The Justice Committee today launches the second sub-inquiry in
its prison reform inquiry.
The report of its first sub-inquiry, into governor empowerment
and prison performance, will be published on Friday
7 April 2017.
TERMS OF REFERENCE
Prison reform: estate modernisation
The Government has announced it will “close the most dilapidated
and outdated prison buildings and invest £1.3 billion in new
facilities that will be designed with reform and rehabilitation
in mind.” Estate modernisation is intended to reduce crowding,
result in efficiency savings, support rehabilitative prison
cultures, and increase safety by using design to impede bullying,
drug-taking and violence. HMP Holloway was closed in July 2016,
the new HMP Berwyn opened in February 2017, new prisons will be
built in Full Sutton and Port Talbot, and four existing prisons
will be redeveloped (HMP & YOI Hindley, HMP & YOI
Rochester, HMP Wellingborough & HMP Glen Parva). It is not
clear how the Ministry intends to make decisions on which prisons
to close and on building and operating new prisons.
The NAO reported on the Ministry’s estate strategy in 2013 and
concluded that cost reduction had been prioritised over quality
and performance considerations. It also found that prisoners
routinely share cells in new prisons, sometimes in crowded
conditions, that it is difficult for new prisons to achieve high
performance quickly, and that smaller prisons performed better in
the performance ratings than larger prisons. The NAO’s
recommendations included that prison performance should be
included in the methodology for selecting prisons to close, and
that provision for purposeful activity should be considered in
the same way as security features.
Evidence submitted to the Committee’s prison reform inquiry so
far suggests that estate modernisation should take account of the
importance of IT access to facilitate prisoners’ resettlement and
family relationships; the need for consultation and engagement
with stakeholders; the need to build prisons that can respond
flexibly to changes in the prison population; and the need to
build prisons close to offenders’ communities. There was also
concern that estate management decisions had been cost-driven;
witnesses called for decisions to be based on rehabilitation and
long-term effectiveness instead.
The Committee would welcome evidence covering the following
topics, to be submitted by 7 May:
- · How
can new prisons in England and Wales be built to enable them to
fulfil the four statutory purposes proposed for them in the
Prisons and Courts Bill?
- · How
should new prison buildings be procured and operated and what
lessons can be learned from the opening of new prisons in the
past decades?
- · How
should the design of new prisons take account of the changing
profile of the prison population (including factors such as age,
offence profiles, prevalence of mental health problems, education
and training needs, parental status (family relationships) and
opportunities for resettlement)?
- · The
appropriateness of the Ministry’s planning for disposal of former
prisons, their buildings and records, particularly given the
heritage status of many Victorian prisons
- · The
balance between considerations of efficiency, performance and
long term cost-effectiveness in decisions on estate modernisation
- · The
adequacy of the Ministry’s and HMPPS’s consultation on its
modernisation programme as a whole and on proposals to close,
open or develop prison sites
This sub-inquiry will not cover the women’s and youth estates,
which could be explored in future, once the Government publishes
further proposals.
Submitting written evidence
The deadline for submissions to this inquiry is 7
May 2017.
