Andy Slaughter, the Labour MP who chairs the Justice Select Committee, has criticised the Government’s response to the committee’s report on drugs in prisons.
The committee made 29 recommendations in its report, Tackling the Drugs Crisis in our Prisons, which it published in October. The Government has accepted eight of them in full and rejected two outright. It accepted the remaining 19 only “partially”.
Mr Slaughter said the response was “not enough” to bring the drugs crisis in jails under control. He voiced disappointment that ministers had backed so few of the proposals in full.
What the committee found
The report said the use of illicit drugs, and the trade in them, had reached “endemic” levels across prisons in England and Wales. It warned of a “dangerous culture of acceptance that must be broken”. Ministers have acknowledged that this culture exists.
The committee said growing availability normalised drug use and left prisoners unable to escape the presence of drugs. According to the report, 39 per cent of prisoners say they find drugs easy to get hold of.
Many people arrive in prison already addicted, the committee found. Others with no previous problem develop a habit once they encounter the ‘menu of drugs’ on offer. The report noted that 11 per cent of male prisoners and 19 per cent of female prisoners reported a new problem with drugs, alcohol or unprescribed medication. They said this had begun since they arrived in prison.
Ministers’ response
Ministers published their response on 9 January. They said they recognised that drug use in prisons was too high. They also said they shared the committee’s concern about the risks to safety and to efforts to cut reoffending.
According to the response, the Sentencing Bill will put the prison population on a sustainable footing. Ministers said this would create the conditions needed to tackle the main challenges in prisons. They said current work aimed to build a safer, recovery-focused system. That system would tackle the threat of drugs getting in, improve support for prisoners in treatment and give staff the skills and tools they need.
One rejected recommendation called for mandatory timeframes for critical repairs to the prison estate. The other concerned the management of people identified as key operators in organised crime groups (OCGs).
Mr Slaughter said HM Prison and Probation Service’s ability to keep safety and control, and to offer effective rehabilitation, faced serious damage from the scale of the drug trade. In that situation, he said, a selective response could not get to grips with the problem.
He called for further immediate measures to cut the underlying demand for drugs. He also wants action to counter the alarming rise in the use of sophisticated drones.
“Without such reform and investment that tackles the profitable supply networks, the discrepancies in treatment provision and purposeful activity, plus the poor condition of the estate and serious capacity pressures, prisons will remain unstable, unsafe and incapable of gaining control over the drugs crisis,” he said.
