The Howard Journal Vol35 No 4 . Nou 96 ISSN 0265527, pp. 336-362

Policy Review Symposium: The Learmont Report - Context,

Content and Aftermath Review of Prison Service Security in England and Wales and the

Escape from Parkhurst Prison on Tuesday 3rd January 1995: The Leamont Inquiry

The Next Steps Approach

SIR PETER KEMP Former Second Permanent Secretary Cabinet Ofice 1988 to 1992

I know nothing specific about prisons or indeed the criminal justice system. My contribution to this symposium arises from my job between 1988 and 1992 as the first project manager for the Next Steps programme, which led amongst other things to the establishment of the Prison Service as a Next Steps Agency. Recent events in the Prison Service have caused a spotlight to fall, not before time some might say, on the Next Steps reforms. While commentators have been generally content that the Prison Agency events of themselves d o not cast doubt on the generality of these reforms, there have been suggestions that there are some government activities for which the Next Steps ideas cannot or should not work; and specifically that to seek to establish the prisons under such a regime was a step too far. I t is right to add, I think, that, as I read it the Learmont Report itselfdoes not subscribe to either of these views.

Naturally I welcome the general endorsement, albeit negatively put, that the Next Steps reforms are right and workable. As to the second two propositions, 1 agree there are areas ofgovernment activity where the Next Steps machinery is not applicable, though I do not think that the boundaries need to be drawn where some of the commentators have been drawing them; and specifically it is not my view that prisons were of themselves inappropriate to operation as a n agency.

Let us take the general proposition first, because that gives us the backdrop to the prisons situation. The idea behind the Next Steps Agency was basically the establishment of a ‘customer/contractor’ - some people call it a ‘purchaser/ provider’ - relationship, although this phrase, now widely adopted in the literature, was never used by us a t the beginning. The minister on behalf of the citizen is the ‘purchaser’ and wants something done; the chief executive of the Agency is the ‘provider’ who sees that it is done, the split between the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. And all this is done within the published framework of maximum

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freedom to the agency to operate, specified financial and non-financial targets set by the minister, and maximum openness.

Next Steps works; there is no doubt about that. This is the view of people far more objective than myself, including many responsible media commentators and also the sub-committee chaired by Giles Radice of the Treasury and Civil Service Committee who produced a first calls report on the civil service in 1994. The published reports speak for themselves. There are over 100 agencies with a number more in the pipeline, and the total is likely to reach more than 75% of the civil service in due course. But it is not just a matter of coverage. The annual Next Steps reviews set out the various targets, quality, financial, efficiency and throughput, which have been set, and suggests that there is a success rate of meeting these of something in the order of 70-80%. This can be improved, and the process by which the targets themselves are set certainly needs to be improved - the minister needs better advice and a sharper edge of knowledge. But the machinery is there to permit this to happen. Two of the three principal legs of what public service is all about - service to the citizen and value for money of the taxpayer - are evidently in place.

But, people say, what about the third important leg - accountability? This goes with the argument that nobody knows who is responsible for what.

So far as the agencies themselves are concerned, clearly this is nonsense. Next Steps Agencies chief executives are more accountable than any civil servant has been in the past. Their names and addresses are available for the public to see. They are accounting officers or agency accounting officers directly and publicly responsible to the Public Accounts Committee for what they do. They are summoned by the appropriate Select Committee to answer for the activities of their agencies. They answer letters to MPs directly on the matters which the ministers delegate to them - with the backup pressure that if the MP who gets the answer is not satisfied they can always go to the minister for direct reply; no mean sanction. The agency prepares an annual report and accounts, to best and most open professional standards, audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General, and published.

And the minister? Well the minister remains accountable too. Agencies are not quangos, nationalised industries, or privatised, or anything like that. They are fully and wholly within the civil service. All their staff are civil servants, up to and including the grandest chief executive employed at a personal pay rate on contract from the private sector. Constitutionally the minister is answerable for every single thing that goes on in that agency.

Or as Aneurin Bevan, I think, put it in relation to the National Health Service many years ago, ‘down to the last bedpan’. But that is patently a fiction and one of the objects of the Next Steps approach was to seek to clarify this fiction, because in point of fact it does cut across good management. The idea was to establish more clearly what, within the fiction - and within the constitutional position that the minister was indeed in theory responsible for everything- who really did what and who really should take the responsibility for what. The objective was to recognise and clarify the reality behind the fiction, so in fact to enhance responsibility and accountability.

But, as people like to say, ifone is going through this it has to be done properly and clearly. We cannot have two accountable persons for one action; we can have, as I think has been described elsewhere, people who are responsible and people who are accountable. If something that has been clearly delegated to the chief executive goes wrong, the chief executive is accountable for it; but the minister with the constitutional doctor has his responsibility. Depending on the gravity of the offence he may have to do something about it, up to and including, indeed,

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disciplining or sacking the individual in the agency who made the mistake. All this is clear in theory. T h e problem that arises is what happens in practice. If in fact this dividing line has not been properly examined and set out. There you get the situation where, people might say, one of the individuals chiefly concerned - say the minister - might seek to shume off the responsibility onto a chief executive, or vice versa so that one ends up with the public and parliament not knowing really who to blame or where to turn.

These are real issues, and something which when we started creating the Next Steps Agencies we were acutely aware offrorn the start. They were not overlooked, contrary to what some commentators seem to suggest. There is no simple universal answer as we saw. The main reason for this is that all agencies are different; indeed the whole object of setting up the Next Steps regime and breaking out from the monolithic civil service was that the civil service does comprise a very large number of wholly different activities, and that a universal steamroller running over them all in a similar way just would not work. There is a split, and an understandable and recognisable split, between what is down to the chief executive and what is down to the minister out there in every single case, although it may differ in every single case. The split is not between ‘policy’ and ‘operation’ - something which some commentators imagine, but which as a very high level of abstraction is really not so - one man’s policy is another man’s execution, and vice versa - but more between what I have just described as the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ or even, if you like, between ‘big decisions’ and ‘small decisions’.

I would certainly agree that more could be done to identify these divisions in the case of individual agencies, and I hope that the events in the Prison Service will have led ministers and chief executives to d o just this. But even on an individual basis it is never going to be easy and there will always be grey areas. I suspect that this is where a good deal of common sense has to come in and on the whole it has come in. After all, even allowing for some six years of experience and over 100 agencies, the events relating to the Prison Service were really the first time this has come up in the Next Steps context, and we have got to remember that it is not just the relatively simple operations such as HMSO and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency which have made the machinery work, but also a much more complex and sensitive organisation such as the Planning Inspectorate, the Social Security Benefits Agency and the Defence Research Agency. These have worked, and worked well.

So I can now come to my second two questions; first, are there limits to where the agency concept can go; and second, were the prisons a step too far.

The answer to the first is that certainly there is a limit. There is a large number of government activities which simply is not susceptible to a ‘purchaser/provider’ split and it is foolish to try. I think the apparatus could go further than it is going now - for instance the Treasury and Civil Service Committee picked up my idea of agency type taskforces for dealing with across the board policy objectives such as homelessness, possibly drugs, and so on; and the agency concept could work there. But even so there are areas where it would not go.

So what now then about the Prisons Agency and, because they are often, misleadingly in my view, brigaded together, the Child Support Agency (CSA)? I t might be just worthwhile distinguishing between the two before we go further. The two operations were wholly different. The prisons are an operation as old as time, and basically pretty simple. More importantly, prisons are a familiar operation and one which, with possible exception of the prisoners themselves, finds general acceptance. The CSA, on the other hand, was a new and controversial piece of social engineering, admirable and indeed much admired in concept, but launched under conditions laid down by parliament and the Treasury which made it

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extremely difficult to get off the ground. It will work, and it is starting to come right. When policy has been properly established and people start to understand that the concept is here to stay, and when new people come onto the books who are not dragooned there in the first place, when the workforce has been properly assembled and trained and MPs and others start to understand what the operation is all about, then it will function well in the same way as, say, the Social Security Benefits Agency, the Social Security Contributions Agency or the Inland Revenue.

The prisons are different, but I would still argue that they could and should work under the agency regime. Indeed by all accounts a considerable amount of good work was done, recognised by Learmont, by the first chief executive, during the three years he was in post. But the agency failed in what was seen as a crucial test, which was preventing escapes, and even if the overall escape record under agency status was as good as or better than the previous record, it was evidently something which the public did not accept, and in this sort of area the public are king. And so the Home Secretary, in exercise of his rightful powers as being ultimately in charge of the Prisons Agency, decided on a change of chief executive. That is entirely within, and indeed of the essence of the agency concept; the Home Secretary had delegated functions to the chief executive and, rightly or wrongly, perceived that these had not been delivered in one crucial respect. I am not a lawyer and I do not know what the chief executive’s contract said, nor whether or when any case will come to court. But I have to say that within the agency concept this was the Home Secretary’s right and, if he saw it that way, duty. And the chief executive should know this.

