Baroness Stern writes for ePolitix.com ahead of her oral question in the House of Lords, on the report on Garth prison and the effect of budget cuts on the prison system as a whole. Skip related content
In her report on Garth Prison (a Category B, that is a medium-high security prison) published in August, the chief inspector of prisons, Dame Anne Owers, sounded the alarm about the way the Prison Service is dealing with the cuts they are required to make in the running of prisons.
She noted that Garth was a high-performing prison, but went on to say that some of the very good aspects of the prison were under severe threat because of budget cuts and the Prison Service exercise of devising standard costs for each prison function, and then requiring each prison to move towards the standard cost.
The governor of Garth Prison had been told that she would have to reduce the levels of prisoner activity so that prisoners would spend longer locked in their cells, and also to reduce the quality of the work done to prepare prisoners for release. Anne Owers described these as "serious and potentially risky developments that have an ominous ring for prisoners, good prison managers and staff, and the prison system as a whole".
The aim of the question is to hear from the government what the benchmarking exercise being carried out by the Prison Service actually means and what activities it will be possible to carry out once the costs are lowered to a standard level. The government has just invited tenders from seven suppliers to build five new prisons, each holding 1,500 prisoners, and the government could be asked what level of prisoner activity is likely to be affordable once these new prisons are up and running.
The question also raises the situation regarding the 11 contracted-out prisons. Do the budget cuts and the benchmarking reductions only apply to public sector prisons, whilst the private prisons continue to get their annual upratings as per their contracts, or are they spread evenly across all prisons?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The pandemic of swine flu may be hitting a peak in the Northern Hemisphere, global health officials said on Friday, but they cautioned it was far from over.
