Authors: Vicky Pryce
S
o there I was in East Sutton Park, a Grade II-listed Elizabethan mansion set in 84 acres of grounds which couldn’t be more different than Holloway, both architecturally and in terms of its regime. William the Conqueror had bequeathed the original estate to Bishop Odo after the Battle of Hastings and East Sutton Park is even mentioned in the Domesday Book. The building itself seems to have been added to over the centuries: there is evidence of an eleventh-century settlement on a moated site which was succeeded by a fourteenth-century building of Kentish rag. The main house where the women are housed is a mixture of Elizabethan and Victorian buildings with a farm attached to it. According to the induction booklet I received on arrival, until 1942 the estate was owned by Lord Filmer Wilson, whose son and heir to the estate was killed in the Second World War. The estate then went to the government, who used it for the remainder of the war as a headquarters for the Tank Regiment. In 1945 the house was opened as the only open borstal in existence before becoming the open female prison it is today. It now houses a hundred residents,
comprising
ninety women and ten young offenders.
It was clear East Sutton Park set out a very
different
approach to prison life than I had experienced in my short period in Holloway. ‘East Sutton Park is an open prison – there are no “Lock-up” times’. But there were also notes in the induction booklet indicative of the problems the prison staff often face: an
anti-bullying
statement, a decency policy and a comment that love-bites are classified as self-inflicted injuries, while tattooing yourself or others is not allowed.
It was a real joy after Holloway to be in a place with no lock-ups. The reports I received later from the girls at ESP, who had been transferred from closed
prisons
around the country, suggested that some prisons were worse than others. This is supported by the ‘Measuring the Quality of Prison Life’ survey that the prison service carries out periodically in all
prisons
in England and Wales. A report to the select committee on home affairs in June 2004 detailed how prisons vary most in terms of treating prisoners with dignity and respect, as well as offending behaviour programme and resettlement provisions.
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Ex-Holloway girls generally had good memories of the prison but I realised from talking to those who came to ESP from other closed prisons that at times the lock-ups were quite horrific. When there were new arrivals in ESP you could in fact tell the girls from one particular prison in the Midlands some two-and-a-half hours away, as they tended to look more pasty faced than others and positively cowed in my view –
uncertain
where to go, huddling very close together in the groups they arrived in, finding comfort in close
proximity
with each other in the first few days. I heard one girl who finally came out to the open area saying to the others how weird it was to step on grass for the
first time in ages. That was sad. I was told that on many days in that private jail they got no more than ten minutes on the outside and couldn’t go out if there was any sign of rain as the guards didn’t want to get wet. In the middle of this cold winter we were having, they had a number of instances where the heating didn’t work for a few days in a row. I idly speculated whether they had hit their heating budget early and were saving energy to ensure they didn’t get over it. On the other hand there were compensating factors, like a better education programme, but the girls all reported being unable to eat the appalling food and a number had lost a huge amount of weight or even arrived with illnesses that had not been treated properly. Interestingly, research so far suggests that private prisons are generally either much worse
or
much better than public sector prisons. There are large differences particularly in levels of staff professionalism, organisation, consistency and staff–prisoner relationships.
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As soon as we arrived at ESP I rang all the kids and my lawyer to give them the good news and the first visit on the coming Sunday was booked for me straight away by Les on reception. ESP allowed visits every weekend rather than every fortnight as had been the case in Holloway, and three adults and three
children
under eighteen could come in either on Saturday or on Sunday. In contrast to Holloway, I was allowed my handbag with all its contents, as well as my
toiletries
and most of my clothes from my suitcase, which miraculously survived the M20 van transfer. I would be staying in a dormitory room with friendly
roommates
, a proper carpet and a wooden moveable bed. The other dorm residents immediately helped me find a soft pillow, duvet and duvet cover, and towel and
bathrobe, and I was settled in very easily. One of the ladies, over sixty, told me that at her former closed prison she had requested an extra blanket and pillow, as she was entitled to at her age. After three weeks of asking she received the pillow and not the blanket – it may have been the blanket and not the pillow, but either way, frankly, that’s shocking. And then another great revelation. The food here was edible – but more than that. As we had arrived so late, we were rushed to the evening meal and discovered battered fish and chips and mushy peas and pudding with custard and fruit – and all this in a wood-panelled dining room with great views of the Kent valleys. It was a far cry from what we had left behind. Of course, as an open prison for low-risk prisoners, East Sutton Park is rather unusual in many ways.
I knew very little – in fact nothing – about East Sutton Park when I arrived. If I had researched it beforehand, I would have seen the November 2012 report by Nick Hardwick, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons.
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He describes East Sutton Park as ‘an unusual prison’. He is right of course. It is a Grade II-listed, sixteenth-century country mansion with a farm attached to it, overlooking the rolling Kent countryside. It is also one of only two women’s open prisons. As a prison its impact is believed to be a very positive one, providing, as the report concludes, ‘unusually good outcomes for both the women it holds and the public as a whole’.
I would also have been reassured by his conclusion that ‘East Sutton Park is a very safe place’. There are ‘supportive reception and induction arrangements’ and ‘very little bullying’. The report also states that ‘illicit drug use was virtually non-existent’. I never
witnessed any on the premises although there were a small number of instances while I was there when residents abused the system on their days out and were generally caught and sent back to closed
conditions
. Nick Hardwick also found that ‘the general environment was impressive but living conditions for most women in small and cramped dormitories were very poor and the lack of privacy caused tension’. I can vouch for that. But on the plus side ESP provided residents with worthwhile external work and lots of training opportunities in the community to help prepare women for release. There were still issues to address, which I discovered and document in the book later, ‘but East Sutton Park provides a safe and decent environment for the women it holds’.
