SHADES OF THE PRISON-HOUSE

Mr Christopher Train has been director-general of the Prison Service for barely two weeks. He already has on his desk confirmation that the prison population has crept back above 45,000 (including five hundred kept in police cells); more evidence of the restlessness of prison officers, accompanied by threats of action on their part; and the Chief Inspector of Prisons' gloomy report on the state of our penal establishments. Give or take a few details, this depressing mixture has been the standard fare of prison administrators for years. Mr Train's predecessor, Mr Dennis Trevelyan, was an enlightened, efficient and reforming directorgeneral, but even he found himself unable to overcome the combined forces of governmental timidity, departmental and judicial conservatism, prison officer resistance and, not least, the inexorably rising crime rate.

Sir James Hennessy, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, has few words of comfort. His suggestions for making better use of the available facilities, and for the alleviation of some of the worst deprivations suffered by prisoners, deserve urgent study, but even if they are implemented they cannot do more than improve conditions at the margin. The efficiency and rationalization exercise now being carried out by the prison department, though welcome, cannot be other than peripheral to the central issue.

T'he problem can be put

simply. Our prisons are appallingly overcrowded - there are about 7,000 more prisoners than the accommodation is designed to hold - and conditions in many of them do not attain even the minimum standards commensurate with human dignity. New prisons being built can barely replace accommodation in buildings finally found uninhabitable. They are not providing extra places. Everyone concerned with the criminal justice system agrees that there is a crisis and that it is getting worse. The concerted effort needed to meet it is tragically absent

The Home Secretary must take much of the blame because in his hands lies at least a partial remedy. Under the Criminal Justice Act, 1982, he has the power to release, by executive order, prisoners in the last six months of their sentence. It is a power which can be used with discrimination, to ensure that those released do not constitute a threat to the community. Primarily intended to respond to situations created by emergencies such as industrial action by prison officers, there is no reason why it should not be used during periods of relative normality. The signs are however that* Mr Whitelaw does not intend to use the power other than sparingly.

The act also allows an order to be made reducing the minimum period a prisoner must serve in prison before becoming eligible for parole. At present it is twelve months. A reduction to nine or six months would allow thou-

sands more prisoners to request parole, though at the risk of overburdening the administrative machinery and the probation service.

A general though limited amnesty is a far simpler, more effective shortcut to emptying our prisons,...