The presidential address given by the Rt Rev Trevor Willmott, Bishop of Basingstoke, at diocesan synod on November 11 to mark Prisons Week (November 20-26)

"I am grateful to the diocese for many things and not least for its welcome, support and prayers over this past year or so.  But it was here also within our borders some 30 years ago or so that I learnt how to play poker.  To be more precise it was within the community of Her Majesty’s Prison Albany on the Isle of Wight where I spent a period living as part of the prison community.  That experience has proved to be formative of a major strand of my life – not the playing of poker! – but a deep concern for criminal justice. 

"Last week I licensed the new chaplain in Winchester Prison. In the course of the bun fight afterwards I spent considerable time with two of the inmates who described the difficulties of being separated from their respective families – separated not only by the reality of being in prison themselves but the impossibility of the journeys involved for their families to visit them. In one case the cost of the journey, the demand of looking after young children, the timing of visits, etc permitted only one conjugal visit over this past twelve months. The word “crisis” has been attached to the state of the British criminal justice system so often that it has now ceased to be meaningful. In my judgement public confidence in our criminal justice system has been eroded by a recent series of revelations about mis-management, particularly in relation to the supervision of dangerous offenders and foreign national prisoners, let alone the fact that our current prison capacity has now reached break point.

"Having only recently sold a prison ship we are now told by the Home Office that tenders are being sought for a replacement. In July of this year the Home Secretary, John Reid, launched a reform plan for the Home Office and published proposals on “rebalancing the criminal justice system in favour of the law-abiding majority”. These proposals coming so soon in the wake of ambitious legislative and institutional reforms in 2003, 2004 and 2005 have done little to address the situation of instability and uncertainty. Those who are required to implement new laws and policies in this area seem to me to have been literally overwhelmed, particularly as a result of the ever widening gap between demand and capacity for prison space.

"In classical theories of punishment the objectives to be fulfilled are described as retribution, deterrence and rehabilitation. Punishment on its own seems to me to be a recipe for negativity and failure. Re-offending statistics also show us only too clearly that deterrence on its own can do little to build the healthy society for which we all long. Too often society looks for short cuts in dealing with crime and criminals. Our duty is to question such short cuts and to join with others in looking for a better way. Our present Prime Minister built his early popular reputation on “being tough on crime and on the causes of crime”. It is a slogan now widely shared by politicians of all flavour and most certainly by the majority of our media.

"The rhetoric of toughness and conflict can also produce distortions in public perception which feed back into the expectations of politicians. The widespread belief that sentencing is over lenient runs contrary to statistics on the increased frequency and length of custodial sentences in recent years which has served to produce seriously overcrowded prisons. Even in those of our communities which over the past years have experienced a very low level of crime, fear of crime still emerges high on the agenda of concern both for would be politician and voter alike. A few pictures will serve to illustrate the crisis. Despite a declared policy of using custody only as a last resort the prison population in this country has risen from forty two thousand in 1992 to over seventy nine thousand today. In recent weeks the population has exceeded capacity. Hence the requirement to use police cells. Within that population the number of women in prison has more than doubled in the last ten years many of whom have suffered violence and sexual abuse; a high proportion suffer from one or more diagnosed mental disorders. Many have a drug habit.

"While the special needs of children and young people are recognised by the existence of the Youth Justice Board, the conditions under which those young people live are far from satisfactory. Twenty eight children have died in custodial institutions since 1990, mostly by committing suicide. It is a statistical fact that members of black and minority ethnic groups are over represented in most parts of the criminal justice system. There is no doubt that racism is a pervasive feature of prison culture among both inmates and staff. About seventy percent of all prisoners are estimated to be suffering from at least one diagnosable mental disorder and as many as ten percent may be seriously ill. Committal to prison often reflects the failings of community mental health services and, as we would all expect, prison is the worst conceivable environment for care and treatment.

"Finally, drug mis-use. While drug treatment has become a major element in programmes to reduce offending behaviour in prisons and outside, the reality is that the need for money to pay for drugs is a major motive in property crime. Sadly, during the course of my time in Durham the therapeutic community which I helped to set up in the women’s prison there had to be closed down because of insufficient funding, despite the fact that the evidence on the ground proved its value.

"What then might we as Christians contribute to this debate? First of all I am not arguing for a state of naïve innocence. Crime and punishment are inevitably part of a world of free will. What we need to do, I think, is to help society’s response to crime to be seen more in line with the grain of God’s creative and redeeming work rather than against it. We need to be urgent in our representations that coercion, ie punishment must always be tempered with the offering of mercy and hope. It must engage us in challenging the wasteful and self defeating use of prison in favour of measures which hold criminals to account but give opportunity for lasting change. We must say that over reliance on the criminal justice system to solve problems of anti social behaviour is highly questionable.

"Finally some signs of hope. I welcome the fact that the traditional work of prison chaplains has been reinforced by an increase in numbers over the last five years and here would pay both my thanks and my appreciation to those priests and lay people who exercise that ministry in our prisons on behalf of the whole Church of God. Secondly, my thanks and prayers to the more than 7,000 Christian volunteers and 460 Christian organisations working within our current prison system. But while there is a powerful witness to the redeeming power of the Gospel in the closed world of prisons it does need to continue in the outside world. It must surely be a matter of deep and urgent concern to us that many prisoners who either come to faith or find faith afresh during their time in prison all too often find their local church on their release to be less than welcoming and understanding of their particular needs.

"Next Sunday, November 19, marks the beginning of this year’s Prisons Week – an opportunity for all of us to remember and pray for all who are engaged in the criminal justice system. On the Tuesday of that week there will be a gathering from our two dioceses to explore one particular faith-based initiative which unites both offender, victim and restorative justice in the theme of Circles of Support and Accountability. In my judgement and experience crime can never be dealt with effectively solely through legislation, control and more prisons. The only effective counter is to be found in partnership between government, the institutions of society, and local communities. Engagement in this issue is a risky piece of work, as is every engagement with the mending of the social fabric of our society. That mending, it seems to me, lies at the heart of all that we are about in Kairos.