Prisonomics

by Pryce, Vicky

  Praise for Prisonomics

  ‘Vicky Pryce is one of the leading figures on public policy in the UK: analytical, thoughtful, experienced and well-respected. It is very welcome that she is writing on prisons, a key issue for public policy, an issue for which analysis and evidence must replace slogans and doctrine. This is a very important contribution.’

  Lord Stern, Professor of Economics, LSE, and President of the British Academy

  ‘In my report, published in 2007, I was clear that prison was being used disproportionately for women who all too often were victims rather than offenders. With this powerful critique, Vicky Pryce reinforces these arguments and augments them with her considerable economic skills, to show that there should be far fewer people in our prisons.’

  Baroness Corston

  ‘Engagingly human, remorselessly practical. A book that needs to be read by politicians, taxpayers and anyone who wants to know the truth about prison for a woman.’

  Erwin James

  ‘This is an important book and one which joins a growing genre of books inspired by personal experience of the criminal justice system. Vicky Pryce’s telling account of women and criminal justice should provoke important and timely debate.’

  Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe, University of Cambridge and President of the British Society of Criminology

  ‘Vicky Pryce is the best witness to what needs to be done to sort out our ineffective prisons for women. As one of Britain’s top economists she explains how education and employability need to be top priorities for prison policymakers. Timpson has always tried to offer a chance to offenders. With Vicky Pryce they have a new champion.’

  James Timpson, founder of Timpson Ltd

  ‘We [at Prisoners Education Trust] sincerely support Vicky Pryce in her quest to shed new light on the prison system by telling her own story, relaying her first-hand account of how education in prison is delivered and by describing the difference it can make for the women she met if learning is properly channelled to meet their specific needs. We know education initiatives work because they are a route for prisoners to avoid reoffending and to contribute positively to society – for example, through employment and through building strong and supportive family ties. This is sound economic thinking.’

  Rod Clark and Nina Champion, Prisoners Education Trust

  ‘Vicky Pryce is right when she says that Holloway is full of vulnerable women, many of whom shouldn’t be there. What Holloway did in my time is respond to women’s special needs in a way that would help rehabilitation.’

  Tony Hassall, ex-governor of Holloway Prison

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Part One

  1. Into Prison

  2. Holloway

  3. East Sutton Park

  4. Halfway There

  5. Preparing for the Exit

  6. Back Home

  Part Two

  7. The Economic Cost of Keeping People in Prison

  8. Why Prison is Not a Deterrent for Crime

  9. Why Education and Employment Matter

  10. Alternatives to Prison for Women

  Thanks and Acknowledgements

  Notes

  Index

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  In 2012 my ex-husband and I were charged with perverting the course of justice and so began many months of legal proceedings. I admitted accepting penalty points incurred by my ex-husband on my driving licence but I pleaded not guilty on the grounds of marital coercion. During the long and painful pretrial hearings, and after the collapse of the first trial and the guilty verdict of the second, I began to record my thoughts and experiences in a diary, and continued to do so as I went first to Holloway, then to open prison in East Sutton Park, and after I was released on curfew two months later.

  I had no idea what to expect and what issues would come up. But I knew that, irrespective of whether people thought the verdict or sentence was fair or not, I had to abide by the court’s ruling and try to survive for both my and my children’s sake. I had been found guilty of a crime for which I was to be punished and I felt that I had to give something back to society on release.

  I knew that just recounting my experience would be an eye-opener for many, but I hadn’t thought on entering Holloway that I would be hit immediately by the senselessness of it all for most of the women I met during my two months. This became even clearer as I talked to people on the outside after my release, including previous offenders, prison governors, current and previous chief inspectors of prisons, and individuals and organisations who comment and campaign for penal reform. I knew I was lucky in many ways and different to many of the women I encountered; I had a home and a family to go back to that would help me after my release. I also knew that even though my prospects for employment in the future were uncertain I wasn’t going to be destitute by any stretch of the imagination.

  It is said that just a few days in Holloway is all you need to understand the flaws of the current regime towards offenders. I spent two months in prison (followed by two months on home curfew), the standard duration for anyone who is sentenced to eight months, and it was enough to give me a feel of the prison regime. When a separate Ministry of Justice (MoJ) was carved out of what the Home Secretary John Reid described as the ‘unfit for purpose’ Home Office, it was hoped that a new era would begin. But as the police help to reduce crime, the MoJ and its judges help to increase prison numbers. From a strictly economic and public expenditure point of view, the MoJ bangs too many up but delivers far fewer bangs for the taxpayer’s buck than the equivalent ministries in better-run countries.

