Stephen Whitehead
While perhaps disappointing to those of us who put too much stock in rumours of a major announcement on courts, yesterday’s white paper on prison reform and safety offers a positive vision for the future of prisons built around devolving powers to governors and holding them accountable via outcomes measurement. However, while the aims are laudable – few observers of the justice system would argue that the purpose of prisons should be rehabilitation – relying on targets and measurement to deliver these aims is an idea with a chequered past.
Key to the plan is greater freedom for prison governors to control their prison regimes, eliminating hundreds of pages of rules and regulations, and giving them control of the budget for rehabilitation, education and healthcare services. But, in order to hold prisons to account, governors will have to sign up to prison performance agreements which will set targets in four areas:
- Public protection will cover escapes and prisoners absconding or offending while on temporary release
- Safety and order will look at violence and self-harm within the prison as well as prisoners’ perceptions of safety
- Reform will look how prisoners are being supported in prison by measuring health, substance misuse, work opportunities, education and family relationships
- Preparing for life after prison will look at how prisoners are faring after release in key areas such as work, housing or education.
A streamlined version of these measures will be included in a prison league table, and the secretary of state will have a legal right to intervene if prisons are failing to meet their agreements.
While it’s hard to argue with the importance of any of these issues, experience suggests that targets can be a fairly ineffective tool to hold organisations to account. The more stress that is placed on a target, the more incentive there are for organisations, or individuals, to hit the target, but miss the point. That’s why we saw hospitals respond to A&E waiting time targets by forcing patients to stay in their ambulances, or US police forces fail to record crimes in order to keep numbers down. If governors are made to feel that that their jobs are on the line if targets were missed, it’s easy to imagine them, say, attempting to transfer prisoners who are the most likely to struggle on release, or encouraging staff not to record some incidents.
Instead of viewing outcome measurement as a shot in the arm for prisons, we should instead see it as an MRI: a tool which can look inside prisons to see what’s working well and where the problems are. If prisons can generate and share this information openly and without fear of consequences, it can help us understand which ones need extra help, and which ones can provide examples for others to follow.
There’s much to like in today’s white paper: the new money for staffing is desperately needed (though it remains to be seen whether it will be enough) and devolving power to governors will unlock much energy towards improvement. But using data as stick to beat prisons, rather than a mirror to help them learn risks diverting energy away from what matters – helping prisoners rebuild their lives and move away from crime.