Older prisoners should be held in “old people’s homes with walls” to relieve pressure on jails where staffing levels are now too low to keep order, the chief inspector of prisons has recommended.
Peter Clarke, the chief inspector of prisons, said jails in England and Wales are not equipped to provide long-term residential care for elderly inmates, many of whom have restricted movement and are in poor health. He said a new type of custody is needed to cater for older prisoners, including those who cannot be moved to open conditions because of the risk they pose to the public.
He has recommended “old people’s homes with walls” which would offer specialised provision for older inmates, including on-site medical facilities to limit the number who have to attend hospital appointments outside prisons. The scheme would allow older inmates to be held securely, but in conditions which were more suited to their age and ability to escape.
The number of prisoners over 50 is rising rapidly, with the total expected to reach 14,000 — out of an overall population of almost 86,000 — within three years.
Mr Clarke’s annual report also warns of a “staggering decline” in levels of safety in youth jails, which led him to privately warn ministers that none he had inspected this year were safe.
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In adult jails debt, bullying, and segregation by inmates seeking to flee violence linked to drugs are now commonplace, the report said.
Conditions have seriously deteriorated in jails, and for far too many inmates “the state is failing in its duty” of responsibility to prisoners’ wellbeing, including their safety and education.
Mr Clarke said too many inmates are living in “utterly appalling living conditions” which had led some to describe them as Dickensian. “I don’t think I would dignify them with that term. In far too many places they are squalid, dirty and disgraceful,” he said.
The report highlights a prison system which is short-staffed, riddled with drugs and plagued by rising violence. It discloses that no young offender institution or privately run secure training centre officially inspected in early 2017 was safe to hold children and young people.
After the disclosure in 2016 of the mistreatment of children at Medway Secure Training Centre, prison inspectors looked at other jails holding young people. Mr Clarke said that by February this year he was so shocked by the findings that he wrote to ministers. “In early 2017 I felt compelled to bring to the attention of ministers my serious concerns about the findings in the youth estate. By February 2017, we concluded that there was not a single establishment that we inspected in England and Wales in which it was safe to hold children and young people. This is the first time this has been the case,” he said.
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Self-harm rates were running at 8.9 incidents per 100 children compared with 4.1 in 2011, while assault rates were 18.9 per 100 children compared with 9.7 in 2011. Surveys showed that almost half of boys felt unsafe.
The number of boys who reported being victimised by other inmates had risen significantly, and the proportion engaged in a job, vocational training and programmes to tackle their offending behaviour in young offender institutions was lower than in 2010-11.
“There seems to have been something of a vicious circle. Violence leads to a restrictive regime and security measures that in turn frustrate those being held there. We have seen regimes where boys take every meal alone in their cell, where they are locked up for excessive amounts of time, where they do not get enough exercise, education or training, and where they do not have any credible plans to break the cycle of violence.”
He said other reasons for the decline in safety among young people are that the overall fall in young people in youth jails has resulted in those remaining being the most challenging to manage, while senior managers are moved from one post to another too quickly.
“The current state of affairs is dangerous, counter productive and will inevitably end in tragedy unless urgent action is taken,” he concluded.