On The Prison Overcrowding Crisis

Prisons Minister Timpson might have the key, but is he really unlocking the door?

If Keir Starmer’s Labour were under any impression that they would at least have the grace of their honeymoon period to give them some breathing space, they will now be sorely disappointed. The eruption of race riots and the arrest of over 1,000 people has massively exacerbated an issue right at the top of Chief of Staff Sue Grey’s ‘shit list’ - the prison overcrowding crisis. As of this morning, the government has activated Operation Early Dawn, a set of emergency measures which will see defendants held in police cells until there are prison places available. One lawyer has already referred to this move as a “sticking plaster”. Given the size of the wound, this might be an understatement.

With Britain’s recent austerian past coming back to bite it, official figures released on 8th July showed that just 708 places - 0.796% of the prison population - remained out of a total prison capacity of 88,864. Prisons have been bursting at the seams under a Conservative regime which has, in the words of Samira Shackle, championed “longer sentences while slashing budgets for prisons, legal aid and courts”. Under the Tories, the number of adults convicted under sentences longer than 10 years has tripled at the same time as legal aid cases dropped from a million in 2009/10 to 130,000 in 2021/22. Since 2010, average sentence lengths have increased from 13.7 months to 20.9 months as of last year. 2.4 billion worth of prison cuts have been implemented and 43% of all courts in England and Wales have closed. The consequences for prisoners have been fatal. As reported by The Guardian last October, suicide rates amongst prisoners have risen to 24%. Two-thirds of prisons are overcrowded with many prisoners sharing cells, some with no toilets, leaving prisoners to defecate in buckets overnight. An Observer investigation found that a third of cells are deemed inadequate, self-harm in women’s prisons has shot up by 51% and deaths and serious assaults on staff and inmates have rapidly increased.

This grim story is underscored by the increased outsourcing of detainment to private firms whose practices have been sharply condemned for their violent consequences. Jimmy Mubenga was murdered by private G4S security guards on a deportation flight, whilst the global corporation Serco was found to have employed staff who sexually and racially abused inmates at Yarl's Wood immigration detention centre. This reality runs parallel to the enforcement of markets within prisons exploiting prison labour for below-minimum wage recompensation. 

The reality that England and Wales can boast the highest per capita prison population in Europe is no surprise when one considers that the number of people on remand has soared by 84% since 2019 and the number of ex-inmates being recalled for breaching the terms of their licence has risen by 72%. The Ministry of Justice’s (MoJ) 2022 report predicted that the prison population would rise by 24% between 2021 and 2026. This, they stated, was “largely a result of the recruitment of an extra 23,400 police officers.”  The increase of Full-Time Equivalent officers by 5.1% between 2022 and 2023, if not the whole reason, confirms the crucial relationship between an enlarged police force and an expanded prison population.

On the state’s own terms, criminalisation orchestrated on an increasingly threadbare state budget is failing. Yet, as Aviah Sarah Day and Shanice Octavia McBean argue, “criminalisation, race and policing are key tools that the state mobilises during times of instability and upheaval.” In the past 14 years of Conservatism, the algorithmically authoritarian Gangs Matrix disproportionately targeted the Black youth population despite Black people constituting a minority of youth violence. The Prevent agenda continued its criminalisation of the Muslim community, whilst later Tory administrations prided themselves on authoritarian legislation such as the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Act, a magnification of police powers against protest, youth and racialised minority communities.

Keir Starmer’s forebear Tony Blair was no better. Under New Labour, the rollout of ASBOs (Anti Social Behaviour Orders), the ramping up of stop-and-search powers, and a raft of repressive counter-terrorism measures all heralded a period which saw 3,600 new criminal offences created and a 66% rise in the prison population between 1997 and 2010. 

Against this backdrop, the current Prime Minister’s appointment of James Timpson as Minister of State for Prisons, Parole and Probation has raised hopes that a shift in governmental priorities is underway. Timpson, a businessman and social reformer known for hiring ex-offenders, has previously stated that “we are addicted to punishment. So many of the people who are in prison, in my view, shouldn’t be there.” Timpson believes that two-thirds of prisoners should not be incarcerated, with their lives and ours better served by state support and an escape from the violent offending cycle currently in motion. 

Appointing Timpson as prison minister may be a deft move by Starmer. Timpson speaks of prisoners in an alluringly humane and reforming fashion but there is a significant gap between the businessman’s vision and his government’s practice. The Financial Times’ Stephen Bush has claimed that this appointment could mark a “sea change in penal policy”, a possibility facilitated by a united reforming brief coalesced around former Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Starmer, Timpson and Secretary of State for Justice Shabana Mahmood. 

Yet as it stands, the pronounced solutions seem to be more of the same. In order to avert a total overspill, the Labour government has committed to shortening the automatic release point for some prisoners from 50% to 40%. This applies to inmates who have been sentenced to less than 4 years, are eligible to be released and who would have been let out after 2 years, but are instead now being released after 20 months. It doesn’t apply to those convicted of serious violence offences, sex offences or domestic violence-related crimes. When considering the Conservatives ordered the early release of 10,000 prisoners between October 2023 and June 2024 under the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme, Starmer’s directives appear contiguous with late-Tory prison policy.

