Building prisons in England and Wales the bigger the better?

15 Building prisons in England and Wales: the bigger, the better?
4. Will a rising prison population
defeat the MoJ’s plans?
In its March 2015 report Prisons: Planning and policies, the Justice
Committee expressed some scepticism (in the context of estimates of
the savings arising from building the new prison at Wrexham) about
NOMS’ ability, because of the rising prison population, actually to close
the old inefficient prison places and therefore realise the savings.
The Committee concluded that the modernisation policy was good in
principle, although (it observed) the National Audit Office (NAO) had
reached the view that the closures of smaller prisons were more about
cost savings than they were about performance.
The Committee remarked too on the decrepit state of some prisons:
We recognise in particular that some prisons have been operating,
and some continue to operate, with decrepit buildings that hinder
effective rehabilitation; and we note that redesign and reconfiguration
provide the opportunity for new technologies and
their resulting efficiencies to be embedded in the infrastructure of
the prison estate. 31
The Committee noted too that prisons were often not in the most
useful or appropriate locations, often being in rural areas, far from
prisoners’ homes:
Phil Wheatley CB, former Director General of NOMS, explained
that decisions about where and when to build new prisons were
constrained by several factors, including the imprecise nature of
forecasting, the time taken to build new places, securing the
necessary finance from the Treasury, and getting planning
permission. The Prison Officers’ Association characterised NOMS’
approach as building where it was cheapest and moving the
prisoners accordingly. 32
The Committee considered the evidence that had been put before it
about the new for old programme.
It noted that various benefits had been ascribed to newer prisons,
ranging from making more use of technology and reducing various
costs to enabling the prison to run with fewer staff. 33 Nonetheless, the
Committee also identified several potential problems or pitfalls which
might get in the way of the MoJ’s plans to close old, inefficient prisons
and replace them with new and better-designed prisons.
Closing prisons - however antiquated they might be - still (the
Committee suggested) posed considerable challenges. HM Prison
Dartmoor was a case in point:
For example, when we visited HMP Dartmoor during our inquiry
into older prisoners it was clear to us that the facilities were
unsuitable for current purposes, and modernisation was not
31
Justice Committee, Prisons: Planning and Policies, 18 March 2015, HC 309 2014-15:
page 19
32
Ibid: page 10
33
Ibid: page 9