  Combining my prison diary with various data sources and interviews with individuals and organisations engaged with the prison service or campaigns for penal reform, this book has tried to put as much evidence together as possible to show that in fact the system is broken and a major rethink needs to take place. It is absurd that as crime goes down we put more people in jail at a huge cost to society when money is tight and there is a public deficit to deal with. The MoJ needs to deliver a better service with much less money.

  On entering prison, I knew that the service was struggling to cope with the repercussions of a government policy towards crime which has until recently focused mostly on punishment rather than rehabilitation. But no matter what the service did and how fair it tried to be in its treatment of prisoners, it was obvious to me that there were too many people in prison – especially women. And I am not alone; Baroness Corston is just one among a remarkable thread of reforming British women who for more than a century have taken up the unfashionable cause of women in prison.

  Of course, the first duty of care is to the victims of crime. But the women I met had rarely, if ever, caused serious damage to others. These women pose no threat to society. The custodial sentences mostly male judges enjoy imposing do not act as deterrents for crime; if anything they increase the chance of those released reoffending. In the middle of the ramshackle officialdom that deals with prisons, including specially elected political ministers, there never seems to be an economist to offer some utilitarian calculation on the value for money of our current criminal justice system. There is a clear moral case for not sending as many people, particularly women, to prison. But given the poor return in terms of offending and reoffending there is a clear economic case too. The cost–benefit calculation suggests that the impact of prisons in reducing the cost of crime to society is low and money could be spent more productively elsewhere. However, the economics of prisons is too big a subject to leave to the politicians or even to the civil servants alone. Prisonomics needs to be investigated seriously. In a more rational, less populist world the lousy economics of our prison system should generate inte
nse debate in society. For most people ‘prison does not work’ – except in removing some offenders temporarily from our streets who will likely reoffend.

  There is also overwhelming evidence that the children of prisoners suffer from being separated from their parents, and those who lose contact entirely or end up in care have a much higher chance of offending themselves than children who stay close to their families, particularly, but not exclusively, to their mothers. The direct short-term and indirect long-term economic costs are large. The despair of many of the women I met in my brief stay in prison was heartbreaking. What gave them hope was the prospect of being reunited with their family and being able to obtain a job that would allow them to return to society and care for their children. And there are clear links between education and employment as major factors in reducing reoffending – but the links need to be understood more generally among politicians, press and a public that wants retribution and considers education in prison a ‘privilege’.

  Throughout this book, I try to give some pointers on how money could be saved through different sentencing guidelines, more community service, more mental health and other support, by keeping families together or at least in touch with each other and, crucially for the economy as a whole, by providing more and better education in and out of prison to improve future chances of employment. No doubt there will be counter-arguments. But it seems to me that in the current tight fiscal environment a smaller more efficient prison service is a must. If properly managed, our prison population should reduce substantially without encouraging reoffending. In many ways, the current economic climate and pressures on the public purse give us the ideal opportunity to completely rethink the management of the criminal justice system, something long overdue.

  While writing Prisonomics, I have been assisted by Nicola Clay from the Cambridge Institute of Criminology, who scoured the academic literature for studies in this area; by International Relations graduate Anthony Elliott, who looked at as much publicly available data as he could find in the time available; by solicitor Kristiina Reed, who has a particular interest in the legal, social and economic consequences of imprisoning mothers and the impact on their children; and by parliamentary radio director Boni Sones, who helped me keep on top of external events occurring during my sentence. The conclusions are all my own but the work done by us all leaves me in agreement with those who argue that Britain is poorly served by an anachronistic, archaic network of male judges who send far too many women to prison. Prison is the wrong sentence for a large number of offences. The special needs of women are neglected and the economic cost of keeping women (and a good percentage of men) in prison is immense.

  The various organisations working hard to achieve some progress in prison reform have done a great job and they have been forthcoming, offering me help in the form of research and combined wisdom. The facts are there, though admittedly sometimes not complete, not fully evaluated and contradictory at times, and there will always be differences in the data depending on which years one looks at and the sample size; results and percentages vary from one survey to another. I had to put up with a lot of that as I was researching for this book, which wasn’t always easy. This book is meant to encourage people to look at the research, sometimes hard to digest, and try to make sense of it – and ask for more. But for the most part the data available reinforces the view that prison is not a deterrent and that the current system is costly and not fit for purpose and has been allowed to remain so despite the very severe financial pressures upon the public sector at present.

  Many close friends who worked with me at senior levels of government and business wrote to me or visited me in prison. It is said you only know who your friends are when the press turns ugly and it is easier to walk by on the other side of the street. I will not embarrass them by listing them here but they and I know who they are. I received hundreds of letters from well-wishers who wrote to say how unfair they thought the sentence was. If I have not replied to them all – stamps were precious currency in short supply in prison – please take this book as a thank you.