In this sense, although Labour’s move will free space and take inmates out of prison early, it’s not clear that it represents anything more than a reprieve from the overcrowding crisis. It may be the case that the appointment of Timpson signals more than simply vibes, opening up cleavages within the state for abolitionists and socialists to exploit. But context is everything. Labour’s 2024 Change manifesto commits the government to a Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee that increases the visibility of police in our communities; Respect Orders which ban “persistent adult offenders” from town centres; the building of more prisons; and a drive to break down the barriers to conviction rates. In the finest traditions of British Labourism, it is an authoritarian manifesto sanctioned by an authoritarian Prime Minister. Starmer’s reputation as DPP involved him punishing benefit claimants, rioters and students to the full extent of the law. Since his reign as Labour leader, the lawyer-by-trade has commanded the Parliamentary Labour Party to abstain on the third reading of the Spycops Bill, a piece of legislation which absolved undercover state agents of crimes of violence, sexual assault and intrusion exercised against the domestic population.

With this in mind, we should view the appointment of Timpson and the early release of prisoners in a slightly different light. Hemmed into tight spending by their fiscal commitments and in need of quick solutions in lieu of immediate prison construction, this is Labour “deliverism” in practice. Yet, even considering Shabana Mahmood’s promise to recruit 1,000 extra trainee probation officers by March 2025, upon release ex-offenders will confront nothing short of a social hell.

Probation services, despite the reversal of Chris Grayling’s partial privatisation, are in a parlous state. Short staffing, unmanageable caseloads, high rates of sickness and poor staff retention all characterise this broken system. The welfare state has been reduced to a shell of its former self. Instead of offering citizens a generous lifeline and a chance to live comfortably, it has become a disciplinarian hotbed of means-testing and inadequate financial support, forcing people who cannot or do not want to work into employment, whilst compelling others into jobs they do not want. According to the British Medical Association, mental health services are severely underfunded, facing waiting lists estimated at 1.3 million people, with demand far outstripping supply. Austerity has wrecked the country and those released from prison will instantly face its sharp end, exacerbated as it is by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. The relief of leaving prison early would be met with despair at the life one would face upon release.

Were James Timpson’s model to be adopted by the government, in a context where there has been no commitment to expanding the welfare state, sections of society’s most vulnerable people will be thrown onto the labour market on low wages in insecure jobs, heavily policed into pliancy by their employer and an ailing probation service. This practice, where firms such as Timpson Shoe Repairs, Greggs, Co-op and Pret A Manger employ vulnerable ex-offenders on low wages is not a phenomenon any advocate of socialism or abolition should desire. The irony, contrary to Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s compelling claim that we live in Victorian-esque times, is that if Timpson’s philanthropic vision was enabled under this Starmer government, it would be totally in line with Victorian values.

This is not to say extremely violent and oppressive prisons are the answer either. That we live in a society which warehouses away the harm it reproduces is not just a state of affairs we should decry, it is a reality we should bring to an end. Even the former Parole Board head Nick Hardwick has derided the £4 billion idea that Labour will continue with Tory plans to expand the prison system by 14,000 places and 6 new prisons. Likening prison policy in England and Wales to an overflowing bath with no respite from the water pouring in, Hardwick proposed that it may be “better to reinvest that money in trying to stop people going into prison in the first place – working in schools, in health, in mental health?” 

There is a tension between a growing professional and institutional common sense which knows that the system doesn't work, and a political class’ instinct to retread authoritarian solutions in the face of the worsening social crisis. The tendency towards a shifting “moral economy” amongst large layers of the popular classes confirms the carceral bias of the Starmers of the world. This growing institutional sense that the current prison system does not work finds some reflection in the MoJ’s admission that they will drive through a new focus on “reoffending, linking up prison governors with local employers to break the cycle of crime.” The inclination to repress the problem, throwing far-right rioters as young as fourteen years old into the prison system, may be too tempting for our rulers though.

As counter-intuitive as it may seem after the events of the past few weeks, the marriage of abolitionism and socialism, and their spread throughout every corner of British society is necessary. We need a rupture with the police, the prison system and the disproportionately racialised, gendered and classed forms of carceral domination which permeate everyday life. But central to that rupture should be a focus on the reparative, democratic and egalitarian solutions which empower human beings and diminish the dominance of both the state and capital. These solutions - be they prison and police abolition, democratic welfarism, fully-funded mental health services, legal reform, drug decriminalisation or a high-wage economy - should have the agency of those whose lives and labour would benefit from them at their heart. The notion that we can solve our problems by binding vulnerable people released from jail into low-paid work is just as absurd and destructive as the idea that we can warehouse them away in a prison.