Let’s not go to Angola: a glimpse of the costs and benefits of prison reform

Is prison reform an economic issue, as well as a moral and social one? Well, if it’s uppermost in my mind and this column, then it must be — and it holds both of those positions this week not so much in response to the news that ex-jailbird Jonathan Aitken is to head a Tory ‘taskforce’ on the subject, but because I too have recently spent time inside. In fact I spent last Saturday morning in HM Prison Kirklevington Grange in Cleveland — where I was startled to find half the inmates had gone out for the day.

Kirklevington is a Category C closed prison, which means it has a high fence and locked gates, but it is also one of only three specialist resettlement prisons in England. Prisoners within the last three years of longer sentences can apply to be transferred there, and if they show sufficient willingness to clean up their act, they are allowed out on day-release to work, study or visit their families.

The emphasis of the regime is on personal responsibility, and it all felt genuinely positive. Officers and inmates were clearly on amiable terms. The white-collar fraudster sitting next to me at lunch (a spot of trouble with Customs and Excise over a container-load of cigarettes, I gathered) said the food was much better than in his two previous prisons. The governor, Alan Richer, told me that his annual running costs, at £18,000 per inmate, are a good deal lower than those of a high-security prison. The long-term saving to the taxpayer of resettling a former criminal so that he is neither a burden on the state nor a threat to his fellow citizens is much more difficult to measure, but at this modest price it is surely well worth the investment.