1990 Prison Reform Trust report: ‘Regimes for Remand Prisoners'
The Prison Reform Trust report, ‘Regimes for Remand Prisoners’, published more than a decade ago is just as relevant today as it was in 1990.

It found that:

• Prisoners on remand suffer the worst conditions in the prison system
• Overcrowding tends to be highest in the part of the prison system which holds remand prisoners
• Remand prisoners spend a good deal of time locked up. The have limited opportunities for using their time in prison positively.
• The rate of suicides among remand prisoners is very high

The report’s authors, Dr Silvia Casale and Joyce Plotnikoff, noted: “The squalid conditions under which remand prisoners are held and the difficult struggle on the part of staff to provide a humane regime despite a poor environment.”

The report made a number of key recommendations that have not yet been implemented:

• Provide the option of unshared accommodation with cell sharing only by consent
• Provide adequate shower facilities (1 shower per 7.5 prisoners)
• Provide separate accommodation and separate use of facilities for all remand prisoners
• A minimum standard of 12 hours unlocked timed daily out of 24 hours for every remand prisoner
• Provide options of structured activities for a minimum of 7 hours per weekday and 3 hours per weekend day
• Provide academic opportunities and the opportunities to develop skills in accordance with the educational needs and inclinations of remand prisoners
• Provide daily access to legal materials.   top

The Lord Chief Justice's, Lord Woolf’s, calls for reform
On 31 January 1991 Lord Woolf presented to the Home Secretary his report into the riot at Strangeways Prison. The recommendations he made set out a blueprint for prison reform. At this point the prison population stood at 43,000. By 31 January 2001, ten years later, the number of people imprisoned in England and Wales had increased to 63,403. The Prison Trust invited Lord Woolf to give its annual lecture. In his lecture Lord Woolf gave his assessment of what has been achieved over a decade of change. He highlighted the failure to improve conditions for remand prisoners:

“I recommended a separate statement of purpose, separate conditions and generally a lower security categorisation for remand prisoners. This has not happened. The treatment of remand prisoners all too often means that they are at the bottom of the pack when they should be, as unconvicted prisoners, at the top of the pack. Because they are there for a short stay they tend to qualify for the poorest accommodation. I cannot do better than cite Mr Narey (the then director general of the Prison Service, currently the Commissioner for Correctional Services) by the way of illustration of the sorry position;

"although the population of remand has fallen very recently and there is some hope that this will be maintained, and although we now have performance standards for remand prisoners, conditions for most remand prisoners remain primitive."

Mr Narey also accepts that the education, drug and offending behaviour programmes have only been of marginal benefit to those on remand. Mr Narey provides no explanation for this state of affairs. This is a problem which is calling out to be tackled. I am afraid I have seen nothing to suggest that any real action has yet been planned.”   top

Unjust Deserts
In December 2000 the then Chief Inspector of Prisons, David Ramsbotham, published a report on the treatment and conditions for remand prisoners. He stated:

“I have highlighted repeatedly the gap between the treatment and conditions for sentenced and unsentenced prisoners, the balance of advantage lying invariably with the sentenced. Logically those still presumed innocent should expect to be treated better than those proved guilty, and those awaiting sentence to be treated better than those serving a custodial sentence as punishment. But for years, despite all the evidence and all the criticism, outcomes have continued to defy this logic.

This review is therefore not the first time that attention has been drawn to the unsatisfactory treatment of unsentenced prisoners, and in this respect I am in the company of politicians, judges and many others concerned with penal affairs.

Unfortunately none of these previous criticisms have impelled Ministers to drive through the sustained programme of improvement that is, I believe, urgently required if this unjust and unjustified situation is to be corrected.”

The then Chief Inspector made a number of recommendations, (to see these in full go to Action for Change section) but he highlighted what he called two over-riding strategic recommendations.

“Firstly, in view of the physical inadequacy of the facilities and buildings within which many unsentenced prisoners are held I recommend that the cost of the work required to
ensure that all local prisons and remand centres have the necessary facilities to hold prisoners in decent conditions should be published and that the finance to carry it out should be provided within a five year programme.

In view of the enormity of the challenge which faces the Prison Service in bringing about cultural change in many of the establishments holding unsentenced prisoners, I recommend that a strategy is introduced by the Prisons Board, with the full support of Ministers, for a two year programme of change to identify and deliver agreed prisoner focused outcomes as detailed in this review, for all unsentenced prisoners in local prisons and remand centres. This strategy should contain a clear sense of direction for local prisons and remand centres, detail the elements of work which they should undertake and include costed service delivery agreements. The strategy should include the introduction of a mandatory and comprehensive initial and ongoing training programme for new staff and an immediate programme to re-educate current staff. There should also be a remedial element to the strategy to identify those prisons needing to achieve fundamental change in the way that unsentenced prisoners are treated. This information can be readily gathered from inspection reports over recent years. Such identified prisons should be set
clear targets, based on the delivery of agreed outcomes for unsentenced prisoners. They should also be given suitable senior managers to carry out this work, which might include nominated ‘change managers’ with a clear briefing and training for what is to be achieved and time in post to carry through the required changes. Such senior
management teams should also be given both practical and personal support from
senior functional managers in Prison Service Headquarters, and opportunities
for the regular exchange of experiences through meetings with colleagues in other
similar establishments.”  top

The full report can be found here

The result of the Unjust Deserts report – No change for remand prisoners awaiting trial
Eighteen months after the publication of Unjust Deserts Monica Lloyd from HM Prisons Inspectorate, criticised the lack of progress in an article for the Prison Reform Trust magazine Prison Report.

