“If you neglect your prisons, you do that at your own peril”

Alice Jill Edwards. The role of prison management is both crucial and limited. Prison authorities manage the day-to-day to ensure that prisoners’ rights are respected. Prison management has to make sure that their staff is behaving according to the rules, that they are establishing an environment in the prison that is collegial and infused by an ethic of care. Likewise, if a prison administrator has been in the job too long, is no longer interested, or is not provided with up-to-date training, the same thing can happen but in reverse: a deterioration of conditions, allowing prison officers to get away with terrible conduct.

There are all kinds of variations in training of prison management staff. In order to be really professional, the prison service should be meaningful and require officers to have a proper level of education, with years of training ahead of being put into the prison facility. One really needs to make sure to recruit the right people and make this an attractive profession. Prison officers do recount to me that they do take pride in their job, many enjoy what they do. But there are too many people in prison staff that are falling between the cracks: they do not benefit from adequate training, a career path or proper remuneration.

Burnout rates are high in the prison service, as they are in other highly demanding departments that work face-à-face with individuals on a daily basis. In some Caribbean countries, the administrations recommend that prison officers should have quite regularly the opportunity to be seconded to another service. Spending time in other facilities can allow them to experience other ways of functioning. When a prison officer is assigned to one facility in which they have always worked, it is very hard to know what could be done better, or that certain standards are not acceptable, because they become institutionalised. Exchanges between facilities, or country exchanges of good practises, would be really interesting for prison officers and can make a difference. Their attitude, their training and their exposure to good practises is key in the fight against torture.

Although the prison management plays a central role in the treatment of prisoners, there are many issues that escape its control. Resource allocation is one of them. Increasing the resources of prisons so that they can meet all their obligations is rarely a priority. Prison authorities also have very little say over who enters in their prison, whether they are suitable for the prison conditions and whether the facility is already at overcapacity.

Other actors have a responsibility in preventing torture and inhuman treatment in places of detention.

It is crucial for prison administrators to be able to explain what is happening in reality. Quite often, parliamentarians, governments, judges, and prosecutors have no idea of what is going on behind prison walls. In many countries, judges and prosecutors are calling for an increase in imprisonment rates and charges, without understanding the consequences for staff and prisoners. It is like the left hand is not talking to the right hand.

AJE. The common perception of climate change is that everything is getting hotter, but it is actually the increase of extremes of temperature. The Committee against Torture and the European Court of Human Rights have both stated that any temperature beyond the median, be it high or low, is considered inhuman and degrading treatment. Overcrowding further exacerbates hotter temperatures. This combination of problems can lead to higher rates of violence and suicide.

When gathering information for the report, there was this statistic: 30% of the global prison population live in the 12 countries that are likely to be most affected by climate change. There are studies showing that prisons are located on the least favourable land, which quite often happens to be such volatile zones. New prisons are built in places that are likely to be most affected by extreme climatic events such as floods, or extreme temperatures. One needs a climate change lens to all prison policy, including infrastructure, both for new prisons and adapting existing prisons.

AJE. There are few initiatives or policies that come from prison administrations on a national level regarding the adaptation of prison infrastructures or practices to the consequences of climate change. It seems that efforts have being done to make prisons carbon neutral. But what about the conditions inside? Little has been done to guarantee good conditions for prisoners in the face of climate change.

Some countries are very large and have very different climatic conditions across their territories. One facility can be suitable for the climate in part of a State’s territory, but totally unsuitable for the climate in another area. Yet quite often they are relying on the same private company to design all their prisons. Expertise needs to be built up and shared in collaboration with leading architectural firms, NGOs and other actors. Governments have a heightened duty of care for prisoners, including in preparedness for climate change. Prisoners are in a vulnerable space, they do not have any choice about where they are housed. It is really in all States’ interests to make sure that their prisons are adaptable and adapted to changes in the climate. I believe that more can be done.

AJE. Too often, a State, or part of the State, will blame the prison administration for the detention conditions that sometimes they have got no control over. Even the most willing administrator will fall foul if they are given 100 prisoners and they only have space for 55. There is no avenue for those prisoners to go anywhere else, if judges do not care about whether the prisons are overcrowded or not.

The responsibility to prevent torture and other inhuman and degrading treatment actually lies with the different components of the State: parliamentarians who pass legislation and the budget; judges who sentence people without knowing what the conditions are, where they are going to be sent to; and prosecutors who ask for incarceration when they know the system is backed-up.

We must have a better understanding that those actors are also accomplices when they send people to overcrowded prisons, places that have poor conditions or that have reputations for direct torture or inhuman treatment. It is everybody’s responsibility, and each actor has specific responsibilities.

AJE. I will continue to follow up on allegation letters that come to my office. For instance, I am working very hard on the cases of nearly 3,000 prisoners in the United Kingdom who are detained indefinitely under the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentencing regime, which was abandoned in 2012. Yet, so many individuals remain in jail indefinitely. I would like to see this end.

Working on prison reforms, visiting prisons, speaking to prisoners will always be a major part of my work as the Special Rapporteur. I have met young people in prison who admit what they have done and they are looking forward to returning to society. They always wanted to be a car engineer, or a teacher, but the courses offered in prison are just activities to keep them occupied rather than provide training. I would like to be known as the Special Rapporteur that was able to bring hope to those that are in prison, to help bring them the skills that they need to be able to leave prison in dignity. This requires that during their stay, they are treated respectfully and humanely.

Some countries are making very good improvements, have changed their mindsets, are really looking at institutional reforms in the prison sector. Others consider prisons as the discarded, unattractive, uninteresting part of public policy. I will continue to stress through my mandate that prisoners are people too.

I have seen a strong correlation between poor, disadvantaged, marginalised communities and prisons. The reasons people turn to crime are quite often linked to poverty or lack of opportunity in society. Certain segments of the prison population will continue to require long prison terms. But for a large majority of people convicted, especially for drug and drug adjacent crimes, or property related crimes, there are other different forms of deprivation of liberty. These alternatives must be employed to get people off what I call ‘the treadmill of recidivism’. We need to remember that people go to prison and then they return to the community. We have to engage with the community, we have to dispel the fear they may have of people returning.

It is crucial for everybody that prisoners are not forgotten. As a necessary part of society, prisons should not be neglected places. I think one must make the public policy case for all this. One of the arguments I have tried to put in the report is that if you neglect your prisons, you do that at your own peril. Essentially, prisons become places of violence, with high rates of injury, suicide, depression. These challenges call for new resources and more targeted or individualised approaches. Governments are short sighted if they think prison reform is something that they can ignore.