Some home secretaries seem to have been more interested in keeping a lid on prisons than they have been in addressing the scourge of overcrowding or the harm done to prisoners, and those responsible for their care, by running a system under intolerable pressure. Indeed one special adviser pondered: ‘we ran hospitals hot and got MRSA, what happens when you run prisons hot?’. 

Yet the Foreign Office and British Council regularly host criminal justice delegations from around the world keen to see inside our jails. Many have a particular interest in human rights observance in places of detention. They want to know about the way in which prisons in the UK are managed, independently monitored and regulated to ensure proper treatment of people in custody. In an accident of timing, as the government seemed hell bent on muffling the independent voice of the prisons inspectorate, and tidying it up into a criminal justice amalgam, international administrations were replicating our respected model of inspection in order to comply with the new UN Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture.

There is considerable interest in all those who keep an eye on prisons and their respective roles. The range is wide from HM chief inspector of prisons to the prisons and probation ombudsman, although this post has yet to be placed on a statutory footing, the Independent Monitoring Boards, due to be strengthened with a new president, and independent groups such as the Prison Reform Trust that do not accept government funding but work to create a just, fair and effective penal system.

There are many internal checks and balances in such a disciplined service and rules and standards to regulate behaviour. Much work has been put in to try and ensure, for example, that systems for complaints or adjudications are clear and fair. There are good governors who ask their staff to use the yardstick for the decent treatment of offenders ‘if this were my son or my brother how would I want him to be treated?’

So why do we need so many safeguards? A retired governor explained to those first in charge in training ‘you have to drive a prison forward. There’s no neutral gear. If you don’t it will always slip backwards.’ Prison governors come and go too rapidly most would agree. Line management training or supervision is sparse. Provision is often not made for people, whether prisoners, staff or visitors, to speak out without fear of recrimination. Abuses of power are still all too easy. Prisons can go bad very quickly. A brutal regime like the one that grew in the segregation unit at Wormwood Scrubs in the 1990s can cause a prison to rot from the inside.

Standards can slip at all levels. In a betrayal of high office, David Blunkett declared that he had greeted news of Harold Shipman’s suicide by opening a bottle of champagne. The Sun applauded and sent him a case. At a stroke the then home secretary undermined the public duty, and onerous responsibilities, of all those men and women working in the prison service for whom he was responsible.

Going back to 1910 Winston Churchill, when home secretary, set out in Parliament why we must create, and maintain, a just and humane penal system.  He said: “The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the unfailing tests of the civilisation of any country.  A calm, dispassionate recognition of the rights of the accused and even of the convicted criminal … measure[s] the stored up strength of a nation and [is] sign and proof of the living virtue in it.”

Prison staff must treat people in custody with humanity and respect, not in order to prevent re-offending although clear linkage can be made with that task, but because that is their duty and they exercise it on our behalf. It remains to be seen whether the new Ministry of Justice can introduce proportionality into sentencing and take a measured, authoritative approach to prison reform but it is clear that, to achieve justice for all, it needs to take account of those who inspect, monitor and regulate our prisons.

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