O n the other hand, it is evident that the Home Secretary also failed to understand the essence of the ‘contract’ - and I put this in inverted commas because I mean the arrangement underlying the Next Steps concept, not necessarily the legal contract which the chief executive had - in his apparent continuous involvement in detailed management matters. True, all concerned may have been at fault - as, as I suggest above, perhaps many agencies are although with less dire consequences, in spelling out clearly enough who can do what. But the concept of continuous day-to-day involvement and interference at a detailed level is certainly not within the agency idea. Indeed framework documents ail say, in one form of wording or another, that ‘the minister will not normally interfere in day-to-day matters’. Of course the ‘normally’ is a form of let out, but the phrase taken as a whole means what it says, which is that the chief executive must be allowed to get on with running the business. If, as we are told, the Home Secretary did continuously intervene and inquire in all sorts of detailed matters, then he too was guilty of failing to understand the machine that he had been entrusted with, in the same way as it seems as though the chief executive similarly failed fully to understand what that machine was.

Indeed in parenthesis it is interesting to look at the episode of the dismissal of the governor of Parkhurst, one of the incidents forming part of the story under review. Perhaps the full tale will never emerge. But to the external observer it looked as though the Home Secretary was suggesting that the chief executive had taken responsibility for dismissing this person, while the factors combined to suggest that it was in fact the Home Secretary himself who had been the driver. This strikes me as perverse. It seems to me that within the Prison Service, if ever there was an event which was not ‘normal’ it would be the dismissal of the governor of a major prison. Thus in relation to the phrase I have just quoted about ‘not normally interfering in day-to-day matters’, the Home Secretary would be perfectly within his rights to have insisted on the dismissal of this individual if he had thought that was right. I t is indeed puzzling, not just in terms of management and the agency concept, but also indeed in political terms, that the Home

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Secretary did not insist on taking public responsibility for this action, wherever the actual idea for it came from, and whether or not there was agreement on the issue between himself and the chief executive.

The conclusion I draw is that the Next Steps regime can and will work in the prisons, but that being near the margins of what the technique will take, more than usual care and thought is required. And, for totally different reasons and from a different angle, the same goes for the CSA. But the crucial difference between the two was that in the prisons the minister and the chief executive were at odds on how to run the long-established and relatively simple operation they had been entrusted with, while with the CSA the minister and the chief executive were entirely at one on what should be done but found themselves with a new and near impossible task. In the prisons it is the relationship that needs to be sorted out; in the CSA it is the policy. When these are solved both will work.

T o return to the start, I remain of the view - shared I am glad to say by very many commentators - that the Next Steps approach is the right one for the delivery for a great many of our public services, built as it is around the purchased provider relationship and the importance of achieving better service to the public, better value for money to the taxpayer, and adequate accountability. Each one of these three legs is vital. And they are all difficult. But we do not want to get them out of proportion. Perhaps it is a risky thing to say within the hearing of any parliamentarian or heavy-weight political commentator or constitutionalist, but it is not always obvious that accountability in detail is the most important element, especially if it leads to less than good service to the public or to good or less than good value for money. The balance is likely to be different in every case, to see that it is right. But it can be done. And in this the Prison Service is no exception.

I will end with a quotation from the All-Party Treasury and Civil Service Committee which this referred to; in their report last year they said: ‘We believe that Next Steps Agencies represent a significant improvement to the organisation ofgovernment, and any future government will want to maintain them in order to deliver its objectives to delivery of services to the public’. This must be right.

The Learrnont Inquiry

SIR JAMES HENNESSY Former HM Chief Instector of Prisons 1982 to 1987

The Learmont Inquiry, by interpreting its terms of reference very widely, has produced a report which covers not only security but a whole range of issues, stretching from the management of prisons to the purpose of imprisonment. Nevertheless, of the 127 recommendations, almost half relate to security in one form or another. Many of these make points that will be familiar to readers of earlier reports on escapes. Few are likely to prove unacceptable to the Prison Service. Some of the analysis and comment, on the other hand, will be controversial and some will be regarded as unfair.

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The Escape

The escape was investigated by a team of police officers led by a deputy assistant commissioner attached to the Inquiry. It is dealt with in a thoroughly professional way. Describing how the three Category A prisoners slipped away from a gym class, cut their way through an inner fence before climbing over the wall to freedom, the report concludes that physical security at Parkhurst was compromised by insufficient CCTV (closed circuit television) cover and a ‘woefully inadequate’ ECR (emergency control room) as well as the lack ofa geophone (normally standard equipment in a dispersal prison). The extensive construction work going on in the prison at the time was also found to be a factor. But it was the many human failures, particularly failures to follow long-standing security instructions, that were so lamentable, and which justify the verdict that it was ‘inexcusable’.

Comments on the lack ofthe geophone, and the reasons for it, take up many pages ofthe report. The governor and his staff clearly felt very vulnerable without one, and pressed hard to have one installed. But despite years of discussion and correspondence with HQ one had still not been fitted a t the time of the escape. The reasons were many but the Inquiry found none compelling. However, the argument is, in a sense, academic. While the geophone would have given the governor some comfort there is no certainty that it would have worked, or if it had that it would have been picked up in the ECR - which the Inquiry itself criticises for being badly equipped and staffed. The truth is that if the security procedures at the prison had been properly followed in the first place the prisoners would never have got as far as the fence.

The ongoing construction work certainly posed a risk: the report describes how hundreds of contractors competed with staff and inmates alike for a foothold in the confined space of the compound. It is a sobering picture and one which persuaded the Inquiry that the Department had been wrong to keep Parkhurst as a Category A prison while theconstruction work wasgoing on. It was toogreat a security risk. Ifit had to proceed the Category A prisoners should have been removed. The argument is persuasive. With hindsight one can argue that the Department should have moved all the Category A prisoners out. But at the time the establishment was under intense pressure to use every cell to accommodate the growing number of prisoners in the system. In the circumstances it is not difficult to understand the Department’s dilemma.

The difficult conditions that prevailed at Parkhurst also provided many opportunities for the hard men who comprised a large part of the prison’s population, to take advantage of inexperienced staff, and to manipulate, condition and intimidate them. The report notes that ‘no go’ areas were common, and that there was agradual retreat ofauthority to the bunkersofthe administration block or the censor’s office. Failures to carry out duties were many. The catalogue of errors cited by the report adds up to a damning indictment. That the escape was not a one- off experience that could be put down to bad luck is clear. There were warnings and there were precedents that should have alerted staff. That it resulted in the removal of the governor was not therefore surprising. And few would quarrel with the report’s judgment that the failures went far wider than Parkhurst alone.

security

The list ofrecommendations for the improvement ofsecurity, both at Parkhurst and elsewhere, is lengthy and comprehensive. Most can be commended but some will be controversial.

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T h e proposal to build a new top security ‘fortress’ prison for Category A prisoners, for example, will revive many old arguments. Those for and those against the present dispersal system have always been fairly evenly divided. However, as the prison population gets progressively more sophisticated, more dangerous and more violent, the need to separate those men in the top security category from the rest may well become more pressing. Even now there are many who argue that the restrictions on the regime caused by the presence of Category A prisoners in an establishment holding mostly Category Bs is enough to warrant a change. The supporters of change, however, are unlikely to win the day in the present financial climate. In the short term, therefore, a reduction in the number ofdispersal prisons may be a better solution.

The recommendation that a new type of ‘control’ prison should be built is also likely to be controversial. Ifit is to avoid the criticisms made ofits American model it would require exceptional staff to run it and a regime which did not rely over much on physical restraints, such as shackles and chains, which are acceptable in the USA but regarded as inhumane and degrading in this country. If these difficulties could be overcome, however, the proposal might well merit support.

Another recommendation which may not be welcomed concerns the need, as the Inquiry sees it, to keep male and female prisoners in separate establishments. Although such a view is hardly politically correct or in line with feminist aspirations the main objection is likely to lie in the sheer impracticality, in present circumstances, ofbuilding and staffing sufficient special prisons for women in all the major centres in the country. That is no reason, however, for not retaining the ideas as a ‘vision’ (a term which did not endear itself to the Inquiry) for the future, which would allow the Service to concentrate on improving conditions for women in existing establishments (an urgent need) while keeping the idea alive for the future.

