The EconomistAugust 3rd 2019 Britain 21R
ory stewartdoesn’t like fudge. With a
degree of precision unusual in a politi-
cian, he promised last August to quit as pri-
sons minister if conditions did not im-
prove within a year. Handily, he supplied a
list of ten jails by which to judge his perfor-
mance. Then events intervened. He was
promoted to a cabinet brief in another de-
partment, before running a spirited but
unsuccessful campaign for the Tory leader-
ship. Boris Johnson put prisons in the
hands of the third minister in three
months in his recent reshuffle. In the
words of one union wag, Mr Stewart had
been handed a “get-out-of-jail-free card”.
It was a lucky escape. The latest prisons
data, published on July 25th, are grim.
Overcrowding is at its lowest for a decade,
thanks to a drop in prisoner numbers, but
this has not spread calm. Incidents of self-
harm are up about a quarter on last year, as
are instances of inmates making barri-
cades. Assaults on staff jumped by 15%. In
the ten prisons targeted by Mr Stewart, the
picture is mixed: drug use is down in half of
them, but the overall number of assaults
has risen.
The scorecard will give the Ministry of
Justice a political headache, but it is inter-
esting for another reason. The 13 privately-
run prisons in England and Wales appear to
be outperforming their state-run counter-
parts. Of the nearly two-fifths of jails that
are assessed as “of concern” or “serious
concern”, the lowest of four ratings, none is
privately run.
The comparison should be treated with
caution. In previous years, the two catego-
ries of prison have performed about as well
(or badly) as each other. And criminolo-
gists rightly point out that it ought to be
easier to run a newly built private prison
than a crumbling Victorian-era jail, all of
which are run by the state. In old jails, “the
culture is embedded in the brickwork,” ad-
mits a private prison manager. “It doesn’t
matter what you do.” On the one occasion a
firm was trusted to take over such a prison,
it failed: g4shanded hmpBirmingham,
which opened in 1849, back to the state
after a damning inspection report last year.
Even so, state-employed governors could
draw two lessons from the improving per-
formance of private prisons.
The first is the importance of retaining
prison bosses. Take hmpAltcourse in Liv-
erpool, another g4sjail. It was the first Eng-
lish prison to be built under the private fi-nance initiative, under which private firms
stumped up for public buildings and then
leased them back to the government. It
opened its doors six months early, in 1997.
It is the same type of prison as some of the
worst-performing ones, but it is highly rat-
ed. Inspectors praised the jail for “bucking
the trend” of rising violence; incidents of
self-harm halved in the last year, staff say.
Managers at Altcourse attribute much
of the prison’s success to stability. Five of
the eight senior managers joined the pri-
son on its first day and have worked their
way up from the lowest rank. And about a
quarter of the original intake of warders are
still at work. In the public sector, churn is
high. About half of the warders in state-run
jails have three years’ experience or less.
The continuity appears to have kept staff
morale at Altcourse relatively high. Sick
days are well below the public-sector aver-
age. Andrew Neilson of the Howard League
for Penal Reform, a charity, says private pri-
sons do a better job at retaining senior staff.
“Whenever someone is good [in the public
sector], they get moved to another prison
to deal with problems there.”
The second lesson is the power of de-
centralisation. Private prisons find it easier
to innovate than public ones, which are of-
ten constrained by the need for clearance
from Whitehall, says Rupert Soames, bossof Serco, which runs five jails in England.
Altcourse was one of the first prisons to
buy a full-body scanner to detect hidden
drugs and knives. Serco installed comput-
ers in cells long before the prison service.
Prisoners use them to arrange family visits,
freeing warders from menial tasks to spend
more time with prisoners. They also help
occupy inmates. “You keep prisoners busy
or they will keep you busy,” says Mr
Soames.
At Altcourse managers try all kinds of
wheezes. Depressed or anxious lags can
spend time handling birds of prey to gain
confidence. Prisoners spend more time out
of their cells than at many comparable jails.
Some keep bees and make their own honey
(“so good, it’s criminal,” the labels boast).
Others work 40-hour weeks in a welding
workshop, making skips and table legs.
“You forget you’re in jail sometimes, when
you’re a bit busy,” says one con, measuring
up the latest creations. If only more in-
mates could say the same. 7HMP ALTCOURSE
What public jails could learn from private onesPrisonsPorridge plc
Rough justiceSource: Ministry of JusticeEngland and Wales, incidents per 1,000 prisoners01002003004005006007002009 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18Self-harmAssaultsA better way of doing bird