Commenting on the Prison Officers' Association strike on 29 August 2007, PRT director Juliet Lyon said:

The illegal strike that shook ministers, managers and many of the POA members who felt compelled to take part is over and talks begin on Friday. What is there to talk about? A starting point would be the state of our beleaguered prison system and the state of those who live and work in it. Prison is our least visible and, arguably, most neglected public service. Political rhetoric, disjointed legislation and scaremongering in the popular press have led to inflation in sentencing, damaging over-use of custody and staggering increases in the prison population - from just over 60,000 people in 1997 to almost 81,000 today. Staffing levels have not kept pace and now the service faces further swingeing cuts.

Prison staff and governors expect to cope with most things. Essentially reactive in nature and unique among public services, the prison service cannot, and does not, operate admissions or gate-keeping policies. Unlike schools, which can and do exclude challenging students, or hospitals, which can and do refuse to treat difficult patients, prisons must accept all those sent by the courts. Throughout the afternoon and into the night people arrive having been stacked up in prison vans. Some will have wet or soiled themselves on excessive journeys from one overcrowded establishment to another. High numbers will be withdrawing from class A drugs and very many will be mentally ill. On arrival, often with no accompanying information to go by, staff will try to assess people at risk to themselves or others and, in most cases, to offer some support and reduce distress.

There are very many prison reformers working hard at every level to change things from within the system. The POA has spoken out against the way in which its members are professionally compromised by being required to work with the seriously mentally ill or people with profound learning disabilities. Led by its chairman, Colin Moses, it has also stood out against racism within its ranks. Disappointingly it has apparently not attempted to quash a push from some of its members for staff who work with young offenders to be armed with staves, a retrogressive move rightly resisted by prison managers.

Yesterday POA members were voicing their frustration, not only about pay, but also about the damaging impact of gross overcrowding. Overcrowding does not only mean the 18,000 men currently forced to share two to a cell designed for one; it also means the continual movement, or churn, of sentenced prisoners from one cramped institution to another to make way for the remand prisoners who need to be held near the courts. The average length of stay is now just 10 days for a young man at Feltham or Lancaster Farms. At worst, a prison like Pentonville, with over 40,000 movements a year, operates much like a giant transit camp. In turn this leads to prison staff being less likely to know their prisoners and a consequent increased risk of suicide, self-harm and assault. Meanwhile the churn is not restricted to prisoner movements. Governing governors stay on average less than two years in any one place and there have been seven prisons ministers in as many years.

Poor, overcrowded conditions, wings condemned as unfit for human habitation dragged back into use, staggered pay rises and drastic budget cuts are a recipe for disaffection and distress. But the illegal strike action that swept the prison system yesterday was bound to do harm - to prisoners, their families, to trust between managers and staff. Irresponsibly it posed a major threat to safety - in just one day two governors were assaulted, prisoners took to the roof in Liverpool, children were held overnight in police cells and there was a self-inflicted death in custody.

There is a lot of talking to do and questions to be answered. What drove the POA to such a pitch that it was prepared to break its own no-strike agreement? Why had negotiation, understood to have involved the TUC and ACAS, faltered? Is the independent pay revue body satisfied about parity of pay and conditions between prisons and other essential public services? Why has training for new prison staff been whittled away to an entirely inadequate eight weeks? Is proper provision made for training first line managers or succession planning for governors and key post-holders?

The central question is - do we really want a prison system that is a matter for national shame? Reform starts with government commitment and authoritative leadership to review the purpose of imprisonment and to reserve prison for serious and violent offenders. Improvements in conditions, training, supervision and treatment, both for prisoners and staff, follow from there. There is a powerful case for investment in the professional development of those who operate our punishment of last resort. Most other solutions lie outside prison bars in adjustments to the sentencing framework, investment in community penalties and treatment for addicts and the mentally ill. Lurching from crisis to crisis is no way to run a public service.

This article appeared in Comment is Free on the Guardian website