20% people in prison are in Victorian jails
Making proper use of “proper prisons”?
The need for a clear strategy on the role, purpose and future of Victorian prisons is explored in a briefing published today (8 August 2024) by the University of Birmingham and the University of Bath, in partnership with the Howard League for Penal Reform.
The policy briefing, Making proper use of ‘proper prisons’? The Victorian estate and the future of the prison system, calls for the development of a comprehensive strategy for prisons, which articulates a clear and appropriate purpose for the Victorian estate within a modernising and significantly reduced prison system. The briefing is based on findings from the Persistence of the Victorian Prison project, which explores implications of the continued operation of Victorian-era prisons.
Background
Over 20% of people in prison are currently housed in prisons with Victorian-era accommodation. This significant part of the prison estate is a legacy of Victorian policy and ambition, both in terms of construction, and in the creation of a new social institution, the modern prison. Both the physical infrastructure and the ideological foundations of the Victorian prison persist today.
This once ‘visionary’ prison design has been widely regarded as an historical relic, a barrier to progress and innovation. These establishments can be characterised by poor-quality accommodation and a relative shortage of opportunities for purposeful activity.
On the one hand, the Victorian estate can exhibit some of the worst conditions across the prison system, with HMIP frequently reporting dark, damp cells with poor ventilation and drainage.
Nevertheless, the Victorian prison remains a significant component of the urban prison estate, located close to courts and communities.
The research, conducted with those living and working in Victorian prisons, highlights some ways in which these challenging buildings could be reimagined and re-deployed.
The Victorian Estate
The authors point out that despite Victorian era prisons being regularly described as “crumbling”, the fact that they are still in use indicates that they are more robust than many modern prisons. Many prisons built in the 20th century exhibit multiple and expensive issues of degradation and dilapidation. Due to less successful design and the poor quality of original build standards and materials, some have already had to be demolished.
Victorian prisons were built on what were then the outskirts of towns and cities. These purpose-built prisons were often in quite compact spaces, designed to efficiently meet the needs of the prison population and deliver dominant ideas of reform and discipline.
However, as a result of urban expansion, they have usually become enclosed within the city itself, and scope for prison expansion has become more limited. This now restricts opportunities to provide facilities for education and training, or outdoor exercise areas. Few have any substantial green spaces within their walls.
Conversely, their urban location does mean that Victorian prisons are usually well-served by public transport infrastructure. They are also close to incarcerated people’s families, to the community and to courts. Proximity enables family contact, known to support reintegration and reduce recidivism. For many incarcerated people interviewed for this study, this closeness to home and community counterbalanced challenging living conditions.
Looking to the future
Given our current overcrowding crisis, it is clear that people will be in Victorian prisons for many years to come. The report’s authors (Dominique Moran, Jennifer Turner, Yvonne Jewkes and Matt Houlbrook ) recommend the development of a comprehensive strategy for our Victorian prisons which limits the negative impacts of poor-quality accommodation whilst maximising the benefits of an urban location offering some of the opportunities for purposeful activity that cannot be provided within the prisons themselves.
They argue that all (or most) Victorian prisons could be usefully moved to the Category D Open estate which would mean that they would have to spend less time in the poor living conditions but would be better placed to maximise their resettlement chances by working in the community and having more contact with family pre-release.
It would also introduce the possibility of changing the recall process so that proper investigations could take place to decide whether recall is a proportionate response to what can often be a minor contravention (most people are recalled to prison for failing to comply with licence requirements rather than committing a new offence). It is certainly true to say that reducing recall numbers is perhaps the quickest and safest way to reduce the numbers of people in our prisons.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the images in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
