Presentation to the Positive Action Group, Isle of Man, September 2009 'What is prison for?'

1. WHAT IS PRISON FOR?
• Andrew Neilson,
Assistant Director, Public
Affairs and Policy,
presentation on the Isle of
Man September 2009

2. What is prison for?
• Punishment
• Public protection
• Deterrence
• Rehabilitation

3. What do people have to say
about prison?
• ‘The degree of civilisation in a society can
be judged by entering its prisons’ - Fyodor
Dostoevsky
• ‘The first real principle which should guide
anyone trying to establish a good system
of prisons would be to prevent as many
people as possible getting there at all’ -
Winston Churchill

4. How is prison used?
• The past decade and a half has seen an
unprecedented expansion in the English &
Welsh prison population
• In 1994, the average prison population
was 48,631
• On Friday 18 September 2009 the English
& Welsh prison population reached an all
time high of 84,422

5. Many thousands of new prison
places have been built…

7. What has caused this growth in
prison numbers?
• A 78% increase in the use of immediate
custodial sentences
• A 19% increase in those sent to prison for
breaches of parole licence and community
supervision

8. People are also spending longer
in prison
• The average time served in prison has
increased by 14% since 2000
• The proportion of the sentenced prison
population serving indeterminate or life
sentences increasing from 9% in 1995 to
19% in 2009
• England & Wales has more prisoners
serving these open-ended sentences than
the rest of western Europe combined

9. Legislation has had its part to play…

10. Do crime rates have any
bearing on prison numbers?

11. Not necessarily...

12. Does prison reduce
reoffending?

13. Who do our prisons hold?
• Around 55% of prisoners are considered
‘problematic drug users’
• One in five prisoners report opiate use in
prison, many for the first time
• 27% of prisoners are BME - compared to
one in eleven of the general population
• 48% of prisoners are at, or below, the level
expected of an 11 year old in reading, 65%
in numeracy and 82% in writing

14. Mental health is a major
concern
• Over one third of men serving prison
sentences have a significant mental health
problem
• One in four attempt suicide in prison
• Self injury rates in prison increased by
37% between 2003 and 2007 - four times
the increase in the prison population
• Women committed 54% of this self injury,
despite the fact that only 5% of the prison
population is female

15. Women in prison
• Women in prison are twenty times more
likely to suffer from delusional or
schizophrenic disorders than women in the
general population
• Over half of women in prison have
suffered domestic abuse and one in three
have been victims of sexual abuse
• Nearly a third of women in prison have no
previous convictions, more than double
the proportion of men

16. Children in prison
• Two out of five girls and one out of four
boys in prison report violence at home
• One in three girls and one in 20 boys in
custody have histories of sexual abuse
• 40% of children in prison have been
homeless

17. Prison fails children
• Over a third of children report feeling
unsafe in custody
• 75% of children leaving custody will go on
to reoffend, the highest for any age group

18. What are prison population
rates?
• International prison population rates are
measured per 100,000 of the general
population
• The median prison population rate for
Western Europe in 2008 was 95 prisoners
per 100,000 of the general population

19. England & Wales is an outlier in
Western Europe

20. How does the Isle of Man
compare?
• The English & Welsh prison rate in 2008
was 153 prisoners per 100,000, Scotland
(152), N. Ireland (88)
• The Isle of Man’s prison rate in 2008 was
127 prisoners per 100,000 of the general
population

21. Some other countries...
• France (96)
• Germany (89)
• Republic of Ireland (76)
• Norway (69)
• Finland (64)
• Iceland (44)

22. Population of the prison on
Friday 25 September
• 111 individuals in custody on Friday
• Seven women
• 14 young men aged 21 and under
• Eight prisoners over 50, the oldest of
which is aged 75

23. The Isle of Man has a high number
of prisoners held on remand
• In 2008, prisoners on remand or pre-trial
detention constituted 27.8% of the
population
• In England & Wales the proportion of
remand prisoners was 16.1%
• Last week just over 40% of the prison
population in the new prison were held on
remand

24. Why so many on remand?
• England & Wales has the Bail Act 1976,
which gives a presumption in favour of bail
• The Isle of Man has no such legislation
• England & Wales has Custody Time Limits
to ensure cases are heard expeditiously
and individuals are not remanded to
custody for excessive periods
• The Isle of Man has no Custody Time
Limits

25. Drugs
• Lengthy sentences are in place for drug
importation and supply
• Around 50% of the Isle of Man’s prison
population are inside for drug-related
offences

26. Life sentenced prisoners
• The Isle of Man is a compact jurisdiction
and life sentenced prisoners will go to
England & Wales
• Currently six lifers from the Isle of Man in
England & Wales

