The Sun reveals cost of keeping one prisoner in UK penal system is £118 a day – higher than elsewhere in Europe
THE cost to the taxpayer of holding inmates in our crisis-hit jails is at a record high, a Sun on Sunday study reveals today.
The bill is now £43,213 a year, or £118 a day, for every place at our 117 prisons — up nearly six per cent in the past 12 months.
Nearly DOUBLE that money is spent on keeping the most serious offenders, such as murderers, terrorists and rapists, under lock and key, with the total cost of caging Britain’s lags at £3.4billion a year.
In France the bill for the average lag is just £91 a day, in Spain it is £50, in Portugal it costs £34 a day — and in Greece it is a mere £5.
Tory MP Philip Davies said: “It is clear from The Sun on Sunday investigation that the cost of running prisons is soaring out of control.
“It’s time for a full re-evaluation of the system. Money should be focused on keeping dangerous offenders locked up securely and in rehabilitation, not all the frills and luxuries. It can’t be right that prison expenditure is rising, yet the problems inside are getting worse.”
James Roberts, of pressure group the Taxpayers’ Alliance, believes it shows the UK public do not get value for money. He said: “The bill for criminals serving time at Her Majesty’s pleasure should not be so painful for taxpayers.
“Either lags are living it up in the lock-up or the costs of criminal justice need to come back under control. Cutting down on perks such as TV and contesting prison compensation payments are easy ways of bringing the bills down.”
Leading criminologist David Wilson, a former jail governor, warns that prison authorities are spending more and more only to make us less safe, and he is calling for an overhaul.
'PROBLEMS GETTING WORSE'
He said: “Prison is costly and counterproductive and is often making the individual worse. Two out of three male offenders reoffend within two years of leaving jail.
“Prison numbers rising makes it seem like a government is doing something about crime, when in fact they are making our communities less safe. We need to rethink who we release, as well as who we send in there in the first place, in what numbers and for how long.”
Our jails are also in their worst state for decades, many so overcrowded that dangerous criminals are released early. Only recently, the Parliamentary Justice Committee chairman, Tory MP
Bob Neill, warned: “From poorly maintained prisons to inadequate opportunities for rehabilitation, the Government’s crisis-management approach to jails has been failing for more than five years.
“Throwing money at such problems on an ad-hoc basis is both unsustainable and a waste of taxpayers’ money.” Yet our study found spending is at a record high, at just over £3.4billion a year to look after 82,751 lags, according to Ministry of Justice figures — with high-security jails even more costly to run. At one such facility, HMP Whitemoor in Peterborough, where London Bridge killer Usman Khan was held before his release, £86,871 a year is spent per lag, or £238 a day.
That is more than the cost of staying at many hotels in central London.
At HMP Woodhill, in Milton Keynes, Bucks — which has held Britain’s most violent prisoner, Charles Bronson, and child killer Ian Huntley — the cost per inmate is £81,847.
Facilities for young offenders spend more still. HMP Werrington, in Stoke-on-Trent, where rehab includes origami sessions, allocates £137,901 per offender, or £378 a day.
The cost of running jails has been ramped up by a series of bizarre spending schemes in England and Wales, including buying portable fridges and in-cell phone lines for inmates. The phone scheme alone has so far cost £10million and is to be rolled out from 20 jails to 50 by March.
Inmates have also had pay rises for carrying out work. At HMP Berwyn in Wrexham, North Wales — dubbed Britain’s cushiest jail — lags can spend up to £250 from their cells on goods from CDs to groceries. Food in jails has also been upgraded, with spending now double that on hospital meals.
More prisons coming
THE Ministry of Justice plans to replace old, expensive prison accommodation with 10,000 “modern and safe” jail cells.
New prisons are expected to be built on the sites of former jails at Wellingborough, Northants in 2021 and Glen Parva, Leics, the following year.
Ministers also want new facilities in South Wales and near HMP Full Sutton in East Yorks, in addition to redevelop- ing existing ones at Hindley, Greater Manchester and Rochester in Kent.
The new-look prisons will follow Scandinavian designs, with no bars on the windows.
Nordic countries spend even more on jails than we do, with Sweden’s daily bill per prisoner £320, Norway’s £278 and Denmark’s £170.
Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik has a three-cell complex where he can play video games, watch TV and use a running machine.
But Andrew Neilson, director of campaigns at leading think tank the Howard League For Penal Reform, said:
“Extra money for prisons has been splurged largely on security measures and plugging the gaps left by departing officers, rather than improvements that will change people’s lives.
“Sensible steps to instead reduce the prison population would save money, protect officers and prevent crime.”
Yet while prison spending goes up, statistics show the crisis in our jails is escalating.
Drug use is rife, especially spice, and many prison wings are now run by gangs rather than guards. The crisis led to 1,000 prison officers resigning last year within just 12 months of joining the service.
There were a record 34,000 assaults in jails last year — 10,000 on staff, up ten per cent on the previous year, and 24,000 prisoner-on-prisoner attacks, up 15 per cent.
And a prisoner now self-harms every ten minutes. Last year there were 18,435 jail drug seizures, compared to 13,118 the year before, and 10,643 illicit mobile phones confiscated, up 15 per cent on 2017.
Lisa Smitherman, Director of Justice at social welfare charity
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Catch22, said: “The growing prison population represents a failure of society. More needs to be done to stop offending. Once in prison, the aim has to be to rehabilitate and reintegrate that person back into society. There are great schemes doing this but too often, on release, prisoners are left without help to get into work, find a place to live and get back on track. Without this support, the cycle of reoffending will never be broken.”
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “Costs have increased as we have recruited around 4,400 extra prison officers over the last three years, while this year giving staff their highest pay rise in a decade.
“Alongside this we are spending £2.75billion to modernise and maintain our prisons, create 10,000 additional places and step up security to stop the flow of drugs and mobile phones.”
Helping inmates can pay
By Carlton Boyce, former prison governor
THE record cost of keeping prisoners in custody in the UK does not surprise me.
If we use private prisons as well as public ones, we have to pay a premium, as they will want to make a profit compared to the public sector. That is the real scandal.
But there are many other cost factors – and a major one was managing drug addiction. The Prison Service used to detox prisoners but about ten years ago we lost a human rights court case and we then had to give prisoners (hard drug substitute) methadone, which brought significant costs as we had to dispense it twice a day.
It was costly, took up time and stopped us doing things such as literacy and education, so the quality of the prison regime went down despite costs increasing.
Another key point is that we treat our prisoners humanely, and that has a cost. Having an expensive prison regime can be the mark of a civilised society and if you want to prevent reoffending there has to be rehabilitation, and that costs.
When I was a governor, food costs were £2 a day. I had to taste it and it was edible and nutritious, but not restaurant-quality.
Scandinavian prisons have a much more liberal regime, which means their costs are even higher, yet some of us think that would be a price worth paying here in order to have the sort of reduced reoffending rates they enjoy.
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