The levels of suicide and self-harm in prisons are a “scandal” and have not abated despite years of warnings to ministers, according to a new assessment by the jails watchdog who has suggested an independent public inquiry into the issue.
Peter Clarke, chief inspector of prisons, made the comments as he published his annual report into the state of jails in England and Wales. His research found that there had been 83 self-inflicted deaths in male prisons in 2018-19, a rise of 15 per cent on the previous year. Reports of self-harm rose by a quarter from 36,347 to 45,310. Levels of self-harm had increased in two-thirds of the adult male prisons inspected to a state that was “disturbingly high”, he said.
“Is it time, after years and years and years of the same faults, same mistakes, same admissions leading to self-inflicted deaths, is it time for there to be an independent external inquiry into this whole subject?” he said at the launch event. “It is no exaggeration to say it is a scandal. People in the care of the state are dying unnecessarily in preventable circumstances.”
The report comes amid a crisis in prisons caused by a legacy of staff cuts, a rise in the use of new psychoactive substances and overcrowding. The prisons watchdog has invoked a new “urgent notification” protocol, which requires an emergency response from the Ministry of Justice, three times in 2018-19, after worrying inspections at Exeter, Birmingham and Bedford jails.
The chief inspector was particularly critical of what he called the “corporate culture of defensiveness” about tackling drugs, which he said had increased violence and mental health problems among the inmate population.
He said “several” senior figures had told him when he took up the post three and a half years ago that the impact of such drugs had been overstated, which he said had been a “misjudgment”.
“These [substances] have been a game-changer . . . they have destabilised a number of prisons . . . and the consequences of the violence, bullying and debt they have created has been profound.”
One problem highlighted in the report was the lack of investment in technology such as body scanners and tracing mechanisms to detect drugs being brought into prisons. The document said the implementation of such innovations was “patchy” despite good evidence of their effectiveness.
Frances Crook, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, a charity, said the report made for “depressing reading”.
“The findings of suicide, self-injury, violence, drugs and squalor are all too familiar to people living and working in a prison system that has been asked to do too much, with too little, for too long,” she said. “Prisons are rivers of crime, and there are dozens and dozens of them, still feeling the impact of disastrous policy decisions made years previously.”
Robert Buckland, justice minister, admitted there were “clear challenges” in some parts of the prison estate such as local jails.
“We’ve spent an extra £70m on improving safety and decency, tightened security with scanners and sniffer dogs to keep drugs out and have recruited more than 4,700 more prison officers in the last two years,” he said. “We’re also improving the education and employment opportunities in prison so that offenders leave with skills that help them get a job on release, rather than return to a life of crime.”
The inspectorate only visited three women’s prisons during 2018-19, compared with 35 men’s jails. While levels of self-harm tend to be high in women’s institutions, rates of violence were lower and relationships between inmates and staff much more positive than in men’s prisons.
