Participle

Based on 2 years work with prisoners and prison officers, Learning Works proposes a total reform of the UK’s approach to the prison population. Currently at least 80 percent of resources are absorbed by the prison infrastructure leaving less then 20 percent for programmes proven to reduce re-offending. At no extra cost this project demonstrates a radical redesign reverses that ratio; changing lives whilst maintaining the highest levels of security.

The prison population is exploding. There are over 80,000 people in prison in Britain, twice the numbers of a decade ago and the second highest population in Europe.

A prison place costs £37,000 a year – nearly one and a half times the cost of Eton annual school fees and nine times the average expenditure on a secondary school pupil.  Yet prison doesn’t work. Six out of 10 inmates are back inside within two years of release. Six out of 10 prisoners are also illiterate and innumerate - they cannot take up the work available in the formal economy. The annual cost of failure is estimated at £11bn.

The government is currently proposing the introduction of ‘Titans’, mass US style gaols, where up to 3,000 prisoners can be warehoused in one unit, thus potentially reducing unit costs.  Such an approach based on bringing down the costs of incarceration in terms of the bed per night without any wider thinking about the broader human, social and financials costs of continued re-offending (or what prevents this re-offending) is bound to fail.

Participle argues that it is time to end the cycle of failure and rethink the basic structure of prison life. Working with an inter-disciplinary team that included senior members of the prison service, prison governors, criminologists, educationalists and architects, we have developed an alternative model: a prison that would cost no more to build and would save money in the short to medium term as a learning programme based on proven international best practice would bring down re-offending rates.

There is widespread agreement that prison should be reserved for serious and violent offenders and prison numbers brought down by a combination of holistic programmes within prison and (less costly) investment in housing, education and drug programmes within the community.  Our model - Learning Works - is prison based, designed to meet the needs of the most high risk, high security prisoners, whilst closely linked to a community programme whereby those outside prison can access learning modules at low cost.

The proposals, based on two years work with prisoners and prison officers in England and on international best practice, were welcomed by Hilary Benn, then Prisons Minister and Martin Narey, then Director General of the prison service and championed by providers in the private sector who argued that they would be only too happy to provide such a prison, if only the government would not repeatedly tender on a low cost, old model basis.  So, why has so little happened?

Working in prisons we have met many prisoners who have clearly been traumatised by prison life; others cheerily greet the prison officers by name as they return yet again; most are just mind-numbingly bored. What is most striking however is the environment within which they are contained.  The new buildings, the daily regime and the internal environment - cells resembling (and indeed containing) toilets, and common areas offering little more than a pinball machine and broken blackboard – are identical to those built 200 years ago. 

These prisons, suitable for the early industrial age, are now outdated: little more than massive holding pens.  They are designed to repress learning and life change.  Indeed you could go further and argue that the buildings contain a hidden curriculum: how to become a better offender.  In the words of a previous Home Secretary, ‘prisons are designed to make bad people worse’.  This is not to argue that good work does not go in prisons – it does, and it should be built on, but anything that is currently achieved is achieved against the grain of the institutions, at huge financial and human cost.

Prisons are the Cinderella of our public services – mopping up those failed by other institutions and exhibiting the stresses of other services writ large. The crisis faced by the prison service – staff sickness and low staff morale, a crumbling physical fabric and escalating prisoner numbers - is not unique, but it is acute.

This has not always been the story.  Prisons constructed in the 19th century, such as Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville, were revolutionary in their day: beacons for the modernisation of other public services, including health and education. John Howard, the great 18th-century prison reformer, argued for the creation of the first professional staff in the public sector, and for new buildings which would provide clean spaces for purposeful activity. The prison service designed by Howard and his contemporaries led the way in a broader modernisation of both the structures of service delivery and the civil service itself.

The challenge for the prison service and for our prisons is to re-capture a revolutionary past and lead the way on public service reform.  Indeed, the case for and difficulties with prison reform are fascinating in terms of the light they throw on these wider challenges – our ‘Beveridge 4.0’ agenda.

Learning Works: the 21st Century Prison

At the heart of our proposals are new architectural designs which free up staff time and prison budgets. Currently at least 80 percent of resources are absorbed by the prison infrastructure leaving less then 20 percent for programmes proven to reduce re-offending.  The Learning Works proposals reverse this ratio whilst maintaining the highest levels of security.

