“Prison doesn’t work, not even for those who were imprisoned because of the riots” – Byline Times

The UK made international news this week: “UK prisons overcrowded after racist riots”.

Our protruding prisons are, it seems, a whole new problem as “Labour’s crackdown on riots leaves justice system on the brink” (according to GB News).

Just weeks after denouncing Labour’s “shameless scaremongering” over prison overcrowding, The mail warns that Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s “harsh crackdown” has left prisons “congested” with convicted rioters.

“This is not news,” said Lady Unchained, a poet and ex-convict, on Media storm“If you don’t know anything about the criminal justice system, you think, ‘Oh my God, we’re in crisis!’ We who have lived through this system know that’s how it’s been for a very long time.”

The media love new things. Right-wing newspapers also love to blame Labour. But prisons are overcrowded not because of recent convictions, but because the UK is both the “biggest prisoner” in Western Europe and one of the worst countries for prison funding. The second reason can be attributed to Tory austerity, but the first is common to all parties, with Labour promising before the election to create even more places in exchange for power.

To be clear, the men’s prison has been operating at an occupancy rate of “greater than 99%” since January 2023.

This is why David Navarro, Media stormsecond guest of this week, He had to learn the ropes to get a single cell during his decade locked up in overcrowded British prisons. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t make for a rehabilitative environment. “You have to be a ‘high risk prisoner’, a risk to your cellmate, so a lot of prisoners fabricate things to become ‘high risk’.”

Navarro and Lady Unchained represent the missing voices in a conversation that has thankfully emerged in mainstream media in response to the “current” crisis – a nuanced discussion about what prison is really for.

Hearing prison officers implore “a determined regime” on the national news is a welcome break from the tabloids’ default response to prison reform (outrage over humane treatment). Media stormThe emphasis on exchanges with former inmates brings something new to the conversation.

Both black, both all too familiar with the racial bias of the justice system that served them, both somewhat surprised that it served white rioters a dose of the same medicine – neither Navarro nor Lady Unchained approve.

“I don’t think it’s going to work because the rioters need real support,” Lady Unchained said. “They need to be really informed about the other people around them, about the history of the UK and why many of us are here.”

Navarro goes further, addressing the rioters beyond racial inequality, a situation he says many prisoners understand. “The whole rioting thing, even the fact that the prisons are full, all of that, just distracts from the bigger issue, which is that poverty goes hand in hand with crime. Instead of addressing that, there are media outlets that are promoting this[tough on crime]narrative,” the same outlets, he points out, that “regularly sow discord” and helped spark the riots in the first place.

This week, another headline focused attention on the British criminal justice system: data revealing that a child had been strip-searched every 14 hours over the past five years.

Navarro’s ongoing body searches throughout his childhood helped establish a body of evidence in which black children were four times more likely to be subjected to such searches. It’s unclear whether a child should be subjected to this practice: “Ultimately, you have to get naked as a child.” He was not accompanied by any “trusted adult,” a parent or guardian, during these searches. No weapons or drugs were found on his person.

That’s not to say he wasn’t doing something wrong. The police’s justifications revolve around a duty to protect the children they’re searching for, and those around them, from imminent danger – for example, from gangs, who are increasingly using children’s bodies to transport or store illegal drugs.

Do you feel like it’s designed to protect you? “No!” Navarro scoffed when asked. “How does giving them a criminal record help them? You’re actually setting them up for failure” – not just with the record, but perhaps more alarmingly, he points out, by racking up thousands of pounds in drug debts to gangs who then have the option of forcing them into permanent servitude. The aim, Navarro reiterates, is not to stop you falling into crime, but to get you out of it.

Is this sad truth any less true for the child rioters who now face years in prison? The evidence does not support an approach that prioritizes punishment for crimes committed by children who grew up in poverty and without state support, and it does not change based on the child’s political affiliation. In the rush of progressives to condemn racist riots, many who know this deep down have remained silent. But those who have been through the system, our guests this week, do not.

Like the media, Labour has chosen to be selective in its messaging. In July, Starmer was applauded by progressives for his bold appointment of prisons minister James Timpson – not an MP but a shoemaker chief executive and chairman of the Prison Reform Trust, a man known for hiring hundreds of ex-convicts and braving tabloid fury by declaring: “Only a third of prisoners should be in prison”. Where was that mantra when Starmer said the rioters should feel “the full force of the law”?

“Prison makes people bad,” says former inmate who lived in revolving-door jail Media stormIt took David Breakspear nine prison sentences to break a cycle in which networking behind bars, combined with the impact of prison on his employability, drew him into increasingly serious criminal involvement. “It’s criminogenic!”

Is Labour’s short-term memory a political bias that does not benefit far-right criminals? Rather, it is an emergency reflex: stop the disorder at all costs, and let another government pay three times the price in the long run. No one in the justice system shares their illusion that penal reform will require anything less than controversial consistency: so far, we have seen none.

Three years ago, when we launched Media stormJohn Sampson, an “exhausted” prison guard, told us: “The prisons are so overcrowded” and “the tough-on-crime policies are a complete failure.”

Today we repeat the question he posed to yesterday’s government to the new one: “Are we simply going to dig ourselves deeper into the pit of our own despair, or are we going to climb out of it and actually build something new?”

The latest episode of Media Storm, “Prisons: Overcrowding, Operation Early Dawn and Child Strip Searches” is now available.