Building prisons in England and Wales the bigger the better?

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Number 05646, 12 February 2016 26 In its report on justice reinvestment - Cutting Crime: The Case for Justice Reinvestment, published after the plans for Titan prisons had been abandoned - the Justice Committee argued that this was the right moment to adopt a fresh approach to the use of imprisonment. 76 The Committee had not been convinced of the rationale for Titan prisons, describing Lord Caret’s report as “light on evidence and deeply flawed”. Nor was it greatly in favour of the proposed alternative - five prisons each holding 1,500 prisoners - suggesting that this step still went “a long way in the wrong direction”. 77 In its commitment to Titan prisons and then to their 1,500-place successors, the Government was (in the Committee’s view) too focused on short term efficiencies and cost savings and had lost sight of the broader aims of the criminal justice system. The Committee argued: [P]rison building on this scale will prove a costly mistake. It will preclude movement towards a more effective community prisons model and may limit this and any future government’s willingness and capacity to reinvest in creative measures to reduce the overall prison population in the future. 78 6.2 Ministry of Justice consultation and the demise of Titan prisons A consultation paper, Titan Prisons, was published in June 2008. 79 The summary of responses was published by the MoJ in April 2009. With it came the announcement that there would be no Titan prisons. The stated reasons overlapped with the potential difficulties identified by Lord Carter, the Prison Reform Trust and others: We have (...) come to the conclusion that the additional risk, novelty and complexity involved in building 2,500 place prisons is likely to increase the cost. In addition we believe they are unlikely to provide the correct environment in which to rehabilitate offenders. 80 It has, though, been suggested by some commentators that the MoJ’s volte face was in fact attributable to the recession and concerns about the difficulties in obtaining planning consents in the face of what was likely to be strong local opposition. 81 In announcing (with some apparent reluctance) the demise of Titan prisons, Jack Straw said that the Government intended instead to build five prisons of up to 1,500 places: 82 I did see merit in Lord Carter’s proposals for 2,500-place prisons, especially as they would have been complexes with four or five distinct and separate regimes, but most of those whom we consulted took a different view, and believed that the advantages 76 Justice Committee Cutting Crime: The Case for Justice Reinvestment 1 December 2009, HC 94, 2009-10: page 10 77 Ibid: pages 34-5 78 Ibid: page 36 79 MoJ, Consultation Paper CP10/08 80 MoJ, New Prisons Consultation Response, 27 April 2009, p3 81 Jon Collins ‘Prison expansion: back to the drawing board?’, Criminal Justice Matters, 76: 1, 2009: pages 8-9 82 HMP Wandsworth, for context, has an operational capacity of 1877.
27 Building prisons in England and Wales: the bigger, the better? were far outweighed by the disadvantages. Not the least of those of that view was Dame Anne Owers, Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons. Jack Straw then went on to describe the MoJ’s plans for two new prisons (and abandoning of plans for a prison on a site in Warrington) and other work to add to the capacity of the prison system. 83 83 HC Deb 27 April 2009, cc569-70
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Building prisons in England and Wales the bigger the better?

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