You’d need a heart of stone not to feel sympathy for Alex Davies-Jones. Labour’s minister for victims was on human sandbag duty for the Justice Secretary David Lammy this morning – tasked with explaining to the media why there had been another two accidental releases of convicted prisoners.
The fact these blunders came only days after an another illegal migrant sex offender was released instead of deported was difficult enough to defend. But her response – which amounted to some waffle about sending in ‘tech experts’ – might make Lammy reconsider deploying junior ministers who seem to know even less about our chaotic penal system than he does.
If David Lammy is serious about his reputation and public confidence he must turn his ire towards his own officials
Saying we need better software is a classic political panic answer to a systemic failure. The increasingly farcical failures of HM Prison Service speaks to a much worse malaise. Davies-Jones also boasted about dragging prison governors before the Lord Chancellor as if a bit more scolding would do the trick. True, the service is full of over promoted duds who ought not to be running baths let alone complex penal institutions. But it also has brilliant public servants who are tearing their hair out to try to keep crumbling jails upright. Kicking them until morale improves is not the answer.
When I heard that two more prisoners had been released in error, including migrant sex offender Ibrahim Kaddour-Cherif, who overstayed his visa and should have been deported, it was no surprise to me that it happened at HMP Wandsworth. This institution typifies the problems that prison governors grapple with every day across the country. Insufficient, poorly trained and inexperienced staff overwhelmed by need. Record levels of violence. Up to a third of front-line officers not available on a daily basis. Rocketing sickness absence due to stress. Overcrowding and a huge number of foreign national offenders. Broken or missing physical security and human security devastated by low morale.
This could have happened at any prison in the UK. We have record levels of drug misuse across the penal estate with drones hovering ‘like wasps’ over high security prisons. There are multiple instances of female officers involved in sexual misconduct with prisoners. The second suspected inmate-on-inmate homicide in a month occurred just yesterday at one of our highest security prisons. The dysfunction is endemic.
In this environment, Lammy’s boasts from the despatch box about the ‘strongest checks ever’ after the release in error of Ethiopian sex offender Hadush Kebatu from HMP Chelmsford, failed spectacularly just 48 hours after they were imposed. The wonder is that prison service bosses even knew that they had lost another foreign national, with police informed six days later.
Which brings me to the nub of the problem – the culture at the top. HM Prison and Probation Service has at the last count around 5,771 non-operational bureaucrats in what they call ‘HQ and Frontline support’.
Above hapless prison governors squat Chief Operating Officers, Directors General, Area Executive Directors and Prison Group Directors. There’s an executive director for standards, for security, for ‘transformation’ and one extra for ‘change’ just for luck. You would think amongst all these expensive suits there was someone who was interested in maintaining public confidence in the system they are paid to safeguard. Or if not that, at least a smattering of pen pushers who think meeting ministers’ needs is more important than arse covering. Not a bit of it. We only know about repeated scandals across the sector through leaks or independent reports. No heads ever roll. In review after review the Chief Inspector of Prisons Charlie Taylor laments the lack of energy or focus coming from the overstuffed prisons HQ to support a threadbare front line.
If David Lammy is serious about his reputation and public confidence he must turn his ire towards his own officials. He is only one of a long line of Justice Secretaries who have found that when you try to pull the levers of power in that ministry the cables are cut. The breaking news that one of the two prisoners currently on the run, fraudster Billy Smith has handed himself in at the gates of Wandsworth should provide little comfort. We can’t run our prison security on luck.
Years of neglect and absurd fealty to progressive ideologies have allowed an administrative boss class to develop that is promoted from within, secretive, defensive and manifestly useless. The fish rots from the head. If Lammy can’t replace this cadre of besuited incompetents who eternally hide behind resources to excuse their failings, he can expect more of the same. And more prisoners accidentally let out on the streets. With perhaps lethal consequences.
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