‘UK justice minister complacent over rise in prison deaths’

A cross-party parliamentary report has accused the UK justice minister of complacency over a sharp increase in prison deaths.

The House of Commons Justice Committee says Chris Grayling and other ministers in his department have tried to play down publicly the importance of a 38% rise in prison deaths.

The MPs say that evidence gathered from HM Inspectorate of Prisons, the government’s performance data, independent monitoring boards, and the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman show there has been a rapid deterioration in standards of safety over the past year or so.

“Most concerning to us is that, since 2012, there has been a 38% rise in self-inflicted deaths, a 9% rise in self-harm, a 7% rise in assaults and a 100% rise in incidents of concerted indiscipline.”

‘Blaming austerity measures’

The MPs blame cuts in funding and reforms in England and Wales for a drop in prison safety between 2012 and 2014. During this period, the Ministry of Justice implemented a modernization program to replace old prisons with new facilities. It also made efficiency savings and altered the prisoner incentive and earned privileges schemes.

The journalist, author and researcher from London, Alan Hart, says the figures are not a surprise to him:

“It’s not surprising that we have seen stringing austerity measures and the truth is that in Britain, for sure, whoever is elected government is going to have to make even more stringing huge cuts to public expenditure. Now the question that rises is that does this benefit the citizens? Well, frankly, governments are not in business to benefit citizens. They are in business to look after their own interest and the austerity measure is all about stopping the collapse of economy.”
The Ministry of Justice argues that there is no evidence to link staffing levels, type of prison or crowding levels to the number of self-inflicted deaths across the state.

However, the MPs’ year-long inquiry into prisons concludes that changes in policy “have made a significant contribution to the deterioration in safety”.

The report also strongly criticizes the 28% reduction in the number of prison officers in publicly run prisons since 2010. It says the trend has resulted in severely restricted regimes in the most acute cases, and in turn affected safety.