Research findings

• Despite the Treasury’s announcement of the end of deficit reduction policies in 2019, very little has been done to improve resources for both prisons and the community. The Treasury announced that more than £10 billion per year would be cut from departmental spending plans next year and in subsequent years (HM Treasury, 2020); this plan, combined with the Bank of England’s prediction of a recession between October 2022 and December 2023, contradicts the political rhetoric about the end of austerity.

• Through an examination of how a decade of deficit reduction has impacted upon prison funding in England, this study found that austerity has failed to reduce the national debt or improve the health, safety and welfare of prisoners in England. Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, alongside the current cost of living crisis continue to impact economic uncertainty. Politicians, policymakers, nongovernmental organisations, and academics must act now to address the impact of austerity on prison healthcare and prisons.

• External regulatory mechanisms, such as the HM Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP), the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO), and the Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs), refrained from commenting on the direct impact of austerity on prisons and prisoners. Study participants expressed scepticism about the ability of trade unions, such as the Prison Governors Association (PGA) and the Professional Trades Union for Prison, Correctional and Secure Psychiatric Workers (POA), to improve prison conditions. They were also sceptical about the efficacy of parliamentary committees in regulating prison healthcare and prison conditions. The Lobbying Act of 2014 has increasingly prevented third-sector organisations from opposing austerity due to contractual clauses and statutory requirements.

• Silence and a lack of meaningful actions to challenge austerity have sustained acceptance and implementation of it, violated prisoners’ rights to access healthcare and decent living conditions in prisons, and compromised working conditions for the prison workforce.

• This study has found links between the government’s decisions to reduce access to the welfare services and an increase in criminality in areas of deindustrialisation including places that are in need of ‘levelling-up’. As a result, when individuals are imprisoned, they often present with extraordinarily complex health and social needs and depend on scarce prison healthcare resources that have not been expanded since 2006—even as the prison population has increased.

• The government response to prison instability—mainly building more prison spaces, recruiting new prison officers, and blaming prison instability on the increasing use of the psychoactive substance Spice—has not resulted in improvements in security or systemic changes.

• Rather than reducing inefficiency and improving cost-saving and competition, participants observed how privatisation increases monitoring costs for the government. This is due to the need to improve accountability and quality control for these contractors. Furthermore, the transfer of HMP Birmingham from G4S to a public sector prison, the bankruptcy of Carillion, and the poor performance of private contractors who delivered the Transforming Rehabilitation programme post-imprisonment exemplify the arguments against privatisation.

• The growth of prison gangs and serious organised crime has coincided with rising drug use in prisons, a dynamic that can be partly attributed to staff reductions, reflecting a weakening of institutional governance. These circumstances could lead to further dysfunction and a loss of control in prisons, as seen in the Strangeways Riot in 1990.

• Longstanding issues of prison overcrowding since 1990 and more punitive sentencing policies have led to the ‘warehousing’ of individuals and more violence among prisoners, with an emphasis on punishment over rehabilitation. Today, overcrowding has increased the spread of COVID-19 in English prisons where lengthy confinement up to 23 hours a day within locked and poorly maintained cells can accelerate disease progression.

• Reoffending rates continue to be high: 45% for all individuals released from custody and 61% for those serving a sentence of less than 12 months. These figures suggest that imprisonment fails to rehabilitate prisoners. Yet thanks to an increase in policing and the new Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, the imprisonment rate will likely continue to grow.