Another controversial recommendation concerns family visits, which were introduced in England as a result of a recommendation in the Woolf Report (Woolf 1991) [all references have been consolidated at the end of the symposium]. Learmont suggests they should cease in dispersal prisons. While such visits were clearly abused at Parkhurst that does not seem a sufficient reason to cancel them altogether. I t should not be beyond the wit of the Service to find a formula for conducting family visits in secure conditions. Even at the Maze Prison, where family visits were also a source of anxiety, it was not thought necessary to abolish them after the big escape of 1983. They play an important part in keeping families of long service prisoners together.

The Inspectorate

The report describes the Chief Inspector of Prisons as currently having no security role. There is in fact nothing in the Prisons Act (which sets out the Inspector’s duties) to exclude security matters from his remit. Indeed, such matters have already, from time to time, figured in the Inspectorate’s reports - usually in a confidential annexe. And it has not been unusual for the Secretary ofstate to ask the Chief Inspector to report on specific security issues. In 1983, for example, when 38 Category A prisoners escaped from the top-security Maze prison it was the Chief Inspector who was asked to conduct the Inquiry. Again in 1986 he was asked to report on the many escapes and disturbances that occurred on May 1st of that year. There have been other instances.

In view of the importance ofgood security it would be sensible to ensure that the Inspectorate keeps this role, and even extends it, so that security matters, as well as the treatment and conditions of prisoners (on which the Inspectorate is required to concentrate) are regularly looked at in the course of inspections. So often escapes

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occur not because security is inadequate (English prisons are generally as secure as any in Western Europe) but because long-standing security procedures are not being properly followed. Only by regular inspections and constant training will standards be maintained. And just as the published reports of the Inspectorate, since its inception in 1982, have seen an improvement in the treatment and condition ofprisoners, so should we be able to look forward to improvements in the way scarce resources are used in the name of security. All too often escapes, like those at Parkhurst, are used to justify demands for extra staff, extra resources and extra security. When the hype and hysteria following the escape dies down, however, no one in the system is willing to take responsibility for removing measures, which may well no longer be necessary, for fear of being made the scapegoat if something goes wrong. What is needed is an independent outside observer to apply common-sense in this field - which is where the Inspectorate should come in.

Management

The report notes that a great deal:

needs to be put right within the Prison Service, spanning leadership, structure, the management chain and the ethos of the service. (para. 3.2)

The new structure recommended in the report would put wing managers back on the wings (where they could see and be seen by inmates) and area managers back in their areas (where they would function as line managers). This must surely be right. And if there is any confusion in the minds of some area managers, as the report suggests, about whether their role is advisory or executive, it obviously needs to be removed. As the direct successors of the old regional directors, who clearly were part of line management, they should not be in any doubt about their functions. The confusion that the Inquiry found may have been more apparent than real, deriving from the fact that, unlike regional directors, area managers are in the same grade as governors I. It would be understandable, therefore, if some of the younger area managers gave the impression that they were ‘advising’ a senior governor to do something, rather than giving him a direct order. If that was the case it would help to strengthen the hand of area managers were they were to be graded a notch higher than governors I.

Prison HQ

The role of H Q in the management of the Service also comes in for much comment. It is criticised, for example, for being ‘out of touch’, too big, ‘too paper- oriented’, and for producing a variety of visions, goals, priorities and strategies that were ‘a recipe for total confusion’. Some of these comments will doubtless strike a chord with staff in the field. They are the kind of things said about the H Q of many large organisations by staff in the field - not least in the army. They are not always justified. In the case of the Prison Service many of their problems stem, as the report recognises, from the historically close involvement of the Home Office. This led to a civil service type of management very different from the style adopted by the Prison Service Commissioners 30 years ago when the Service was still a disciplined service. The Department grew to resemble other departments in Whitehall, with a large staff of civil servants, who acording to Learmont, ‘appear to have little understanding of the problems of the Service’.

The deputysecretary who headed the department was chosen from among those civil servants in the Home Office who had the qualities and skills to provide the

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Home Secretary with the support he needed to discharge his parliamentary duties. He was not chosen because he had any particular knowledge of prisons. Often he had none. That he was simultaneously appointed director general of the Prison Service was as anomalous as it would have been to choose a member of the Prison Service to fill the role of deputy secretary. Neither had all the skills required to do the job of the other. The comment in the report, therefore, that ‘it i s a damning indictment of career development policy that no director general has ever been appointed from within the Service’ is wide of the mark. So long as the Department remained a Whitehall department it was inevitable (until very recently) that the head should be a civil servant. However, Learmont is right to quote approvingly the comment in the May Report that the ‘organisation and ethos of a civil service department [is] inappropriate for the management of an operational organisation.

The opportunity for change came with the setting up of a Prison Service Agency. Lygo (Home Office 1991b) hoped that it would lead to a distancing, if not a complete separation, of the operational side of prisons from the Home Office. But little changed.

The problem remains how to make policy, in the broadest sense, in a way in which it can be communicated to and integrated with, the day-to-day workings of the Prison Service while at the same time ensuring that the Home Secretary is enabled to perform his parliamentary duties in relation to the Prison Service. Until these questions are clearly answered the difficulties that Prison Service H Q faces are likely to continue - and so will criticism of its size and paper producing potential. It is clearly not possible for a much reduced Agency, staffed largely by Prison Service personnel, to deal simultaneously with the flood of demands from the Home Office (Learmont catalogues the enormous number of requests made over a period of 83 days) while at the same time operating efficiently some 150 prisons holding over 50,000 prisoners.

To overcome this difficulty the report recommends that the director general should be responsible to an owner in the Home Office. This proposal is not elaborated on so it is difficult to judge its usefulness. But if the relationship between the Prison Service HQ and the Home Secretary were something like that between the Home Secretary and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police it could provide a model for a fresh start. It would certainly lead to a much greater distance between the director general and the Home Secretary thus making it easier to appoint a director general from within the Service - which would bring considerable advantages in terms of credible leadership. But what is gained from credibility within the Service might he lost in terms of Whitehall credibility. And the need for the director general to have the kind of expertise most developed in the private sector, further complicates the picture. What is clear is that the qualities and skills required of a director general are manifold - and not easily found in any one person. This may explain why so many directors general in the past have encountered criticism from one quarter or another. The recently dismissed director general is no exception - and in this respect the report appears less than fair. He and his board had, for example, achieved much in the field of industrial relations and, ironically, in reducing escapes. He presided over a Service which has come a long way since the 19809, when criticisms of overcrowding, slopping out, lack of work, and lack of association time were the stuff of Inspectorate reports. And this progress has been made at a time when the prison population was rising to record levels and the climate of opinion in the field of penal reform was changing. Much is still wrong in our prisons, but that should not blind us to what has been achieved. The report gives scant recognition to this fact.

In similar vein the report laments the absence of Key Performance Indicators

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(KPIs) for drugs, sanitation, time out of cells, recidivism etc. But little credit is given to the Prisons Board for having introduced standards and KPIs in the first place. Ten years ago many observers were despairing of ever getting a code of standards accepted at all. Yet the Inquiry appears not to have been impressed. Instead, the report calls for more emphasis to be laid on custody.

To many observers of the penal scene this is going backwards. But it should not cause surprise. After every major escape in the last 30 years there has been a similar lurch towards security and more repressive regimes. Humanity is put on hold - eventually prisoners are brought to the point where they rebel: disturbances and riots follow. And then the pendulum starts to swing back again towards more liberal regimes.

M o d e

These swings in policy have a most unsettling effect, not only on prisoners but on the Service as a whole. Staff begin to lose confidence in what they are doing. The leadership of the Service is questioned. HQ is blamed. Morale drops.

This has been a recurrent theme in reports on the Service ever since the May Committee reported in the late 1970s (Home Ofice 1979). Poor morale is nothing new. The Learmont Report is not alone - except in ascribing the cause to the recent escapes and riots and the proliferation of paper and new initiatives emanating from HQ. But it is not as simple as that. Poor morale results from many things: poor industrial relations, staff shortages, job insecurity (as prisons are privatised), pay problems (as overtime is cut), lack oftraining, when prisons cannot be left unmanned, intimidation and poor physical conditions. The list is long. But most of all it results from changing fashions in penal policy - changes which lead to staff questioning not only the value of what they are doing, but the whole purpose of imprisonment.

