The Prison Governors’ Association is right to warn about “nothing-to-lose” prisoners attacking notorious inmates such as Ian Huntley (Governors warn of increasing violence of ‘nothing-to-lose’ inmates attacking notorious prisoners, 13 March). But the warning barely scratches the surface.
The deeper problem is that the system itself contains many people with little to lose, either inside or outside prison. Thousands arrive already trapped in cycles of addiction, trauma, homelessness and untreated mental illness, with little stake in life beyond the prison walls. Prison rarely repairs this damage; more often it compounds it. Rehabilitation has increasingly given way to containment and idleness, and regimes that in practice resemble solitary confinement.
Release often changes little. Former prisoners are at best monitored, but rarely supported into stable housing, employment, education or treatment. Unsurprisingly, many return to custody even more embittered and dysfunctional.
Until ministers confront these wider social and institutional failures – and hold the leadership of the prison and probation services properly accountable – the crisis in our penal system will deepen and serious violence will become increasingly endemic.
John Podmore
Former governor, HMPs Belmarsh, Brixton and Swaleside; and former prisons inspector
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