Maintaining Victorian buildings, which occupy valuable urban land, is increasingly costly. Escorting prisoners along sprawling wings to exercise, see their lawyers, or attend a class is labour intensive. The proposed “learning prison” would be at least a third smaller than existing jails. It has been designed to reduce the movement of prisoners within the jail, enabling scarce resources to be switched from security to rehabilitation.

The learning prison is made up of 11 houses, in each of which an accountable group of 36 prisoners will live in a small community, countering the debilitating effects of ‘prisonerisation’. Cells are grouped on three floors around a central atrium, ensuring a secure inside and outside space where the prisoner is continually visible and can move unescorted.  In every detail capital investment in infrastructure has been planned to support social outcomes.

Prisoners would be expected to work an eight-hour day and take part in community activities such as cleaning, cooking and budgeting. These too are learning activities, central to the prisoners’ ability to structure their lives after release. Inmates will have free run of a secure space, but they will be closely supervised by staff teams located in the house.

Learning in this context is a broad concept which includes, but goes beyond those activities currently defined as ‘education’.  The nineteenth century prison was one which was embedded in and suitable for the wider society and economy of which it was part.  The world beyond the prison gates has now changed beyond measure: structures such as the family, the work place and the community are continually in transition.  Moreover, the prisoner has demonstrably already failed to ‘fit in’.

Today the re-integration of the individual into society demands the ability not only to read and write (a narrow skills agenda) but to personally adapt and build on creative skills – a process of change which must engage with rather than negate the emotions.  Cognitive behaviour skills, life skills, financial planning skills, mental health, drug issues and spiritual, physical and intellectual programmes need to be part of an assessed individual plan, not a menu from which a prisoner if lucky can choose some options, as is currently the case. Evidence shows that the failure to work on the whole person or provide them only with limited skills will not equip the ex-offender to lead a different life beyond the prison gates.

To realise the programme the 21st century prison must be based on a model which integrates resources around the individual.  Successful programmes in Canada and the Netherlands start with an in depth assessment of a prisoner’s full needs on which a personally tailored programme is developed.  In Britain by contrast a rapid, shallow assessment is still continually repeated as prisoners move from one prison to another.  As with public services more widely the need is to start with the individual and alter the institutional response as opposed to thinking how the institution might better meet the individual.

Technology will play a key role.  Currently limited to punitive measures such as tagging, technology would enable the low cost provision of a broad curriculum of learning modules, which can be continued after prison and used by those sentenced within the community.  It is not only the curriculum which must change but also the learning methodologies.  A prisoner is unlikely to progress when faced with more of what s/he has already failed at school.  Pedagogy and accreditation are transformed by technologically enabled best practice.  Technological innovation also provides the possibility of a secure continuum to the outside world.  Video conferencing for example enables continued contact with family members, mentors, probation officers and other social services. 

The role of the prison officer would be transformed. Any new public service paradigm must involve and build on the creativity of the workforce at all levels.  The Learning Regime builds on innovations that many of the best prison officers have introduced, often working against official regulations. The transition from a Fordist regime of external control to one of internal discipline implies a very different role for front line workers.  Officers would become facilitators and learners, with opportunities for formal and on-the-job training and career progression.

Infamously front line workers at Feltham Young Offenders Institution are paid less than baggage handlers at nearby Heathrow airport.  Wages are one of the causes of the constant staff turn-over and the comparisons are highly symbolic of the way wider society, as represented by the prison system, see difficult and problematic young people. Reduced rates of re-offending would offer the potential for increased salaries which, combined with new, team based roles would modernise the role of the officer.

Learning is the transformative principle, not only for the prisoner (who might also tutor, thus blurring the boundary between producer and consumer), but also for front line workers, professionals and the organisation itself.  The highly respected prison inspectorate, currently under threat of extinction would be required to share best practice between the prisons they visit: a form of barefoot tutoring.

Is this still a prison? Yes - prisoners are deprived of their liberty and free contact with family and friends. The surroundings are no longer mentally and emotionally repressive, but they are spartan. This is a place that you would not choose to visit more than once. But that single visit would equip you with skills, internal discipline and the potential for personal transformation.

Why has it not happened?