  But this book really belongs to the amazing women I met in Holloway and East Sutton Park. We are all called ‘girls’ in prison and although it is a few years since anyone so described me I am proud these girls became my friends. Girls, you deserved better and here’s to you, wishing you all the best on the outside and keep your heads up high!

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  INTO PRISON

  11 MARCH

  The enormity of what was about to happen hit everyone around me on the morning of the sentencing as I found myself saying goodbye to the children and calmly packing a suitcase with clothes to last me for a few months. Still in disbelief, people came in and out of the house to hug me, all in full view of the large number of photographers stationed outside my front door.

  I had assured everyone who worried about me that in fact I was very institutionalised and could survive anything. And the good thing is that I believed it. In the late 1980s, I spent an inordinate amount of time in the Overseas Development Administration providing an economic recovery plan and then an economic recovery implementation plan for Zanzibar, which, because of a collapse in the price of cloves in the face of increasing competition from Mauritius and Madagascar, was being forced to move from being a Marxist region redistributing revenues from cloves to a more open one based on a functioning market economy with proper price signals and some policies to encourage badly needed inward investment. The old Arab stone town was beautiful but in dreadful condition. The main old hotel, which had splendid views of the ocean and the dhows still making the traditional journeys to Oman, the sultanate which they once belonged to, was in complete disrepair and so full of interesting rodents moving between your feet that you couldn’t stay there. There was only one serious alternative: the Hotel Bowani. This splendid establishment was within walking distance (thankfully) of the stone city but had two problems: first, it was built next to a swamp so you had to dodge the malaria-carrying mosquitoes on the one side. The second was that after it was built, so the locals told us, representatives of the government had a fit when they realised the one hotel that could attract international visitors was built with no balconies. So they were added on – or rather, sort of glued on from the outside. We were told that unsuspecting visitors would open their French windows and step outside onto their balconies which would then collapse and fall to the ground with or without the guests still on them. Walking back to the hotel in the evening in the pitch dark (there were almost nightly power cuts) and trying to avoid walking too close to the swamp and malaria on the right and falling balconies on the narrow road on the left led to the creation of the ‘Bowani test’.

  As privatisation and economic reform work spread to other countries in Africa, eastern Europe (which was only just emerging from Communism), the Middle East, India and Bangladesh, and later China, my team and I would always compare the shabby hotels we stayed in to the Bowani, which soon became the bar below which it proved difficult for any establishment, however bad, to fall. So, went my theory, Holloway could not possibly be worse than the Bowani. If I had survived very difficult environments – sometimes threatening ones in so many countries around the world – I could survive a UK prison.

  It was clear to me that the sentencing would be a custodial one. I was convinced by the attitude of the judge during my first trial and then the retrial that the judge was intent on passing a custodial sentence and that the judiciary did not like my marital coercion defence at all. The CPS argued that it could apply to a lorry driver’s wife but not to someone ‘rich and powerful’ (if only) like me. I knew that the moment the guilty verdict was announced, to the gasps of the people at court, I would be sent to prison for a while. But I also knew that whatever the sentence, in most cases people only served half except in exceptional circumstances. In addition some of it was spent ‘on tag’ on Home Detention Curfew (HDC). The chances were that I wouldn’t be away from
home for long.

  Nevertheless, I decided to prepare for the worst-case scenario and on the Monday morning, while the photographers were waiting outside the house (I wondered whether they had camped overnight after following me and taking pictures and I presume bribing the supermarket cashiers to tell them what I had bought, including bin liners, apparently), I was busy making all the arrangements for being away for a while. I left cheques for the pest control man, the milkman and generally for ensuring that the house and my children who lived there would survive my absence, at least financially. So it was with that complete peace of mind that I approached the day: it can’t be worse than the Bowani. And if my time away was less than I had provided for then that would also be a great plus and the children, who feared the worst, would be relieved.

  I was, of course, lucky insofar as I was able to make these provisions. Some 15 per cent of prisoners report that they are homeless before entering prison.1 For those women who aren’t, many face the possibility of eviction while inside due to rent arrears, as well as losing their personal property. Indeed one in three (32 per cent) of prisoners lose their homes while in prison2 and there is no help available to pay for the storage of their belongings. Many children end up in local authority care while their mothers are in prison, with the remainder being looked after by an assortment of family, friends and acquaintances. Only one in twenty (5 per cent) children are able to stay in their own home when their mother is in prison.3 They rarely have to move when their father goes to prison.

  The array of judges with high salaries, investment savings from their time as QCs, and handsome pensions plus high social status only have the mother in front of them to send to prison. As many campaigners have observed, those actually punished are the children left behind. What is more, many initial care arrangements are likely to break down as a prison sentence progresses, leading to unstable and uncertain care for the child. Grandparents may be too old, ill or disabled. Sibling carers may be too young and emotionally immature to cope. Other family members may be put under financial pressure with another mouth to feed.