We should try rehabilitating 'lifers'

We should try rehabilitating 'lifers'

Given the questionable conditions life-sentence prisoners are kept in, we should be grateful more don't re-offend once released

By Erwin James

Of the thousand or so life-sentence prisoners released over the last six years 65 went on to seriously re-offend, the government revealed this week. Three of those released committed murder, the others were found guilty of all manner of assaults including attempted murder, rape, kidnapping and wounding. The revelations have understandably caused outrage and not surprisingly led to new calls for "life to mean life". Were that to be the case however we would need to rapidly expand the prison-building programme already planned by the government for the next few years. And vastly increase the budget.

Current plans to build three giant so-called Titan prisons designed to hold at least 2,500 prisoners each is already going to set the taxpayer back at least £1.2bn. The first Titan is expected to be open in three years' time, the other two by 2014. The total cost for the provision of up to 20,000 new prison places planned over the next 10 years, including the cost of the Titans, is estimated at £2.7bn. The cost of running the extra places is estimated at an extra £800m per year (on top of the £2bn a year we spend at present). Without doubt keeping all "lifers" in prison until they die would amount to a serious extra increase in spending on prisons. So much so that it is unlikely to be an option the government will be persuaded to choose in the foreseeable future. Especially considering that there is already a huge budget deficit in the cost of running our prisons currently.

During the past year the Treasury demanded cuts in prison spending totalling £60m. To meet the targets prisons all over the country curtailed their regimes so that prisoners are now effectively "banged up" from Friday lunchtime until Monday morning, with cell doors opened only for meals and brief exercise periods. Bearing in mind that the average time that prisoners spent on daily bang-up before the cuts were introduced was already 13-and-a-half hours.

Bang up of 17 hours a day was not unusual in some prisons and many local prisons still operate regimes of 23-hour bang-up. All in all it means that resources and facilities, which enable people in prison to develop skills and abilities that will help them to live productive, constructive crime-free lives after release are severely limited. As are "offending behaviour" programmes.

Overcrowding is such that courses designed to challenge the criminal thoughts and behaviour of prisoners are massively oversubscribed. The reality is that the majority of time in prison is passed meaninglessly, going through the motions, trying to tick as many boxes as possible, just waiting for a parole hearing or a release date.

In that mix we have more than 11,000 prisoners serving indeterminate sentences, around seven out of 10 serving mandatory life for murder – and all subject to the same regime deficiencies as any other prisoner. Logic dictates that the more de-personalised and dysfunctional the system has become through overcrowding and under-resourcing, the less likely it is that those being held in it will respond positively, whatever category of offence committed.

Life-sentence prisoners are subject to closer scrutiny by prison professionals than other prisoners for sure. And closer supervision once they are transferred to less secure prisons in preparation for release once they have served their "tariff" (the term that must be spent in custody to meet the requirements of "retribution and deterrence"). Depending on the nature of the original offence and the risk posed they are also subject to varying levels of supervision once released.

But given that we have more people in our prisons serving life sentences than Germany, France, Italy, Russia and Turkey combined, and that we keep them in highly questionable conditions, often for decades, I think we should be grateful that many more than the 65 referred to by the government have not already committed further serious offences. As the justice minister David Hanson said: "The decision as to whether to release a mandatory life-sentenced prisoner is an extremely difficult one. The risk to the public can be reduced but never eliminated."