📢 Truth Watch: Prisons: still we build them and still we fill them

Transcript of speech by Faith Spear FRSA delivered at Battle of Ideas, Church House, Westminster, London on 20 October 2024.

“I’m not a political person… I’ve never wanted to get involved… I don’t like the idea of having to play to someone else’s tune and say things I don’t necessarily believe in.”

For those who know me, they would say that this sounds like something Faith would say, but it wasn’t me this time. In fact it was James Timpson – Lord Timpson, Minister of State for Prisons, Parole and Probation – talking with Andy Coulson in an interview a couple of years ago.

Now as Prisons minister, he must have changed his tune?

In the same interview he also said that instead of people serving 50% of a sentence in prison, this should be reduced to 25%. I wonder if he has changed his mind about that too?

But one thing that I have said repeatedly is:

“We have to stop this madness of believing that we can change people and their behaviour by banging them up in warehouse conditions with little to do and not enough to eat and sanitation from a previous century.”

The prison estate is running out of space and Early release schemes have been implemented by the new government to avoid gridlock in the justice system.

Mainstream media frequently report on prisons in England and Wales that are squalid and fuelled by drugs.

I have seen it for myself and have been writing about it for over 10 years. The lack of rehabilitation, the lack of education, lack of purposeful activity, overcrowding, understaffing, gang related violence.

Yet still we build them and still we fill them.

In 2016 I was invited to write an article from my experience as a chair of an Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) in my local prison in Suffolk. It was factual, honest and challenged the independence of the IMB. Even before it went to print in The Prisons Handbook, I received notification that it had been sent to the Ministry of Justice lawyers.

What followed was 9 months of hell; I was bullied, suspended from my role, gagged and investigated by the MoJ – twice – called in front of a disciplinary hearing at Petty France and then dismissed.

Two Prisons Ministers were involved in the whole debacle.

My crime? I broke the IMB code of conduct.

One of the investigators wrote:
“In my view she breached the code of conduct, but as there is no clear IMB code of conduct or any reference to the Cabinet Office guidance, this was not entirely Ms Spear’s fault.”

Allegedly I broke the code of conduct which did not exist.

Even the then President of the IMB wanted to rewrite the ‘Constitution Template’, to close a loophole to dissuade others in the IMB from speaking out.

Not the last bastion of chauvinism I have come across.

HM Chief Inspector of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, is saying the same things today as I said then. He’s paid to say these things; I was dismissed for saying these things.

People always harp on about the prisons in Scandinavia, Halden and Bastøy in Norway seem to be the best known. But few seem to know that a prison in England had visitors from Scandinavia looking at their regimes etc with a view to model some of their best practices.

It was called HMP Blantyre House located in Kent, and over in Norway a resettlement prison was set up based on the principles and methods used at Blantyre House.

So, how was this beacon of best practice recognised here?

Instead of promoting their good practice, the then Director General of the Prison Service authorised squads of approx 80 officers and dogs, led by the then Governor of Swaleside prison, to raid Blantyre House.

They trashed it.¹

All prisoners were tested for drugs, yet not a single test proved positive. The whole episode ruined a lot of the trust built up between prisoners and staff.

The then Governor of HMP Blantyre House was unaware of what was about to happen because he was removed from his position hours before.

But it was a prison that exceeded all their key performance targets and had the lowest rate of drug abuse of any prison in the UK.

Even when something works, still they trash it.

So, when we read the Ministry of Justice mission statement: “The Ministry of Justice is a major government department, at the heart of the justice system. We work to protect and advance the principles of justice. Our vision is to deliver a world-class justice system that works for everyone in society” I just don’t believe it.

And neither should you.

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From the speech by Faith Spear FRSA given 20 October 2024 at Battle of Ideas 2024 held at Church House, Westminster, London, convened by Academy of Ideas.

Speaker bio https://www.battleofideas.org.uk/speaker/faith-spear-frsa/

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