Report of the Inquiry into the circumstances of the Death of Bernard ...

held safely; Respect – prisoners are treated with respect for their human dignity;
Purposeful activity – prisoners are able, and expected, to engage in activity that is likely
to benefit them; Resettlement – prisoners are prepared for release and helped to reduce
the likelihood of reoffending.
17.18 The Director General appointed in 1999, and his successor, have repeatedly
championed a ‘decency agenda’, that prisons should be fair, humane and reformative
places. In a speech to the Prison Service Conference in 2001 the then Director General,
Martin Narey, stated:
“I am not prepared to continue to apologise for failing prison after failing prison. I’ve had
enough of trying to explain the very immorality of our treatment of some prisoners and
the degradation of some establishments…it’s a matter of caring, a matter of
determination and, I accept, not a little courage in taking on a culture in all too many
places which we have allowed to decay....”
“The choice is straightforward. We take on the challenge. We make a reality of the
rhetoric of decency and dignity. Or we accept the unacceptable. We tolerate filth,
appalling healthcare, treating prisoners as a sub-species, doing virtually nothing to
prepare them for release.” 1
17.19 The inquiry asked the Prison Service whether it accepted that levels of prisoner
distress and rates of suicide are linked in part to levels of fair and respectful treatment.
The reply quotes the following from the current corporate business plan:
“The decency agenda remains absolutely crucial to the service’s development and the
delivery of decency underpins all its other work. In particular it is a vital component of
reducing the rate of suicide…”
Findings
17.20 I find that:
The punishment imposed at the adjudication increased Sonny Lodge’s
vulnerability through confinement without means of occupation or distraction.
To go back on the decision to return Sonny Lodge to E wing after the seven days’
punishment was either a mistake or it was a deliberate decision for which
reasons should have been recorded.
1 quoted in Liebling, A (2008): Prisons and their Moral Performance, Oxford p.39.
140