The Purpoae of Imprimnment The recent hardening of public attitudes towards crime and imprisonment has led to changes in penal policy. These changes have, once again, raised questions about the purpose of imprisonment. The Learmont Report follows this trend by questioning the present Service statement of purpose - to hold prisoners securely and humanely, and to help them lead law-abiding lives when they released. This statement was re-written, amended and refined a number of times before being published in its present form. The report, however, calls for a new statement - one that reflects its belief that greater emphasis needs to be put on custody and control. This is another way of saying that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of care - and the evidence for that is supposed to come from the recent escapes. Yet escapes are endemic in all prison systems. However many more millions may be spent on security following this Inquiry it can never be guaranteed. No prison is ever more secure than the weakest member of its staff. And absolute security can only be ensured by resorting to inhumane and unacceptable methods. The Learmont Report, therefore, marks a defining moment in the history of penal reform. For the first time in 20 years of steady progress towards more humanitarian regimes the clock may be about to be put back.

Some may feel it is no more than time; that the calls for more relaxed conditions that followed the Woolf report have been taken too far, and that the connection between prison and punishment, so essential to our system of law and order, has been lost. Such feelings appear to have been picked up by the Inquiry - and reinforced by what they found at Parkhurst.

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Whether feelings of this kind are widespread and represent a general reaction in the Service to the changes which were stimulated by the Woolf Report is open to doubt. However, a return to more traditional Victorian values of work, discipline and punishment for wrongdoing would probably be supported by some in the Service - and certainly by many outside it. I t results from a feeling that the retributive and deterrent elements of imprisonment are no longer apparent in some of our prisons. By recommending a new statement of purpose the Inquiry appears to lend its support to this view.

The risk is, of course, that any swing away from care towards custody could have quite the opposite effect to that intended. The lesson of the 1986 disturbances, during which 45 prisoners escaped, was that security and stability rest as much on consent as on control. Putting less emphasis on care and more on custody may reduce the number of escapes in the short term - at great cost to the individual and the taxpayer - but is likely to prove counter-productive in the long term.

This is an important report and should be widely read. It exposes many of the ills that beset the Prison Service. And it makes useful recommendations for improving security, and the structure and management of the prison system. One regrets the lack of historical analysis - which might have resulted in a fairer assessment ofwhat had been achieved -but understands that time was against the Inquiry. It would be a pity, however, if the report were remembered chiefly for setting the clock back on penal reform.

Learmont: Dangerously Unbalanced

ROD MORGAN Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Bristol

However cynically ministers may attempt to appoint to official positions and enquiries persons who are likely to provide them with the answers they would most like to hear, the evidence suggests that it often fails to work out. Confronted with the legacy of a growling Woolf, increasingly fed up with, and at last rid of, the dogged Tumim, and startled now by the precocious snarls of Woodcock and Ramsbotham, Michael Howard must have wished that with Learmont, carefully shepherded by a well-trained Woodcock, he had got it right. But Learmont turned out to be almost rabid, unpredictable, combative and opinionated. He picked up the lure and ran all over the place, apparently not recognising the boundaries of the course. And for once Michael Howard’s fiercest critics must have wished he had managed to find a poodle. For Learmont has unleashed forces on which the Home Secretary, hoist by his own rhetoric, may feel he has to act. If ever there was a report that deserved to gather dust, it is Learmont’s. But ironically, and dangerously, i t may not be so. Learmont is not going away. He appears to be advising the Home Secretary about the implementation of his recommendations at Whitemoor (Learmont 1995), an arrangement that must be viewed with irritation by the provisional director general and the new Chief Inspector of Prisons. And all the evidence suggests that many of Learmont’s recommendations are already being acted on.

The escapes from Whitemoor and Parkhurst, whether or not the prisoners were

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recaptured within minutes, hours, days or years, represented a major failure by the Prison Service to meet its stated objectives. An inquiry was justified, though it might better have been conducted, and with the wisdom of hindsight would certainly have been better conducted, by the Chief Inspector. The Woodcock and Learmont Reports revealed major lapses by the institutions concerned and, when read in conjunction with the report of the Chief Inspector of Prisons on Parkhurst (HM Chief Inspector of Prisons 1995), it seems clear that there were also breaches of the Prison Service’s duty of care. Some parts of Parkhurst, where serious prisoner-on-prisoner violence was rife and where dealing in and the taking of hard drugs was endemic, were not patrolled by staff and were virtual ‘no-go’ areas. Cells and other areas were not regularly searched and when they were proper records were not kept. The lack of security and control in the prison was closely related to the security lapse of the prison. Well established procedures were not followed. Whatever other policy pressures and structural defects came to light the governors of Whitemoor and Parkhurst could scarcely have been spared and there can be little quarrel with the well-precedented outcome of their demise.

Further, many of Learmont’s day-to-day security recommendations are scarcely arguable. Indeed they often traverse ground already well covered by Hadfield and Lakes (1991) following the escape of two Category A remand prisoners from Brixton in 1991. So far so good. It is when Learmont takes a broader view of his terms of reference that he stands revealed. His principles are unacceptable, the logic of his arguments do not bear scrutiny and his understanding, both historical and operational, appears negligible. The latter is scarcely surprising. When I gave evidence to him Learmont literally bragged about not having read previous inquiry reports. It shows. His report is a thoroughly bad one which should not command respect and will result in serious long-term damage if implemented.

The most important innovation, and defect, in the Learmont Report is his elevation of ‘custody’ to the position of ‘primary purpose’ for the Prison Service (para. 3.40). The significance of this cannot be over-emphasised. Learmont is not saying that custody should have priority. That much is already well-established. Custody is the first duty spelt out in the Prison Service’s current statement of purpose, it is the Service’s first ‘Goal’ and, from the beginning of its life as an agency, has been supported by a ‘Key Target Indicator’ focussed on escapes and their elimination (HM Prison Service 1993b). Moreover, despite Learmont’s scathing comments about the generic nature of this KTI (Appendix J), and the Service has always made clear that’its particular aim is ‘to ensure that no Category A prisoner escapes and that no prisoner escapes from a Category B establishment’ (HM Prison Service 1993b, p. 3). In this regard the Prison Service has been highly successful with the exception of the, admittedly serious, Whitemoor and Parkhurst lapses and, as I understand it the provisional escape figures for 1995 will show the lowest number of escapes for many years.

Learmont wishes to go beyond all this. He wants custody to be the ‘primary purpose’ of the Service and it is clear that everything that follows in his report that all other aspects of policy are to be subordinated to this ‘basic’ requirement. Learmont recommends that, in order that the Service rid itself of the confusion he claims is pervasive, for the Service to have ‘a clear purpose’ which will avoid ‘unco-ordination’ and ‘prisoner exploitation’, it should adopt a new statement of purpose which will emphasise that ‘the primary responsibility of the Service is custody’ (paras. 3.34-3.40).

This recommendation is disingenuous and dishonest: everyone knows that the confusion in the Service stems not from the statement of purpose but from the policy reversals dictated by Michael Howard since 1993 and his meddling in issues which ought, by any standard, to be regarded as operational. These reversals and

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interventions have resulted in confusing messages received by prison officers with regard to their day-to-day dealings with prisoners. Furthermore, Learmont’s recommendation overturns the philosophy of the Woolf Report, which in 1991 the government said it accepted (Home Office 1991a, para. 10). Were Learmont’s recommendations adopted, in spirit or in letter, it would radically alter the historical character of the Prison Service and there are signs that this is happening already.

It has been customary to see the functions and objectives of the Prison Service, like those of many other organisations, as a balancing act. The terminology built into the equation has been much debated - ‘Security’ and ‘Custody’, ‘Control’ and ‘Order’, ‘Care’ or ‘Regime’, ‘Fairness’ or ‘Justice’, ‘Programmes’ or ‘Opportunities’ (see Morgan 1992, 1994). There has also been discussion about the number of terms that should be used in the equation satisfactorily to cover the mandate. But there has been some consensus, which it is generally acknowledged was taken to a fairly sophisticated level in the Woolf Report, that the maintenance of ‘balance’ is essential if the Prison Service is to realise the wider objectives of the criminal justice system. Woolf and Tumin were very clear on this point. They saw ‘security’, ‘control’ and ‘justice’ as complementary:

If security is breached and a prisoner is allowed to escape, that frustrates the sentence imposcd by the Court. There is a failure of both security and justice. If sufficient control is not provided and prisoners riot, security is put at risk and the ability of the Service to provide conditions which accord with justicc will bc impaired . , , If the Prison Service contains prisoncr(s) in conditions which are inhumane or degrading, or which are otherwise wholly inappropriate, then a punishment which was justly imposcd, will result in injustice. (Woolf 1991, paras. 10.41, 10.19)

The Woolf Report stressed that security, control and justice are complementary and symbiotic elements each of which must be given their ‘due weight’. Although Learmont talks about ‘Custody, Care and Control in harmony’ providing ‘a balanced regime’ (para. 3.32), there is no reference to justice in his report and it is clear that he sees care and custody as conflicting elements. Giving them their due weight apparently results in confusion (paras. 3.31, 3.35). Thus custody must be made the ‘primary purpose’ (para. 3.40).

