Purposeful prisons
The Prison Inspectorate’s annual report, published earlier this month, highlighted ongoing failings in purposeful activity with 30 out of 32 closed prisons inspected in 2023-24 being poor or not sufficiently good. On Friday (27 September 2024), the inspectorate followed up with a key findings paper which looks in more detail at how much time prisoners spend out of their cells, and its impact, across the closed prison estate.
During 2023-24, inspectors found more than two thirds of prisoners were spending most of their days in their cells with little to occupy them. The situation was particularly acute in men’s reception prisons, where half of prisoners reported receiving less than two hours out of their cell on a typical weekday – and just under three-quarters (72%) at the weekend.
This is not a new finding and has essentially been the case across most of the prison estate since the pandemic restrictions started in March 2020. In this latest review, prisoners continue to describe the harmful effects of long days spent locked in their cells on their well-being. There was a striking correlation between prisoners’ own perception of the likelihood of them reoffending and the amount of time they reported getting to spend unlocked and engaged in constructive activity, suggesting that purposeless prisons are not only harmful for prisoners, but could also extend to wider society.
Key findings
Twenty four percent of prisoners reported spending less than two hours unlocked on a typical weekday and an additional 44% had less than six hours out of their cell, falling far short of a working day in the community. In total, therefore, more than two-thirds of prisoners were spending most of their days in their cells with little to occupy them. Just 7% reported being unlocked for more than 10 hours a day, which is the inspectors’ expectation.
Restrictions on unlock were even worse at weekends, with 37% of men and women out of their cells for less than two hours. This appears, however, to be an improvement from 2022–23 when we found 60% of men and 66% of women unlocked on Saturdays and Sundays for a similarly short length of time.
Poor time out of cell is particularly acute in men’s reception prisons, where 50% of prisoners reported spending more than 22 hours in their cells on a typical weekday – rising to 72% at weekends. Just 3% reported spending more than 10 hours unlocked on a typical weekday. Reception prisons, serving the courts, have borne much of the brunt of the population crisis with often high numbers of prisoners on remand and a high throughput. Many are often inner-city, Victorian jails with particularly cramped, aged facilities compounding the challenges that they face. Many prisoners still spend months – and sometimes years – locked up for far too long each day in these establishments.
Impact on health
When prisoners get minimal time out of their cells, they inevitably have less access to activities which are important in supporting their physical and mental well-being. Unsurprisingly, people unlocked for less than two hours a day reported fewer opportunities to go to the gym, exercise in the fresh air and visit the prison library when compared with those who were out of their cell for longer. Only a third (33%) reported that they were able to lead a healthy lifestyle in prison most or all of the time compared with 53% for prisoners who were unlocked for longer.
Impact on relationships with staff
Time out of cell also impacted on prisoners’ perception of staff; prisoners with less than two hours out of their cell each day were less likely than their peers to report feeling respected by staff (56% compared with 77%).
Those who spent more time locked up were also less likely to be encouraged by staff to attend education, training or work (35% compared with 59%). Those who said they did receive this encouragement from staff were also more likely to report that they were less likely to offend in the future as a result of their experience in prison.
In inspections at prisons with minimal time out of cell, inspectors found there was simply not enough time for staff to build meaningful, supportive relationships with the prisoners on their wings, a concern given the important role staff ought to play in helping prisoners to make positive changes in their lives.
Inconsistency
A common cause of frustration for prisoners was the lack of consistency with the daily regime. Prisoners spoke about the anxiety they experienced as a result of unpredictable unlock and lock-up times, which could further curtail time out of cell for work, education or daily domestic tasks.
Conclusion
While this is not a new finding, it is a clear indictment of the state of our prison service that most prisoners are experiencing a regime that has more in common with living through a pandemic than in normal times. The findings are based on nearly five thousand (4,882) prisoner surveys and show that the main function of our prisons in 2024 is essentially to warehouse people and not to provide any form of help (education, training, work, offending behaviour programmes) to give a better chance of people moving away from a life of crime on release.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here.
