Twenty five years since the riots at Strangeways, the prison is still overcrowded and lessons have not been learnt.
A new report out this morning from the Prison Reform Trust finds that many of the factors that contributed to the riot are reappearing in prisons today.
Progress in reducing chronic levels of overcrowding and improving treatment and conditions in prisons has been set back by the reluctance of politicians “to explain to the public the limited improvements that can be achieved by greater reliance on more and longer imprisonment,” Lord Woolf, chair of the Prison Reform Trust, who carried out the inquiry into the riot twenty five years ago, will say at a lecture at the Inner Temple in London this evening.
When the Strangeways riot began the prison population was 45,000; today it stands at 84,000.
England and Wales now has the highest rate of imprisonment in Western Europe, imprisoning 149 people for every 100,000.
At the end of February 2015, 71 of the 118 prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded.
Half of all men at Strangeways are held two to a cell designed for one.
Almost one quarter of people held across the prison estate in England and Wales are in so-called “doubled accommodation”.
The Strangeways prison riot, which left two men dead and 194 injured, was one of the most serious in British penal history.
Lord Woolf’s inquiry into the causes of the disturbances constituted a wide-ranging examination of conditions in Britain’s prisons and represents the most important analysis of the penal system for the past 100 years.
Lord Woolf’s twelve main recommendations and 204 proposals on matters of detail set out an agenda for comprehensive reform of the prison system. These included an end to “slopping out”, whereby prisoners had to urinate and defecate in buckets in their cell; the appointment of a prisons ombudsman; and the introduction of telephones on landings so prisoners could keep in closer touch with their families.
A report published by the Prison Reform Trust to mark the 25th anniversary of the riot assesses progress made against Lord Woolf’s 12 main recommendations for a more fair and just prison system.
It says that many of the factors which contributed to the unrest have resurfaced today. Although the Prison Service is better able today to ensure control and security, this has threatened to set back decades of painstaking progress it has made to improve treatment and conditions.
Commenting, Juliet Lyon, Director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:
“Chronic overcrowding driven by a near doubling of the prison population over the past two decades undermines standards of decency in prisons and restricts opportunities for rehabilitation. The past two years have seen a worrying deterioration in safety. This has set back painstaking progress made by the prison service since Lord Woolf’s report to improve treatment and conditions.