There is a striking parallel here with recent debates on the police. In Britain the police have generally been held to serve several purposes - crime prevention, the pursuit and bringing to justice of offenders, keeping the Queen’s peace, and protecting, helping and reassuring the community, for example, were cited by Sheehy (1993). I t has been repeatedly asserted that all these aims are important and that none should be allowed to prejudice another. Lord Scarman (1981), for example, famously arguedfor ‘consent and balance’ and against the pursuit of ‘law enforcement’ to the detriment of ‘public tranquility’ (para. 4.57). I t was precisely because ‘balance’ and ‘policing by consent’ have been held to be so important a part of the British policing tradition that the government’s White Paper on Police Rcfonn (Home Office 1993) excited such controversy. The government argued that ‘fighting crime should be the priority for police officers’: Keeping the Queen’s peace was nowhere mentioned. Critics argued that the ‘war on crime’ model represented a misunderstanding of the nature of crime and that were ‘crime- fighting’ made the principal role of the police, there was a danger that much else of value to a civilised community, not least effective policing, would be lost (Independent Committee 1996). The same critique can be applied to Learmont. Though prisons policy is less prominent a test ofa civilised society it is, as Winston Churchill observed, nonetheless a test. Custody is, as the Prison Service maintains it is, a key priority. But it is not the primary purpose. Nor should it be.

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Consider Learmont’s proposals regarding prisoner security classification. Two of the three prisoners who escaped from Parkhurst were Category A ‘standard risk’ and had served nearly six and five years respectively: the third, who had already served nine years, was Category B, formerly Category A. In Learmont’s judgment the two Category A prisoners were classification ‘anomalies’: neither ‘sat comfortably’ within either the standard or the high-risk Category A definition (para. 2.149 and Appendix N). On the basis of their escape risk, and the danger they presented were they to escape, they should, Learmont argues, have been more highly classified. Only the inflexibility of categorisation practice and the present system had prevented that from happening. Learmont therefore recommends that the present four-fold categorisation system be replaced by a six- fold system in which Cats 1, 2 and 3 would roughly approximate to Category A exceptional, high and standard risk, though the adoption of what Learmont, following Canter ( 1991), calls a multi-dimensional ‘facet’ approach would, he asserts, permit the more precise categorisation of prisoners on the basis of a ‘scientific’ assessment of risk (paras. 5.2-5.8 and Appendix N). Possibly. Though it should be noted that, pending the results of the research that might ‘scientifically’ validate Learmont’s proposed approach, the two Category A escapees would not have qualified for the new Categories 1 or 2 and Learmont did not find the Category B escapee, a life sentence murderer, formerly Category A, to be a categorisation anomaly. This outcome, however, has apparently not given Learmont pause for thought about making recommendations which, were they implemented, would massively ratchet up the security quotient for the prisoner population and Service generally.

Learmont’s fortress prison, in which would be concentrated all the exceptional and high-risk Category As, would have a CNA of 258 (para. 5.14). His ‘Control’ prison which, if past experience as well as Learmont’s own expectations is any guide, would accommodate many Category As, would have a CNA of 200 (paras. 5.41-5.52). Yet he also proposes retaining the six remaining dispersal prisons, their existing Category B inhabitants - approximately 2,000 of them - being recategorised Category A, or Category 3 under the proposed system. At a stroke, therefore, Learmont suggests that we ignore all the evidence, about which prison staff as well as external critics have been agreed, namely that the majority of prisoners in dispersal prisons have been subject to greater security than individually they require (see King and McDermott 1995, chapter 2). He would increase fourfold the number of what we currently call Category A prisoners from 700-800 to approximately 3,000. It follows that Learmont’s plan is not consistent with the high-security ‘concentration’ model for which many critics, myself included, have long argued (King and Morgan 1980). Learmont proposes surmounting a super fortress on a chain of fortresses, the dispersal prisons concretised. Literally.

Furthermore, Learmont recommends that many Category C prisoners be re- categorised B (or 4) on the grounds that many of them ‘tend to have long sentences and are likely to be dangerous and keen to escape’ (para. 5.23), an assertion for which he provides absolutely no supporting evidence. He would also substantially intensify the security provisions in Category C prisons on the grounds that many Category C prisoners are young, undisciplined and difficult to control (paras. 5.24-5.25), that is that they represent a control not a security risk and that there is, therefore, an ‘order’ not a ‘custody’ problem. Finally, he would fence many of the open prisons on the grounds that the number of prisoners suitable for Category D (or 6) is falling: the number ofopen prison places should therefore be significantly reduced (para. 5.37). Learmont also recommends, intcr alia: CCTV cover, fixed furniture and the wearing by prisoners of distinctive clothing in secure prison

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visiting rooms; an end to family visits in serurity prisons; a strict volumetric limit to the amount of personal property that any prisoner may have; the withdrawal of what high-security prisoners have come to regard as their entitlement to prepare their own food on the wings; the removal of all blinds or curtains affording some privacy in security prison communal areas; and a mandatory end to contact visits for ‘exceptional risk’ Category A prisoners.

It all adds up to a dramatic intensification of the depth of imprisonment. Moreover Learmont appears to be unaware of, or has chosen to ignore, the fact that every major inquiry into prisoner categorisation in recent years has concluded that excessive resort has been made to the higher risk categories, and recommended that they be used more parsimoniously (Home Affairs Committee 1981; H M Prison Department 1981; H M Chief Inspector of Prisons 1984; Hadfield and Lakes 1991). I t is possible that this conclusion no longer applies. The number of prisoners serving long sentences has greatly increased. The proportion of prisoners convicted of crimes of violence has increased. There has been dramatic growth of the number of sex offenders in prisons. There are more and more sophisticated drug tratfickers in the system, ruthless offenders with well- resourced professional backing. But it is not self-evident that the number of prisoners in the system who would present a grave risk to the public were they to escape has increased to the extent that the Service now imposes that categorisation label. Learmont has provided absolutely no evidence to support his proposal that we should now take that security path to quite extraordinary new high levels.

Woolf considered that in the years preceding the 1990 riots the Prison Service had overemphasised security, given insufficient attention to justice and often adopted inappropriate control measures. This imbalance has led to catastrophic disorder. Learmont makes no mention of justice, recommends that security be screwed up to unprecedented levels and, though he makes recommendations for the enhancement of prisoner programmes, he appears to see them not as valuable in their own right but rather as incentives with ‘control’ potential. I t is a recipe for disaster.

Other aspects of the Learmont Report are so lacking in logic, and are couched in terms so superficial, that one hopes that even the most knee-jerk of Home Secretaries will be restrained by the disruptive and financial cost of implementing them. Learmont talks almost gleefully, for example of the ‘paper mountain’ received annually by prisons - higher than Cleland House, Big Ben, the Empire State Building and Ben Nevis, ‘47 tons of paper, equating to a pile nearly a mile high’ (para. 3.131 and Figure 9). An inflated headquarters staff, presumably engaged in generating work merely to justify their own existence, is also held responsible for the ‘38 current initiatives . . . (not necessarily exhaustive)’ ofwhich Learmont, almost derisively, provides a list (Appendix L). These initiatives, contributing to the ‘blizzard of paper’ emanating from headquarters (para. 3.125), have ‘a detrimental effect on prisons’ (para. 3.129). They prevent governors ‘from discharging the primary role of hands-on management’ of their establishments (para. 3.132). There should therefore be significant ‘downsizing’ of headquarters.

The ugliness and superficial fashionability of this phrase is telling. It is underpinneed by no honest diagnosis of what has actually been happening to the Prison Service in recent years. Moreover, there is no incisive appraisal ofwhat the administrative consequences of implementing Learmont’s own recommendations would be. For example there is no discussion of public accountability - should that also be ‘downsized’? - and no appraisal of the Prison Service’s assertion that only 12% of the paperwork received by establishments emanates from headquarters (para. 3.132). Furthermore, the content of the 38 ‘headquarters’ initiatives receives absolutely no comment: the fact that during the course of Learmont’s own

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Inquiry ‘the director general wrote to all governors to postpone or re-phase about half of them’ is taken implicitly to mean that they could scarcely have been very important (para. 3.130).

