Inside the UK’s broken prison system as overcrowding reaches breaking point

Cliff Notes – Inside the UK’s broken prison system

The UK’s prison system is at a critical breaking point, with overcrowding reaching 156% at Preston Prison, necessitating urgent reform.
A forthcoming Sentencing Review is expected to recommend more community and non-custodial sentences to combat the £18bn annual cost of reoffending.
Staff and inmates highlight the pervasive cycle of reoffending and mental health struggles, indicating that current prison conditions are failing to rehabilitate individuals.

Inside the UK’s broken prison system as overcrowding reaches breaking point

“As far as I’m concerned, there are only three ways to spend the taxpayers’ hard-earned when it comes for prisons. More walls, more bars and more guards.”

Prison reform is one of the hardest sells in government.

Hospitals, schools, defence – these are all things you would put on an election leaflet.

Even the less glamorous end of the spectrum – potholes and bin collections – are vote winners.

But prisons? Let’s face it, the governor’s quote from The Shawshank Redemption reflects public polling pretty accurately.

Right now, however, reform is unavoidable because the system is at breaking point.

It’s a phrase that is frequently used so carelessly that it’s been diluted into cliche. But in this instance, it is absolutely correct.

Without some kind of intervention, the prison system is at breaking point.

It will break.

Inside Preston Prison

Ahead of the government’s Sentencing Review, expected to recommend more non-custodial sentences, I’ve been talking to staff and inmates at Preston Prison, a Category B men’s prison originally built in 1790.

One prisoner I interviewed, in for burglary, was, until a few hours before, sharing his cell with his son.

It was his son’s first time in jail – but not his. He had been out of prison since he was a teenager—more than 30 years – in and out of prison.

His family didn’t like it, he said, and now he has, in his own words, dragged his son into it.

Sophie is a prison officer and one of those people who would be utterly brilliant doing absolutely anything, and is exactly the kind of person we should all want working in prisons.

She said the worst thing about the job is seeing young men, at 18, and 19, in jail for the first time. Shellshocked. Mental health is all over the place.

And then seeing them again a couple of years later.

And then again.

The same faces. The officers get to know them after a while, which in a way is nice but also terrible.

The £18bn spectre of reoffending

We know the stats about reoffending, but it floored me how the system is failing. It’s the same people. Again and again.

The Sentencing Review, which we’re just days away from, will almost certainly recommend fewer people go to prison, introducing more non-custodial or community sentencing and scrapping short sentences that don’t rehabilitate but instead just start people off on the reoffending merry-go-round, like some kind of sick ride.

But they’ll do it on the grounds of cost (reoffending costs £18bn a year, a prison place costs £60,000 a year, community sentences around £4,500 per person).

They’ll do it because prisons are full (one of Keir Starmer’s first acts was being forced to let prisoners out early because there was no space).

If the government wants to be brave, however, it should do it on the grounds of reform, because prison is not working and because there must be a better way.

A cold, hard look

I’ve visited prisons before, as part of my job, but this was different.

Before it felt like a PR exercise, I was taken to one room in a pristine modern prison where prisoners were learning rehabilitation skills.

This time, I felt like I really got under the skin of Preston Prison.

It’s important to say that this is a good prison, run by a thoughtful governor with staff that truly care.

But it’s still bloody hard.

“You have to be able to switch off,” one officer told me, “Because the things you see….”

Staff are stretched and many are inexperienced because of high turnover.

After a while, I understood something that had been nagging me. Why have I been given this access? Why are people being so open with me? This isn’t what usually happens with prisons and journalists.

That’s when I understood.

They want people to know. They want people to know that yes, they do an incredible job and prisons aren’t perfect, but they’re not as bad as you think.

But that’s despite the government, not because of it.

Sometimes the worst thing you can do on limited resources is to work so hard you push yourself to the brink, so the system itself doesn’t break, because then people think ‘well maybe we can continue like this after all… maybe it’s okay’.

But things aren’t okay. When people say the system is at breaking point – this time it isn’t a cliche.

They really mean it.