. Reintroducing uniforms for operational people sitting above the Governor would also have the effect of immediately improving its quality!
- Enact legislation that diverts all non-violent offenders who offend to feed drug habits into secure NHS treatment centres. These people need a medical response, not a criminal-justice one that only makes them worse.
- Replace the Prisons Inspectorate (who do a superb job but have few teeth) with an independent prisons regulator that has statutory powers to enforce minimum standards and hold individuals to account. Have a national prison governors’ council set those standards and be the senior accountable operational delivery group.
- Use the space created to close down our Victorian dungeons and move prisoners to modern facilities that are fit for purpose in the twenty-first century.
- Make work the centrepiece of all prisons. About the only thing we know for certain in terms of reoffending is that stable employment in the legitimate economy stops it. Introduce ‘enterprise jails’, where entrepreneurialism is repurposed and prisoners are paid the minimum wage, plus productivity bonuses, and compulsory deductions are made for release savings, victim reparation and bed and board.
- Reintroduce remission for good behaviour and successful participation in offending behaviour programmes. This is the most powerful motivator available to ensure compliance and foster rehabilitation.
- Make sure that a proven, serious assault on a prison officer results in automatic consecutive custody of two years as a starting point. Broken staff can’t fix broken people. The assault rate is completely shameful and utterly unacceptable.
The list goes on and it’s all in the book!
Should Britain look at another nation’s prison model for inspiration, and if so, which and why?
No. The inspiration must be homegrown to take root. We can see what’s happening in other countries, but ultimately any ideas have to be made to work in a British context. Cherry picking from other jurisdictions is superficially attractive, but you have to be careful you’re not trying to make one system with cultural differences fit another.
The most obvious example is the Norwegian system, based on Halden Prison. While it is true that Norway is one of the safest countries on Earth and has the lowest recidivism rate in Europe, it also has exceptionally tough gun-control laws, very low poverty and very generous social-welfare provision, so we need to be careful about places we think are doing better at imprisoning than we are. I’d like to see the UK become a place where humane, safe and purposeful custody is exported, rather than a source of envy and despair.
You can buy your copy of Screwed: Britain’s Prison Crisis and How To Escape It by Ian Acheson here.
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