One would like to know which of the 38 Prison Service initiatives listed in Appendix L were dumped or put back as a result of the ‘new top priorities’ which arose during the course of the Woodcock and Learmont Inquiries. Did they, for example, include ‘dealing with increase in the prison population’ (16), ‘market testing’ (6), ‘agency status’ ( l ) , ‘changes in escort procedures’ (15), ‘changes on home leave, adjudication procedures, prisoners’ shopping’ (20) and ‘hard charging for services’ (32), all ofwhich initiatives were made necessary by changes in government policy? Did they include ‘equal opportunities’ (lo), ‘change of status of POA, PGA - High Court Injunctions’ (29), ‘loss of Crown immunity - food regulations’ ( 17) and the ‘new parole system, discretionary lifer panels, open reporting’ (18) made necessary by recent legislation and court decisions? Did they include ‘race relations’ (9), ‘suicide awareness’ (1 I ) , the ‘introduction of new breathing apparatus for cell rescue’ (26) or the ‘drive to develop offending behaviour programmes, anger management, pre-release, drug advice groups, HIV/AIDS awareness’ and so on (28), all of which arose out of system failures arguably of equal or greater importance than anything that happened at Whitemoor or Parkhurst? Did they include the ‘implementation of Woolf recommendations and government’s White Paper’ (8) the report of whom Learmont bragged about not having read and which he chose largely to ignore (except, for example, when attributing to Woolf the damaging disappearance of prison officers’ uniform hats (para. 3.47) and, indirectly, the abandonment of plans to install geophones at Parkhurst (para. 2.89))? Or did they include the ‘development of KPIs’ (3), ‘developed budgets and greater local involvement’ (4), ‘sentence planning/compacts’ ( 12), the ‘building programme across estate’ (24), ‘headquarters reorganisation - impact on establishments’ ( 5 ) , the ‘area manager’s review’ (22), the ‘impact of major IT programmes’ (36) or the ‘review of training requirements’ (38), all of which topics are also the object of many of Learmont’s 120 recommendations and which, if implemented, would greatly increase the number of initiatives which a much diminished headquarters staff would have to pursue with more pieces of paper?

Let us be clear. Few would contest the case for reducing the number of Prison Service HQ personnel and redistributing those staff to establishments in order that prison governors, given their new devolved budgetary and managerial respons- ibilities, be better supported administratively. Moreover, the size of HQ has been significantly reduced in recent years and the Service would like to reduce it further from approximately 1,800 to 1,300 posts by 1998 (para. 3.123). But it is scarceIy surprising that the Service envisages little immediate scope for further reduction of HQ if ministers continue to make changes and meddle in operational policy detail to the extent that they currently do - a topic about which Learmont could have spoken a good deal more plainly -and if they must now pursue a whole raft of new changes which Learmont recommends and to which the government has given a warm reception.

Learmont offers no solution to this dilemma: indeed much that he proposes, whatever the merits of the individual recommendations, would make it worse. He wants existing KPIs to be made more complex and new ones developed (recommendation 65), all of which would necessarily lead to the collection, reporting and analysis of additional data. He wants further written policies to be generated by H Q regarding: the searching of prisoners (rec. 12) and prisoners’ visitors (rec. 87); prisoners’ property (rec. 23); minimum physical security standards (rec. 25); staff co-operation with police investigations (rec. 36); and

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agreed prison design (rec. 79). H e wants national reviews of policy, which would largely have to be undertaken by H Q staff, regarding: locks and locking schedules (rec. 26); intelligence and management information (rec. 37); prisoner security categorisation (rec. 38); prisoners’ access to phone cards (rec. 44); personnel policy (rec. 49); the handling of disputes with the POA (rec. 55); desired core staff competencies (rec. 66); the status of the Prison Service agency vis B vis the Home Office and, by implication, ministers (rec. 71); the development of industrial prisons (rec. 11 I ) ; the continued need for open prisons (rec. 112); and the prison estate for women (rec. 114). He wants the possible use of T V links between courts and prisons to be explored (rec. 98) and the potential use of chemical incapacitants, CS gas and armed response to be investigated (rec. 101). Those tasks would also lie largely with HQ personnel.

There is practically nothing that HQ personnel currently do that Learmont appears to think they should not do. Aside from his general ‘downsizing’ injunction he makes only three recommendations which involve the specific transfer of H Q tasks and staff, He proposes that the lifer group and the parole unit should be moved out of HQ - they, apparently, being ‘distraction to top management (which) should be moved forthwith’ (para. 3.124) - though where they should go he does not say and there is no suggestion that these personnel should undertake their work based in any of the establishments. Secondly, he thinks that ‘boards of visitors should be properly resourced’ (para. 3.142), which suggests that they are not at present, and their liaison section (which I believe comprises one woman and her dog) also removed from HQ. Once again there is no suggestion as to where the woman and her dog should go, but the implication is that the boards of visitors should be served by a larger liaison unit, presumably to be staffed initially by HQ personnel currently engaged on other work. Finally, L,earmont wants area managers out of HQ, holding their own budgets and ‘appropriately resourced’ (para. 3.136). This would mean the re-creation of a dozen area offices, three times as many as the four regional offices closed down in 1990, and, it would appear, the allocation of more staff to them than currently serve area managers at HQ. These proposals also, whatever their individual merits, would involve no real reduction in HQ personnel: they would simply transfer HQ staff from Cleland House to a variety of HQ satellites. I t is highly unlikely, therefore, that governors would gain relief from their managerial burden as a result of these rearrangements and H Q administrative costs would certainly rise.

One could continue this review almost indefinitely. But the exercise would not be rewarding. Whichever way one approaches it, the Learmont Report does not add up. I was living abroad when it was published and was asked by the BBC, who had faxed me the 120 ‘consolidated recommendations’, if I would be prepared to comment on it publicly. I said I could not: I needed the full text in order to understand the logic behind Learmont’s recommendations. The commissioning editor accepted my refusal. But he could not resist commenting that he doubted whether the recommendations would make better sense if I did have the full text. I largely agree now that I have read it. Which is why the speed with which many of Learmont’s proposals are apparently being taken up - the abandonment of Parkhurst as a dispersal prison despite the millions so recently poured into it, the abolition of all contact visits, including those with lawyers, for all exceptional risk Category A prisoners, and, as I write, alleged plans to close or fence several open prisons in spite of the record-high and rising prison population (The Guardian, 28 December 1995) - is both astonishing and alarming.

It needs to be said loud and clear by everyone who cares about the future of the Prison Service that a just and humanely balanced mandate is what the Service

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must be allowed more autonomously to pursue. The interests of the public and the criminal justice system will not be well served by an increasingly politicised prison system in which security and custody becomes the be-all-and-end-all. The Prison Service has a generally good custody record and despite the troubles of recent years most prisons, most of the time, are orderly places within which prisoners can live a safe and humane existence. Further, the majority of prison officers do a difficultjob well. There must be no diminution in the accountability of the Service. But the many able and wise governors in the system must develop a more professional association which will corporately enable them better to resist the superficial meddling to which they are increasingly subject. Learmont represents dangerous imbalance and most of his report should be allowed to gather the shelf- dust that it deserves.

What did Learrnont Say? Some ‘On the Ground’ Views of the

Learrnont Report

ANITA DOCKLEY Policy OfJicer, Howard League f o r Penal Reform

A look of uncertainty came across the faces of many prison staff and prisoners when they were asked directly what the Learmont Report (Home Ofice 1995) and its recommendations meant to them’. After further questioning, it became apparent that most had a fairly good idea about the main thrust of the report: increasing control through enhanced security’.

General Sir John Learmont emphasised in his report that he was given a wide brief to ‘provide as comprehensive picture as possible of the many areas that could effect security’ (p. i ) . Later, he urged the Prison Service to ensure that custody (used as a synonym for security (para. 3.32)) became its primary purpose, above caring for prisoners (rec. 62).

A look through the report revealed that Learmont’s route to secure prisons was by getting the ‘basics right’ (para. 4.1) which meant focussing on physical and electronic security. Dynamic security, based on relationships and trust (Dunbar 1985), took a secondary role despite the Inquiry’s recognition of its ‘importance . . . and acknowledg[ing] the work already undertaken with prisoner programmes’ (para. 5.56). However, it would seem that in reality the ethos of Learmont and how it, and the other recent changes to the prison system, have been translated into practice, has done more to undermine rather than enhance dynamic security.

At the time of writing, the Home Secretary has made no commendations to parliament about the remaining 1 253 recommendations contained in General Sir John Learmont’s report4. However the flavour and emphasis of Learmont, in combination with other changes and pressures on the prison system and the Woodcock Report in particular, have had a discernible impact on the prison environment and actors. Yet almost no-one in either of the two prisons visited for this paper would attribute any single change to Learmont alone.

