Covid-19: Prisons and Offender Rehabilitation

Lord German Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord German]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic on the prison population and offender rehabilitation programmes.

The Question was considered in a Virtual Proceeding via video call.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, in this debate the Government have three big questions to answer. First, have they failed in their duty of care to prison staff and prisoners? Secondly, have their actions to date been too little, too late? Thirdly, are the Government’s actions sufficient to safeguard the public from the community spread of coronavirus, and have they adequately ensured that the safety of the public has not been put at risk?

I thank all the organisations that have provided me with supporting evidence to understand these key questions, in particular the Howard League for Penal Reform, the Prison Reform Trust and Women in Prison. I also acknowledge that the Government have limited room for manoeuvre, given the systemic problems over many years in our prison system—problems of overcrowding, maintenance backlogs and inadequate support to prepare people for release.

On my first question, of whether the Government have failed in their duty of care, we have just to look at the statistics on virus transmission to identify the scale of the problem. The first reported coronavirus case in a prison in England and Wales occurred on 18 March. By 1 April there were 88 cases among staff and prisoners. By 8 April that number had risen to 177; by 15 April it had risen to 300; and on Tuesday this week it rose again to 534. These figures demonstrate an exponential rise and no sign of a flattening curve. In fact, in the last week alone, the number of cases has risen from 269 to 534. That is six times higher than it was on 1 April. Sadly, prisoners, prison officers and staff have died from coronavirus. I ask the Minister to provide us with the latest details.

Isolation, social distancing, testing and wearing of protective equipment are the actions we would expect to be undertaken by the Government to protect prisoners and staff alike. Our overcrowded prisons make it very difficult to isolate or to develop social distancing. By way of example, Swansea, the most overcrowded prison in England and Wales, is supposed to hold no more than 250 men, but at the end of February it held 436. The Government’s response is to create three cohorts of prisoner and to try to isolate one from the other: those with coronavirus symptoms; those who might have been exposed to the virus or are new to prison; and the vulnerable group to be shielded.

To create the space for this to happen, the Government announced that they would build 2,000 temporary cells. How many of those have now been built and how many are occupied? Also, how many prisoners are currently required to share a cell or sleep in a dormitory? Is the wearing of PPE compulsory for staff? Can the Minister confirm reports of woefully low numbers of available equipment?

For example, in our largest prison, HMP Berwyn in Wrexham, where 60% of the cells are designed to hold two people—built in breach of United Nations minimum standards—social distancing is impossible. I am afraid that the conclusion reached is that, because of a failure of testing, availability of PPE, isolation and social distancing, and the exponential rise in coronavirus cases, our prisons are incubators, pumping the virus and spreading it to the communities both within and outside their walls. For the 17,000 prisoners sharing cells, whether the virus is contracted is truly a terrifying lottery.

On my second question, of whether government actions have been too little, too late, I turn to the Government’s key proposal to reduce the spread of the virus by creating more space in the prison system through the early release of prisoners. There is confusion about how many prisoners are to be released: the Government say 4,000, plus pregnant women prisoners, but we are told that Public Health England and Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service have recommended a reduction of 15,000 prisoners to properly safeguard both prisoners and staff. Either way, progress has been painfully slow to reach even the lower government target. Only 17 of the 70 pregnant women have been released and the end-of-custody temporary release scheme had released only a handful—just four—by 14 April. If that is still the case, it gives us a grand total of 21, nowhere near the 4,000 the Government say and nowhere near the 15,000 the prison service says.

This rate of release is too slow and too late

“to save lives and avoid a public health catastrophe both within prisons and beyond.”

Those are not my words but those of the Secretary of State for Justice announcing the release scheme earlier. Has the ECTR scheme been restarted and how many have now been released? Do the Government have sufficient powers to facilitate early release and, if not, why have they not taken them? Meanwhile, new prisoners are being admitted. Can the Minister tell the House how many have been admitted to prison in the last month and how many are being held on remand? All around the globe, countries are releasing prisoners under strict conditions. The Ministry of Justice response falls way below any international comparator and indeed, in the UK, below that of Northern Ireland and probably Scotland.

The scientific advice is quite clear: the risk of infection is much higher in congregate settings such as prisons. The fewer the people in those settings the better. A similar situation applies in immigration detention centres. By definition, these people are not criminals and are certainly vulnerable. So, to my third question: is public health adequately safeguarded by the Government’s actions? Prisons are not places of total isolation. Some 50,000 staff and workers enter and leave daily, and goods and services arrive and leave. Prison staff have woefully low numbers of PPE and nearly a quarter of staff are self-isolating at home. The reduced numbers serving the prison population have resulted in lock-ins for 23 hours at a time, often with more than one person in a cell. Testing of staff has only just started, and those tested are a tiny proportion of staff overall. As the expert adviser Professor Coker says:

“Closed environments contribute to secondary transmission of COVID-19 and promote superspreading events. Closed environments are consistent with large-scale COVID-19 transmission events such as that of the ski chalet-associated cluster in France and the church- and hospital-associated clusters in South Korea.”


The Government’s response to the pandemic in respect of the Prison and Probation Service has been inadequate and lacking in urgency. What we have witnessed has been too little and too slow. Urgent action is needed to save lives. In these exceptional circumstances, the Government must accelerate and widen the release scheme, including vulnerable offenders, children and pregnant women. Only then will prisons have the space to isolate and undertake some social distancing. We need a presumption against short-term prison sentences, which do not generally work anyway. The Government have been looking at this very carefully. Sending more people to prison for a short time is a double whammy against beating the pandemic.

The prison estate is now a perfect crucible for the disease. The dangers have been pointed out to the Government, but they appear reticent to act. This has put prisoners and prison staff in danger. The Government have failed in their duty of care and are sleep-walking into a crisis that they must avoid. Prisons were already overstretched and overcrowded before coronavirus. Adding this crisis on top makes it a perfect storm for our Prison and Probation Service. I therefore look forward to the Minister’s response to these problems.