27. Voting
• Prisoners on the Isle of Man have the vote
• England & Wales has an absolute
statutory bar on prisoners having the vote
• In 2005 the European Court of Human
Rights ruled that this was unlawful

28. The Isle of Man has mirrored
increases in England & Wales
• When the Chief Inspector of Prisons last
visited in 2006, there were 66 prisoners
(rate of 86.5 per 100,000)
• In 2008, the average prison population
was 97 (rate of 127 per 100,000)
• The average daily total in 2009 has been
105 (rate of 137.5 per 100,000)

29. As with England & Wales, more
prison places have been built
• The Victoria Road prison could hold a
maximum of 92 prisoners, with cell-sharing
• The new facility can hold 138 in single
cells
• Since opening the new prison, the prison
population has now gone over the 100
mark
• It reached an all-time high of 124 on 7th
June 2009

30. Crime comparisons
• In 2007-08 the crime rate in England &
Wales was 92 incidents per 1,000 of the
population
• On the Isle of Man in the same period the
crime rate was 48 per 1,000

31. Violent crime comparisons
• Violent crime in England & Wales in
2007-08: 20 incidents per 1,000
• The Isle of Man saw 13 incidents of violent
crime per 1,000 in 2007-08

32. A note on costs...
• In 2008-9, the Isle of Man prison service
had a budget of £10.2m
• The Isle of Man probation service had a
budget of £1.7m

33. Pennies and pounds
• The Isle of Man spends 16p on probation
for every £1 spent on prison
• In 2008-9 England & Wales spent £2.9bn
on prisons and £876m on probation - or
30p spent on probation for every £1 spent
on prison

34. A further note on costs...
• The Isle of Man’s government spends
around £570m a year
• The new prison cost £41.7m – over 7% of
annual expenditure
• The Isle of Man’s prison service is
budgeted to spend around £10m each
year for the next three years - another
1.75% of annual expenditure

35. By contrast...
• England & Wales spends about 0.4% of its
annual expenditure on prisons.
• In 2008-9, £2.49bn out of a total £586bn
was spent on prisons

36. The big question?
• The Isle of Man experiences just over half
the crime and half the violent crime than
that on the mainland
• So why is the Isle of Man spending
proportionately more than four times as
much than England & Wales on prison?

37. More big questions?
• The average prison population on the Isle
of Man has increased by 43.8% since
2006
• Why has this happened when last year the
Chief Constable reported that recorded
crime had fallen by 35% since 2006?
• Crime fell by 10.5% in 2008 on the
previous year. So why has the prison
population hit further record levels since
the new prison opened in 2009?

38. A word of warning...

39. No jurisdiction has ever built its
way out of overcrowding

40. A vision for change
Less crime, safer communities,
fewer people in prison

41. There is growing concern at ever-
increasing prison populations
• In 2007 the Scottish government set up an
independent Prisons Commission to look
at the purpose and impact of imprisonment
in Scotland
• The Commission’s final report, Scotland’s
Choice, was published in 2008 and made
23 recommendations
• Scotland now taking steps to reduce its
prison population, including a presumption
against sentences of six months or less

42. Meanwhile, in England...

43. Canada: a success story?

44. Spending cuts...
• In 1993 the new Liberal government faced
the need to reduce a $42bn deficit
• As part of a strategy to reduce public
spending by 20%, the government sought
to reduce its spending on prison

45. ...meant prison cuts
• Between 1995 and 2004, the Canadian
prison population was reduced by 11% -
lowering their rate of imprisonment from
131 per 100,000 to 108 per 100,000

46. How did the Canadians do it?
• Inserted a ‘restraint principle’ into their
criminal code
• Introduced conditional sentences served
in the community
• Developed restorative justice programmes
• Speeded up the parole process

47. What happened to the crime
rate in Canada?
• Crimes rates in Canada are at their lowest
for 25 years
• Between 1991 and 1999 there were drops
ranging from 23% in assault and robbery
to 43% for homicide
• The magic formula: less crime, safer
communities, fewer people in prison

48. Potential reform for the Isle of
Man
• Introduce the principle that custody should
be used only as a last resort, when there
are no reasonable alternatives available
• Introduce a presumption in favour of bail
and Custody Time Limits for remand
prisoners
• Replace short prison sentences of six
months or less with community-based
responses and fund the probation service
appropriately

49. Finally...the ‘community-facing’
prison
• Of the 111 prisoners in the Isle of Man
prison on Friday, 15 are not due for
release until 2012 and one not until 2018
(barring parole)
• But these prisoners, like all the others, will
be released and all will return to the
community
• Resettlement is everyone’s responsibility

50. Thank you
www.howardleague.org