This paper will provide an illustration of what the Learmont Report has meant

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to those who have to live, work and visit the prison environment. I t looks a t how the current security focus is a t odds with the concept of dynamic security.

Just Another Change . . . The Learmont Report has been just one of numerous pressures on the prison system over the last few years. As one Prison Service official recently commented: the prison system is ‘. . . in an era of rising demands and constant change’ (Home Office 1996a). The situation has not been aided by the swingeing budget cuts being imposed on the Prison Service ( H M Prison Service 1996; Howard League 1996a).

Among the pressures, and certainly one of the most pressing, has been the rapidly rising prison population (Howard League 1996a), over which prisons have no control. In May 19935 the prison population stood at 43,585. The latest figures show 53,941 people in prison (29 March 1996), a 24% increase6. There continues to be upward pressure7, almost certainly fuelled by a Home Secretary who actively endorses mass incarceration (Rutherford 1996) in sloganeering and rhetoric which has had such an influence on the direction of penal policy* and practice. I t also complements a general parliamentary trend to present complex issues in a simplistic, commonsense manner. This has allowed rhetoric, which has mass public popularity, to be presented (and implemented) as a panacea to the ‘crime problem’. However, little coherent research was used in their formulation or to indicate that these policies are likely to be effective in the long term (Howard League forthcoming; Ryan and Sim 1995).

Crisis management has been another important factor in the constant change imposed on the prison system: in August 1993, the Home Secretary stated that prisons should be ‘austere’ (Rose 1993); this was closely followed by proposals for incentive/enhanced privilege regime (Leibling and Bosworth 1994; H M Prison Service 1995a) and now operates in more than 30 prisons (Home Offke 1996b); in November 1994, the rules on temporary release were tightened following a few high-profile failures (Penal Affairs Consortium 1995; H M Prison Service 1995b); and then there have been two high-profile escapes from the high-security estate leading to the Woodcock (Home Office 1994) and Learmont reports. All these factors have contributed to the emphasis in the prison system swinging firmly toward the needs of security, making it the Prison Service’s ‘top priority’ (Home Ofice 1996b). This has been a marked departure from the previous, widely accepted, penal policy agenda which promoted the principles of security, control and justice in prisons, as shaped by Lord Woolf (1991).

Such constant change has led to low morale in the prison environment with actors feeling bom barded and fatigued (Roddan 1995). The general feeling portrayed to the Howard League, by prison staff in particular, was that they were undermined and constantly fearful that they would be ‘blamed’ for anything which did not comply with the Home Secretary’s viewg. This particularly a plied to innovative practice of where decisions were based on calculated ‘risks”( One identified factor was the increasing number of interventions and the level of daily control imposed from the central government. This contradicted the ‘hands-off approach to daily matters which should have followed from the Prison Service’s agency status (Home Office 1991). This meant that prison staff and prisoners felt the prison environment, and its rules, were constantly changing, often following contradictory routes. These were thought to be shaped to meet the perceived needs of the electorate rather than the statutory demands of Prison Rule 1 to ‘look after them with humanity, and to help them to lead law-abiding and useful lives in custody and after release’.

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Although there have been a series of changes which have contributed to tightening of prison security and less varied prison regimes, the Woodcock and Learmont reports have had an important role in informing the current shape of prison policy.

Two Inquiries into Escapes: One Analysis of the Problems

It seems that history is repeating itself. Just as the escapes of prisoners between 1963 and 1965 led to the Mountbatten Report (Home Office 1966) and the subsequent Radzinowicz Report (Home Office 1968) focussing on, and increasing, prison (physical) security (Downes and Morgan 1994), so too it appears that this will be the destiny of the prison system again.

Although security, was quite logically, the central concern of the Woodcock and Learmont reports, they have sought, once again, to contain and control prisoners through physical security measures above all else. They stressed the importance of physical security, searching and a ‘carrot and stick’ approach to control. Notions of permeability, responsibility, opportunity and trust, which had been broadly welcomed by commentators and prison staff alike (Player and Jenkins 1994; Howard League 1994; Woolf 1991), appear to be defunct concepts in today’s prisons.

The very fact that the reports were looking at the escape of high-risk prisoners from maximum-security prisons has had an important influence on the report’s nature and content. Many of the recommendations were not meant to be implemented across the whole system”. However, in reality most of the recommendations, and much ofthe security ethos which pervaded the reports, have been implemented throughout the entire system (Penal Affairs Consortium 1996). In his last annual report, His Honour Judge Stephen Tumim commented:

. . . the Woodcock Enquiry Report . . . included a number of policy passages [that were] difficult to interpret . . . The Prison Service as a whole seems to be taking the view that Sir John was referring, in . . . vital recommendations, to all prisons everywhere. (HM Inspectorate of Prisons 1995, p. xii)

The Prison Oficers’ Association has also acknowledged the impact of the Woodcock and Learmont ethos on the entire prison system:

. . . the Woodcock/Learmont list , . . will have particularly drastic effects on the lower category prisons as they are cut harder in order to fund more security at higher security establishments . . . Staffwill be cut from all areas other than security tasks. (quoted in Penal Affairs Consortium 1996, p. 4).

Security is at the top of every prison governor’s agenda (HM Prison Service 1996; H M Prison Service 1995a). It is testament to the low morale and prison professionals’ lack of faith in the current direction of penal policies, that some staff openly speak of a need for a ‘good riot’ to swing the balance away from pure security considerations. In recent years the most positive reforms have followed disturbances (Woolf 1991).

Building Greater Barriers

Security considerations have not only become the first priority, but the second and third as well, throughout the prison system. Indeed, the Prison Service will be conducting security audits in which each prison will be rated in terms of physical security and searching procedures (Ford 1995). Many consider this to be detrimental to rehabilitative and constructive regimes. Prisoners and staff

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recognised that there has been intensified security awareness throughout every aspect of prison life. This ranged from the curtailment of published material prisoners can have sent to them to mandatory drug testing and the increased use of CCTV. As the Learmont Report stated:

Security covers a wide spectrum of measures. However, within that spectrum are certain fundamental requirements which must be met . . . First and foremost, prisons must be built to a nationally agreed standard . . . Not only must the outer perimeter and building reach a satisfactory standard but also up-to-date electronic devices, such as closed circuit television systems, electronic movement detectors and electronic locks, must be installed, to complemcnt the perimeter security. (Home Ofiice 1995, paras. 4.5fj-4.57)

This emphasis on physical security contradicts established and respected views of academics and professionals. I t was recognised that to maintain security and control in prisons emphasis should be placed on relationships, individualism and activity (Dunbar 1985; Brett et al. 1995), alongside effective communication (Papps 1972). Security developed through this type of initiative has tended to be collectively termed ‘dynamic security’. Learmont does acknowledge the concept, giving over a section to developing his own version of it (paras. 5.55-5.85). Sadly, it seems to be reliant on a ‘carrot and stick’ approach to prisoner compliance.

The supremacy of physical security measures is also somewhat contradictory to the route followed by our neighbours in the Scottish Prison Service, particularly with their notions of the ‘responsible prisoner’ (Scottish Prison Service 1990) and the recent relationships audit (Brett et al. 1995)“. This work highlights the fact that prisons cannot be managed through coercion. Good relationships between staff, prisoners and their support networks in the community is much more fruitful in providing constructive regimes and maintaining control. Therefore, a much more secure prison environment can be achieved.

Actors in the prison environment have not been slow to identify and associate dangers with this increased reliance on physical security. Only a few had the view that ‘you don’t have to worry about prisoners if they’re behind an 18 foot wall’. While most noted the hazards of this approach, stating that:

‘the rcality is that you have to make it work together, and policies, like the ones which currently focus on physical security, do not sufficiently allow for this . . .’ and that:

‘good control is not just physical control, but being able to talk to people . . . its all about human relations . . . we’re not silly enough to throw the baby out with the bath water . . .’.

Daily Activity

Prisoners and staff recognised security as the all pervading concept on the wings. This impinged on the daily routines for staff and prisoners alike, creating more tension. The Prison Governors’ Association ( 1995) noted that oppressive physical security inhibited the construction of positive regimes and wanted to avoid ‘high tech’ solutions to security. Yet such ideals seem to have fallen by the wayside. The changes to regimes most frequently identified were searching procedures and the incentives based regime (see rec. 45).

