Prisons in England have used “absolute last resort” red regimes 22 times this year, the Guardian has found. Swaleside prison in Kent, has used the regime 15 times since January.
These measures, reserved for when staffing levels run below a locally agreed minimum, mean prisons can only exercise a “basic regime.” This denies prisoners access to work, rehabilitation, libraries and in extreme cases, meals. This “culture of hopelessness” is felt across the UK as, last year, Richard Benn, an inmate at HMP Doncaster, said that inmates were only allowed out of their cells for “half an hour each day,” which had resulted in some inmates “turning to drugs” due to the restrictions.
Pia Sinha, the chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, an independent UK charity that works to ensure a humane and effective legal system, stated: ‘Red regimes in prisons used to be the absolute last resort. The fact that they have become routine in so many of our prisons reflects the grim reality of our prison system today. No one benefits from these regimes. They breed despair among people in prison, they lead to poor motivation and poor job satisfaction among prison staff and create a culture of hopelessness.’
The data was revealed following a freedom of information request from the Guardian to the HM Prison and Probation Service, which is a government sector charged with managing most of the prisons in England and Wales. This found a quarter of institutions were operating on a severely reduced regime. 32 of 123 prisons in England and Wales were providing an amber-red regime as of 7th September, which is described as a “reduced but sustainable delivery of activities and services.”
The restricted regimes are linked to the current UK prison overpopulation crisis. The Justice Gap reported that last week, prison populations surpassed 88,000, the highest number ever recorded in England and Wales.
A Prison Service spokesperson responded to the ongoing crisis, ‘We are doing more than ever to attract and retain the best staff, including boosting salaries and launching our first-ever nationwide recruitment campaign. We have hired over 4,000 additional officers since March 2017 and retention rates for prison staff are improving.’
Andrew Nielson, the director of campaigns at Howard League for Penal Reform, a national charity that works for safer communities and fewer people in prison reinforced, ‘Inadequate staffing, overcrowding, and lack of resourcing mean that people are warehoused in unsafe conditions for hours on end with nothing to do.’ ‘These instances of red regimes are not a coincidence but the direct consequence of ever-increasing prison population figures and of a system that has been asked to do too much with too little for too long.’