First impressions had indeed been good. Very
important
for me was that I was allowed to make phone calls to thirteen different approved personal numbers and seven solicitor numbers. I still found it restrictive but it was a luxury after Holloway. In some private prisons, such as Lowdham Grange men’s prison in Nottingham, enhanced prisoners enjoy landline access in their rooms. Nick Hardwick commented that although ‘women were appreciative of the opportunities they had to maintain contact with their families … it was still not possible to receive incoming calls from their children and the continuing ban on the use of mobile phones in the prison was hard to justify’. I have to say that in discussions with the lifers, some of whom had gone in before the latest mobiles and smartphones became so popular, I found that they had great difficulty adapting to them once they were able to use them out on visits.
Naturally, the media started writing that I had moved to a cushy prison with special privileges like flat screen
TV, Jacuzzis and tennis courts. The other residents found it hilarious and we started searching for all these ‘mod cons’. The main issue worrying the women there was their loss of freedom and their separation from their families. That they were treated humanely was in my view just as it should be. But even I was astonished to discover that Friday night was karaoke night in the pool room between 8.30 and 10.30 (which I went to on my first night), Saturday night was bingo night, for which you had to pay a fee (50p block fee from your wages for a number of games if you wanted to take part – practically everyone did – and run by the residents), and bedtime was 11 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on the weekends. It was a far cry from the Holloway, Peterborough and other closed prisons’ lock-up time, which forced you to be a hermit and not socialise – an attitude that hardly helps when you are out there again seeking re-employment or trying to reintegrate. The right-wing call for tougher regimes forgets one fact: for these women losing their liberty and their families is the most horrific thing to happen to them.
A lovely girl from Indonesia, who I will call Aanjay, came from Peterborough and immediately threw herself into working life at ESP: she was up at 5.30 to serve breakfast for two-and-a-half hours, then after a short break carried out kitchen duties for three hours, then another three hours in the kitchen before serving supper and finally a very brief break for dinner herself before spending the rest of the evening doing people’s hair, nails and eyebrows, giving massages and the like. It wasn’t that this was necessarily her métier – she had a sociology degree from the London School of Economics. Yes, it made her popular with all the other residents who queued to have their hair and makeup
done before their home visits. It was, as she confessed to me, the only way to stop her thinking about the five children and her (rather handsome) Italian husband she had left behind. On the few occasions she joined us in the drawing room, all talk would be centred on how she could persuade the governor to allow her to go out and see her eldest daughter, aged fifteen, who was due to have a major knee operation just around the time I was leaving ESP. Nothing preys on the mind of these women more than things like this. They didn’t tend to classify prisons by the treatment they received but what regimes they could undertake to pass the time faster and push them closer to seeing their loved ones again.
Family relationships and support is recognised as a significant factor in reducing the risk of reoffending by providing a platform for the offender to make positive and valuable changes towards rehabilitation. An
investigation
by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) stresses the importance of keeping close contact with the family to reduce reoffending (by as much as 39 per cent), to avoid depression and self-harm, and to improve
children
’s well-being.
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Maintaining contact with children and families through visits, telephone calls and letters not only ameliorates the painful experience of
separation
but enables women to adjust more effectively to prison life. Research in America examined the
determinants
of female prisoner misconduct and found the number of visits and phone calls a prisoner received reduced rule-breaking behaviour, thereby allowing the woman greater opportunities to respond more
effectively
to rehabilitation and treatment programmes, and offering a greater chance to avoid reoffending on release.
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The National Offender Management Service’s (NOMS) Reducing Reoffending Delivery Plan
identifies
seven pathways to reduce reoffending and this includes maintaining prisoners’ relationships with children and family.
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Researchers in the US have gone so far as to say the family ‘is probably the most important weapon we have in fighting crime. Prisoners who receive visitors, maintain family ties and are released into a stable home environment are more likely to succeed in leading productive,
crime-free
lives.’
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A reduction in reoffending of course has significant costs implications for wider society.
A study undertaken by the New Economics Foundation examined the economic impact of work undertaken with prisoners and their families by the Prison Advice and Care Trust. The Integrated Family Support Programme (IFSP) seeks to support
prisoners
’ relationships with their families by providing assistance with visits (including help with arranging and facilitating visits and intermediary work between prisoners and their families to build bonds), support to families (including emotional support, advice and referrals) and resettlement support. The study ‘reviewed the work of the IFSP over a one-year period with 794 prisoners at HMPs Swansea, Wandsworth and Styal, and was based on a proposition derived from analysis by the Ministry of Justice that the odds of reoffending within one year of release from prison were 39 per cent higher for prisoners who had not received visits from a partner or family member while in prison compared to those who had’.
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The estimated cost-benefit of reducing reoffending over a one-year period through the IFSP work with the 794 offenders and their families was £1,063,529.
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This
was based on a conservative estimate of avoiding the costs of an offender reoffending only once during the year. The costs saved would be significantly higher if cases of multiple reoffending were avoided.
With a stable home and family network so
important
, the value of being able to return home after serving time cannot be overestimated but, as has been noted, many women lose their homes as a result of imprisonment and are released despite uncertain availability of accommodation or housing. The Wedderburn report in 2000 found that of the women it interviewed, ‘half of the mothers nearing release were not expecting to return to their previous
accommodation
and almost four in ten had lost their homes.’
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A 2002 report by the Social Exclusion Unit showed that around one third of female prisoners lost their homes and possessions.
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The Home Office found that ‘during the period 2006–08, 44 per cent of female prisoners reported that they would have a problem finding accommodation on release’.
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This would suggest that moving prisoners to places where they lose contact with their family because they are too far away makes little sense.