Searches have taken on a new dimension following Woodcock and Learmont (paras. 7.35-7.4). They are now a more central part of life on the wing. One wing manager commented that the increased level of searches, in particular cell searches, was the most notable change in the regime. He added that he was now required to monitor the process much more closely. Searching procedures on the wings had become more intrusive and obvious parts of the regime. The prison

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security squad’s search teams (para. 4.31) tend to be dislocated from prisoners and other staff alike. They have taken a militaristic approach to the treatment of prisoners and carrying out of searches (Sim 1994). This is best illustrated by the squad’s black jump suits and the way they conduct searches in the style of raids on wings, with all the trappings of a paratrooper operation.

The current emphasis on incentive based regimes left one prisoner feeling that the regime which was operating was one in which all the ‘carrots’ had been taken away. Yet they were still being asked to jump through extra ‘hoops’, in order to attain the level of regime to which they had previously felt entitled. Austerity is dominant over rehabilitation as privileges is over rights (Ryan and Sim 1995). Prison staff feared that a reduction or even restriction on prisoners’ access to facilities would increase tensions between the two groups with potential to create an ‘us’ and ‘them’ culture, which many believed had been curtailed in recent years. One officer said ‘the bottom line is we’re all human beings, so the prison system rests on good relationships’.

A by-product of many factors, including incentive regimes and staffing reduction^'^, has been the increased amount of prisoners’ time spent in cells. Prisoners expressed their feelings of frustration, boredom and debilitation. One staff member commented on the impact on the general atmosphere which prevailed: with prisoners and staff being more fractious and less tolerant of each other, more expression through aggression (physical and verbal); and more litter around the prison.

One measure of officers’ confidence to resolve situations of tension and conflict, is the number of times that they resort to the formal punishment process. Provisional figures indicate a general reduction in the number of punishments meted out in prisons (between 1994 and 1995). However, there has been a slight increase in the proportion of adjudications which have resulted in the charges being dismissed or the adjudication not being completed (10.5% in 1994 and 11% in 1995)14. Prisoners already talked to being ‘pulled for silly things’ and were obviously aggrieved and disgruntled by the situation.

A more limited regime in prisons had generated a low morale. Some officers were not questioning the changes and whether they were positive or not. Many more, often more experienced prison officers, spoke of the desire to bring back some more positive aspects to their role. They feared a return to being little more than turnkeys.

Communicating with the Community

Numerous prison commentators have endorsed the view that prisoner contact with the outside community is positive. This view is formed from enhanced behaviour within the prison, but also from the reduced likelihood of re-offending (HM Inspectorate of Prisons 1996; Brett et al. 1995; Howard League 1994; Woolf 1991). Since the publication of Woodcock and Learmont visitors to prisons have been the focus of many more limitations and security checks. Overall the Learmont Report has resulted in a regressive attitude toward visits. Many positive, or softer, elements of visiting regimes have been eroded, like allowing children to bring in toys for comfort (HM Prison Service 1995~).

Security procedures have had a particular impact on visitors as the social visit has been identified as the most common route for illegal items to be smuggled into the prison. Therefore, visitors have been subjected to more vigorous searching procedures. The Bourne Trust has argued that: ‘the general upgrading of security procedures have had the effect of making visitors feel that they are seen as pseudo- prisoners’ (Penal Affairs Consortium 1996). Other reports have suggested that the

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searching of visitors has not been undertaken in a very sensitive manner, in unsatisfactory surroundings, with parents concerned about the impact of children witnessing and being the subject of searches themselves (Federation of Prisoners’ Families Support Groups 1996).

Visitors’ centre co-ordinators have voiced numerous concerns about the treatment of visitors during searching procedures and entry to the visits area. The most common concerns centre on the lack of consistency in the treatment of visitors by officers and the general decorum of officers. One visitor expressed the view that the balance between dignity and security had moved far too much toward security when dealing with visitors, and that common courtesy had been abandoned. I t was said that:

‘officers seem to take positive pleasure in searching. . . but they do not appear to have any positive training in how to deal with people at this sensitive time . . . I hope they act in the way that they do because they feel uncomfortable . . .’. As a result of new searching procedures the length of the visit was often shortened to the minimum length. This had not been common practice in recent years. Once a visitor has passed through the security checks and reached the visits room, the visiting experience has also changed. There is more evidence of CCTV and, in some visits rooms, dogs patrolled around the tables. The visiting experience has become more humiliating, one prisoner said that he ‘could not be doing with it any more’ even though visits with his family were important to him, he would not put them through these rigours.

Many of the complaints made by visitors were about the lack of information being provided by prisons about changes to procedures. But communication between the prison and visitors was not the only breakdown that was identified (although visitors are inevitably the last to be informed). One person commented that the whole prison does not communicate, leading to inconsistency in practice and frustration.

Reflecting on the Views from the Ground

Whatever changes to prison life were discussed, one issue recurred: the quality and the opportunity for relationships to develop. In short, everyone in prisons thought that relationships and contact with others was a positive way to create a safe and secure environment.

One view put forward was that the Learmont and Woodcock reports were looking for excuses rather than solutions which got to the heart of the matter. These solutions were thought to be found in the quality of relationships and the security which flowed from them. As David Evans, General Secretary of the Prison Officers’ Association said:

Security is not just about preventing people from escaping. It is about allowing regimes to operate that actively tackle offending. A secure environment is not a punitive one. (Evans 1995, p. 2)

The measures which have followed the rhetoric and ethos of the Learmont Report have led to the increasing alienation among all groups in the penal sphere: whether it is prisoners feeling alienated from staff, or governors feeling alienated from the political leaders. Such alienation has led to low morale and confusion throughout prisons. This cannot provide a positive outlook for the future. One result could be a downward spiral flowing from poor stafiprisoner relations, to a decline in the levels of control and greater indiscipline in prisons (illustrated on p. 359).

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Downward Spiral of Human Relations in the Prison Environment

More political Increased physical Less positive/ interference security constructive regimes

Poor staff:prisoner relations

Increasing inability to identify problems in the prison environment

Declining control and greater indiscipline

v Greater recourse to Pervading culture and

someone has to be

Low staff morale

The most depressing view that was promoted by staff and prisoners was that the most negative policies were yet to come. Even the most punitive and security conscious recommendations, made over the last few years, would not have as negative an impact as the huge staff cuts which are anticipated throughout the prison system. Current discontent is being seen as the thin end of the wedge with worse yet to come.

Notes

' This paper uses information from governors, prison officers, other prison staff and prisoners as its source material, gleaned from visits to two establishments in England and Wales in February and March 1996. The paper does not provide a representative view of actors throughout the penal system, but merely the views of some of those in the two prisons. One of the few things definitely associated with the Learmont Report was the dismissal of Derek Lewis, the director general of the Prison Service, when Michael Howard presented the report to parliament on 16 October 1995.

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‘’ When the Learmont Report was first laid before parliament in October 1995, the Home Secretary immediately rejected two of the recommendations, namely the introduction of televisions in cells and the extension of home leave, two of the potentially more liberal proposals in the report. The Home Secretary’s response is likely in two stages. In the late spring he will table a report on actions that have taken place or are planned, to implement most of the recommendations, and later in the year he will announce decisions on major recommendations like the high-security and control prisons and new system of categorisation (Home Office 1996b). Michael Howard became Home Secretary on 27 May 1993. Prison population figures provided by the Prison Service’s strategic planning and management section. The sentencing proposals announced on 2 April 1996 have been widely acknowledged as having the net effect of increasing the prison population, one estimate suggests that the prison population will increase by 30,000 (Penal Affairs Consortium 1995). The obvious example being ‘prison works’, Michael Howard’s speech to Conservative Party conference, October 1993. The prevalence of the ‘blame culture’ in the prison system is consistent with the feeling across Whitehall (Howard League forthcoming).

l o One example of innovation and ‘risk taking’ leading to good practice is the work at Holloway in the early 1990s to develop all-day children’s visits (Howard League 1993; Save the Children 1992). This initiative is still in place and is regarded as a positive aspect of the regime by commentators and the Prison Service alike.

‘ I Paragraph 1.22 of the Woodcock Report states that ‘a conscious decision was taken not to expand the terms of reference to concentrate efforts towards answering the main questions connected directly to the actual escape’. The relational audit was undertaken at Greenock Prison in 1994 and ‘demonstrated that it is able to provide a coherent and incisive picture of relationships in a prison establishment. . . it can be used by the management to explain and justify decisions made relating to relationships and policy’ (p. 10).

l3 David Roddan, General Secretary of the Prison Governors’ Association predicted staff reductions of between 4,000 and 4,500 as a result of 13.5% budget cuts over the next three years (speech to PGA conference 27 March 1996).

l4 Provisional information provided by the Research and Statistics Directorate, Home Office.

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Editors’Note: The contributions to the Policy Review Symposium were written in the period December 1995 to April 1996 and may have been overtaken by events.

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