Concern for fate of young prisoners

8:00am Monday 26th September 2011
By Stuart Arnold


A SENIOR official with the Prison Officers’ Association (POA) has raised the alarm about overcrowding at the region’s young offender institutions.

The prison population in England and Wales reached an all-time high for the third week running on Friday.
The total number of prisoners hit 87,214, 94 higher than last week’s record high of 87,120 and about 1,600 short of the usable operational capacity of 88,818, Ministry of Justice figures showed.

Those figures follow the jailing of hundreds of rioters following the violent outbreaks in London, Manchester and Birmingham last month.

Terry Fullerton, the POA’s national executive member for the North-East and North Yorkshire, said: “If there is a blow-up in one area and that area cannot cope, you have to start to move prisoners around to the places where there are spaces.

“A knock-on effect takes place right around the country.”
Mr Fullerton said he was particularly worried at the moment about the fate of younger-age prisoners.
He said, because of the current overcrowded conditions, many were being moved to adult prisons prior to the end of their sentences.

“We are seeing a lot of pressure on the likes of Deerbolt (near Barnard Castle) and Northallerton,” he said.
“What happens then is you have young offenders being held in adult establishments to ease that pressure.
“That does not have a good effect on the individuals concerned.

“They need to be with their peer groups and, unfortunately, they learn the criminal trade a lot faster in adult jails.”

Mr Fullerton said 200 new places at Holme House Prison, near Stockton, which became available earlier this year, had helped relieve overcrowding in the region.

But some prisons were still “bursting at the seams”, which meant there was nothing for many inmates to do.

He said: “You have people spending a lot of time idle, quite a lot of them who are already quite angry at being sent inside, and quite often they take their frustrations out on staff.”

Mr Fullerton also renewed the POA’s attack on “absolutely horrendous” plans to privatise more prisons, including Durham and Acklington and Castington, in Northumberland.

He said: “When the Government is talking about reducing numbers in jails, it does not make any sense to do this and won’t change what is happening.

“The private sector won’t want to reduce prisoner numbers.


“The cost of prison places is down to how many people you have in your establishment, so if a prison is full, the more profit will be made.

“If the Government wants to be honest about privatisation, they want to look at the cost of private sector prisons – every one costs more than their public sector counterparts.”

A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: “We currently have enough prison places for those being remanded and sentenced to custody.”