Speech of Stephen Withers, PCS, UK - 28 February 2008, Brussels
28-02-2008 Prison Action Day
Speech, UK, PCS, Stephen Withers
Hello everyone,
I’m very pleased to be here to speak on behalf of the Public and Commercial Services union, which represents civil servants and other workers in the UK. In particular I bring greetings from the PCS Prison Service Group Executive Committee and our members working in prisons in England and Wales.
I’m speaking to you at a time when the prisoner population in England and Wales is rising relentlessly, and last Friday the number of prisoners in custody was 82,068, while the capacity is 81,972. The UK governments’ solution to this problem is, of course, to build more prisons -15,000 more prisoner places over the next few years. And of course, many of these new prisons will be managed by the private sector. This will ensure that England and Wales continue to have more private prisons than any other country in Europe.
The Labour Party, which said in 1996, before they came to power, that they would return private sector prisons to state control, have instead continued the work of the previous conservative government.
Jack Straw, the Secretary of State, now tells us that competition is good, but in fact the only thing that can be said about private prisons is that they are cheap.
PCS believes very strongly that too many people are sent to prison unnecessarily and that in many cases, community punishments would be more effective.
And of course there are many for whom prison is totally unacceptable and indeed damaging: the mentally ill, drug addicts, vulnerable women and children and people with learning disabilities, for example.
Over the last few weeks and months, Jack Straw and others have begun to state that magistrates and judges should send fewer people to prison.
This has been tried before, but without sustained investment in community punishment and supervision, mental health treatment and drug misuse treatment, simply asking the courts to send fewer people to prison will fail once again.
Finally, the growing prisoner population is being used as a pretext for privatisation, and we are aware that some EU governments are now actively considering these options.
PCS states, clearly and without reservation, that making profit from the imprisonment of offenders is morally wrong and indefensible.
In conclusion, we welcome the work of EPSU in organising this event and we hope it will be the start of a massive campaign throughout Europe to force a radical change of direction by our governments.
PCS will firmly support these efforts and I know you will do the same.
Thank you.
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