The answer is in part malaise.  Reforming the prison system, however important, will never win many votes.  But it is also about some of the deeper structures and mindsets that are limiting our attempts at public service transformation more generally.

In recent years the broad acceptance on the part of policy makers that prison does not work has led to a wide number of initiatives, pilots, targets, reports and departmental re-organisations.  These can be broadly typified in two ways.  Firstly those working at senior levels within the prison system have been emphasising the imperative that prison should serve a clear purpose in relation to crime, introducing for example indicators on re-settlement rates. 

The second approach, commissioned within government, but outside the prison service has asked more wide-ranging questions as to how efficiencies can be achieved within the current system.  The emphasis here has been on cutting labour costs and exploring the potential introduction of the ‘Titans’.

Both these approaches are severely limited in what they are likely to achieve.  The first is encouraging in terms of openness to innovation but deals only with the symptoms of an underlying problem.  Moreover in practise the organisational and physical barriers to change have proved immense.  Adding more classrooms on the end of long wings to try and provide more activity for prisoners is symbolic of the difficulties of grafting change onto the edges of a system experiencing a more endemic crisis.

Similarly, the second approach of bringing down the costs of incarceration in terms of the bed per night without any wider thinking about the broader human, social and financial costs of continued re-offending is doomed to fail.  Prisons are a labour intensive service: it is difficult to decrease the numbers of staff without confining prisoners to longer hours of purposeless activity.  With overwhelming evidence showing that education and contact with family lead to a reduction in re-offending, it is hard to see the benefits of increased time in cells and mass prisons far from home.  Such proposals are best seen as the last gasp of an outmoded system.  No amount of efficient throughput will deal with the issues that lead to repeat offending.

The Learning Prison by contrast does ask the fundamental question as to what prisons are for and provides a new system for service delivery that reaches beyond the narrow confines of the existing institutions.  Importantly, Learning Works is not an intellectual proposition: our action based research suggests that very real changes can be realistically and gradually progressed through the existing service. 

Real change is made possible firstly by the introduction of an overarching transformative principle: the principle of continuous learning.  But it also entails integrated thinking and working, the pooling of financial, physical and human resources and starting from the needs of the prisoner; engaging with the behaviours and emotions that will lead to personal change.  It is perhaps the need to make these changes – ones we would argue are fundamental to all service reform, but can only be brought about by determined political leadership, - that has made implementation hard to achieve as yet.

The first challenge is the pooling of budgets. In the Netherlands for example where there has been keen interest in the Learning Works proposals, prison reform has been enabled by a financial agreement whereby metropolitan authorities have passed the budgets they formerly spent on civil disorder, homelessness and unemployment benefits to the prison service, who effectively now use these resources on working with prisoners to prevent their need for municipal support.

Expenditure on infrastructure (both buildings and technology) cannot be made in isolation from social policy yet within the prison service in England (as within education and health) those responsible for capital expenditure sit in separate buildings with very little engagement with the policy making process.

Secondly and closely related there will be a need to work across government and departmental silos.  Prisons cannot be viewed in isolation from the wider institutional web of which they and prisoners are part: courts, the justice system, failed education and housing policies.  Neither should prisoners themselves be isolated from wider social networks which might be mobilised to support their learning: family, friends and social workers for example.  Currently there are no incentives within the system to encourage these wider connections yet reform will be impossible without them.

Learning Works starts from the needs of the individual prisoner (recognising that meeting them ultimately serves wider society), concentrating on their learning plan.  By contrast the last years of attempts at improvement within the prison service, as with other public services, have all started within organisational boundaries, asking first how can the service be improved and only then how can it be personalised or connected to the individual.  This logic must now be inverted.

Finally, reform will only be delivered by understanding behaviour change and engaging with the emotions and motivations of the convicted criminal, thereby triggering a sustained change in life style.  Again, this is a principle that applies to public services more widely.  Whether we are engaged with delivering preventative health services, an active ageing population, the respect agenda or environmental change, services will have to engage in a very different way with lifestyles and individual behaviour.  This requires a wholly different approach to service delivery, the principles of which are only just beginning to be accepted.

In 2007 an enquiry by the House of Commons Education and Skills Committee considered the Learning Works proposals, supporting their premise and again concluding that an overarching strategy for prison learning is needed.  All that is missing is the political will to set the ball rolling.

Download the full report here.