Hello,
Wednesday morning. “I only got out of prison last week… it’s still a lot of bang up, no staff to open anything up, often behind my door for 23hrs a day”.
We remain connected with our local prisons, now regularly visiting HMP Dartmoor, Exeter and Channing’s Wood, building relationships, and providing a resettlement pathway for prisoners to LandWorks on their release.
But since March 29th, 2020 (Covid lockdown) we have not had any day-release prisoners. I am hopeful this will change soon. But the Prison service is still crippled by low staff numbers. One in seven officers left last year.
So, in essence too few staff and too many prisoners, means looking ahead, this is going to be a tricky few years.
To be honest before anything meaningful can change there are a few issues that should be discussed by all of us, because the Government intends to increase the prison population by around 20,000!
- Over-use of prison… In 2021 despite the pandemic, more than 42,000 people were sent to prison to serve a sentence. The majority (61%) had committed a non-violent offence and nearly two in five (38%) were sentenced to serve six months or less.
- Recalls remain high… Since the Offender Rehabilitation Act which means that anyone serving two days or longer is subject to a minimum of 12 months supervision, the number of people recalled back to custody has increased, particularly amongst women. 7,006 people serving a sentence of less than 12 months were recalled to prison in the year to December 2021.
- Mental health… 1,095 people were transferred from prison to a secure hospital in 2021, the highest number since records began.
The Prison Reform Trust notes… Community sentences are particularly effective for those who have a large number of previous offences and for people with mental health problems. Yet, their use has more than halved in only a decade.
LandWorks is currently providing placements for people following release from prison or serving community (non-custodial) sentences.
LandWorks is acting as a direct alternative to custody/recall to prison.
LandWorks has done some of its best work in the last few years, able to act in the immediacy of an individual’s crisis, reducing the chances of that crisis escalating.
I would however say, that if we are to go down the route of more community sentences then they have to be delivered through carefully thought out, well managed schemes such as LandWorks.
“Yeah Chris, on my first day here everything changed really. I suddenly … I felt that little spark of hope.”
Chris
1st September 2022