In December 2000 the Prison Inspectorate published a report on the treatment and conditions of unsentenced prisoners. It was informed by surveys of over 700 unsentenced prisoners and the Governors or Directors of the 53 prisons holding those prisoners, and by field visits to 11 establishments. As such it was probably the biggest ever single study into this invisible part of the prison population.

The report was entitled ‘Unjust Deserts’ because it demonstrated that those who were unsentenced and who might legitimately expect better treatment than sentenced prisoners, on balance experienced a worse regime. Moreover, the treatment they received and the regime which they experienced was significantly at variance with what the Governors of those prisons holding them believed was in place.

The better performing prisons were more often those with more modern buildings, those which were privately managed, and those in the female estate. The poorest performers were the adult male inner city Victorian local prisons and the very large modern remand centres for young people. Unsentenced prisoners experienced very restricted regimes and were often unable to reach enhanced regime status as they were considered ineligible for work or not in prison long enough to demonstrate a sustained pattern of ‘good’ behaviour.

So, has the treatment of unsentenced prisoners become more ‘just’ and are they any more visible now, 18 months on from the publication of this report? The Prison Service did not dispute the findings of the review or the under-performance of the inner-city locals. It was pointed out by Director General, Martin Narey, that the Prisons Board was exploring the possibility of selling off these prisons and building new ones with the proceeds. Such a proposal, whilst probably very effective as a ‘final solution’ would deliver no immediate benefit. Our recommendations for improved facilities and a two year programme of change to train staff and introduce a full regime for unsentenced prisoners have therefore been effectively shelved.

Our inspections indicate that the quality of clinical detoxification provided to new prisoners – both sentenced and unsentenced - coming in off the streets remains far short of the Prison Service’s own clinical guidelines for prescribing. New prisoners continue to suffer needless physical pain and discomfort, along with the emotional disturbance unmasked by the withdrawal of drugs. This combination of factors renders them particularly vulnerable to depression, suicide and self-harm. Formal evaluation of the CARATS provision is still awaited.

The numbers of newly received prisoners with mental illness continue to rise. Diversion schemes, only partially in place at the time of the review, appear to be working less well now than they did before. There is no incentive for the NHS to divert people into their own facilities when prisons can bear the cost of their care and provide a place of safety where, it is wrongly presumed, they are able to receive the medical care they need. Our inspections continue to indicate that the secondary care of those with mental health needs falls far short of NHS standards. Prisons are simply not resourced to provide this level of care. The 1996 figure of nine per cent of remand prisoners in England and Wales requiring immediate transfer to the NHS [1], suggests that about 5,500 prisoners a year are not appropriately located, at a substantial cost to the Prison Service and an equally substantial saving to the NHS.

The lack of attention to the resettlement needs of unsentenced prisoners remains an issue, and no progress will be made in this area until the Prison Service accepts its resettlement responsibilities and puts in place a target to measure its performance. Despite some examples of creative initiatives, such as the ‘Jade’ project in Bristol, it remains the case that local prisons pay attention to those activities which incur penalties if they are ignored, and these remain the production of prisoners for the courts and the avoidance of escapes. At the moment, local prisons earn no ‘points’ for caring about what happens to their prisoners after release.

The Government Comprehensive Spending Review in 1998 allocated £0.75m to the Prison Service to establish bail information schemes in the 28 establishments which did not have them, on the basis that this would reduce the prison population by 4.5%. Our review identified that trained officers were often re-allocated to other tasks and that less than half of prisoners wanting help with bail were able to get it. We have no reason to believe that bail information schemes are operating any more reliably now, and many defendants awaiting trial remain unnecessarily in prison.

This diversion of staff is a symptom of the scarcity of resources for the multiplicity of tasks which local prisons are expected to perform. The actual resources necessary to deliver local prisons’ business plans have never been measured and they continue to operate with budgets that are determined by a variety of serendipitous and historical factors. We find in inspections that those prisons which have costed service delivery agreements or private contracts perform consistently better than those which do not.

So the problems of unsentenced prisoners are intimately linked with the problems of the local prisons in which they are housed, and are shared with the sentenced prisoners with whom they are co-located. It is hard therefore to argue for improvements for one group in isolation from another. The Director General is aware of this, and for the time being the problem remains just too difficult to solve and unsentenced prisoners continue to receive their unjust deserts.    top

[1] Brooke, D., Taylor, C., Gunn, J. and Maden, A. (1996) ‘Point prevalence of mental disorder in unconvicted male prisoners in England & Wales’. British Medical Journal. 313: 1524-7.