Is there anything the prisons minister does know about prisons?
Another day, another startling admission of ignorance from the prison minister.
Jeremy Wright has spent much of the last month reassuring MPs that prisoners have access to all the books they want (incorrect) and insisting that parcels sent to inmates had to be banned because of all the contraband they were trying to get in.
Prison authorities were not impressed. Prison officers said the parcels were not a problem. They checked them. Sometimes they contained contraband, usually they didn't. It was part of the job and not something anyone had ever complained about. Prison governors went a step further and warned that Chris Grayling's new "right wing solutions" to jails were creating "instability", evidenced by a sudden increase in suicides.
A round of parliamentary questions from shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan, who has been working hard on the issue, shows just how superficial the prison minister's assurances are.
Every time he is asked a question about the basis upon which he holds his views, Wright reveals his ignorance.
This morning Khan asked him how many prisoners had been prosecuted or convicted for receiving illicit items through the post. Wright had no idea. Khan asked how many people had been prosecuted or convicted for sending prisoners illicit items through the post. Wright had no idea about this either.
The shadow justice secretary asked how many prison staff were allocated to the handling, processing and checking of prisoners' post. Wright had no idea. He asked how many packages containing books were received by prisoners and what proportion of them contained contraband. Wright had no idea.
We didn't really need further proof, but there it is anyway. When the prisons minister or justice secretary say the parcel ban was a response to a contraband problem, they are telling fairy stories. When they send photos of contraband to the right-wing press hoping for sympathetic coverage, they are telling fairy stories.
If it was a problem, they would have bothered finding out about it. They haven't, so it is clearly not a problem. People do try to smuggle in contraband, of course. But there were no signs that it was becoming unmanageable. We have now heard this from prison staff and, implicitly, from the Ministry of Justice itself.
The ban on parcels has nothing to do with contraband. It is to do with punishment. Grayling is outraged that any creature comfort should be available to prisoners. He wants incarceration to be a process of humiliation, hardship and isolation.
Personally, I wouldn't really mind – if it worked. But it does not work. There is no evidence that this approach improves rehabilitation rates. The data suggests quite the opposite. It alienates inmates from society and drives them back toward crime. Rehabilitation is about improving confidence and educational attainment, maintaining family contact and giving prisoners a stake in society.
The debate on the prisoner book ban can sometimes appear a little technical, but it goes to the heart of what we think prison is for. Is it to rehabilitate or punish? For all their talk of the former, it is clear than Grayling and Wright are committed to the latter.
The full set of parliamentary questions are below, along with a link to the relevant page on Hansard.
Sadiq Khan: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice (1) how many prisoners have been (a) prosecuted and (b) convicted for receiving each type of illicit or unauthorised items into prison through the post in each of the last four years; [196850]
(2) how many people have been (a) prosecuted and (b) convicted for sending illicit or unauthorised items through the post to prisoners in establishments in England and Wales in each of the last four years; [196852]
(3) how many prisoners were charged with receiving illicit or unauthorised items through the post in each of the last four years. [196851]
Jeremy Wright: Prisons employ a range of measures to detect, disrupt and deter the trafficking of illicit items into prisons. Any contraband detected coming into the prison will be recorded on a central incident reporting system. However, to identify the manner in which the contraband entered the prison and any subsequent referral to the police would require a manual interrogation of incident reports. This could be achieved only at disproportionate cost.
Information on prosecutions and convictions for these offences is not held centrally and could be obtained only by asking each prison to source information locally. This, again, could be achieved only at disproportionate cost.
Sadiq Khan: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many prison staff were allocated to the handling, processing and checking of prisoners' post, in each prison, on 1 April in each of the last four years. [197048]
Jeremy Wright: The levels of staff in each prison allocated to handling, processing and checking of prisoners’ post varies according to the security category and size of each prison and is not recorded centrally. To determine the numbers of staff engaged in this activity for the periods in question could only be determined by asking each prison to calculate these numbers using historic records. This cannot be done without incurring disproportionate cost.
Sadiq Khan: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice pursuant to the answer of 10 April 2014, Official Report, column 406W, on prisons: postal services, how many incidents of (a) drug-related or (b) miscellaneous contraband were found in post received by prisoners in (A) 2010, (B) 2011, (C) 2012 and (D) 2013. [197172]
Jeremy Wright: All finds of contraband, whether found in post or otherwise, are recorded on a central incident reporting system under the drug-related or the miscellaneous incident categories. In order to establish the number of occasions, in each of the last four years, where contraband had been found in post sent to prisoners, would require the examination of over 62,000 individual electronic incident files. This could be achieved only at disproportionate cost.
Sadiq Khan: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many packages containing books were received by prisoners in each of the last four years; and what proportion of such packages contained contraband. [196678]
Jeremy Wright: Following the introduction of the revised Incentives and Earned Privileges (IEP) national policy framework in November 2013, prisoners are not allowed to receive parcels sent to them. Prisoners are able to order books from reputable suppliers which they can receive via the prison shop, or they can borrow books from the prison library. This limits the opportunity for contraband to be sent into the prison and reduces the operational resource required to search all packages received in the prison.
The number of packages received by prisoners, prior to the introduction of the revised IEP national policy framework, is not recorded centrally and could be collated only at disproportionate cost.
