Preventing ill-treatment in prison

Work with Offenders explains the work of the UK National Preventive Mechanism

I am sure that many readers of this site have been thinking about those living and working in prisons more frequently than usual over the last few weeks. One organisation dedicated to the protection of prisoners is the UK National Preventive Mechanism (NPM). Last week the NPM published both its usual annual report and the report marking its 10th anniversary.

What is the NPM?

The National Preventive Mechanism (NPM) is the network of independent bodies that have responsibility for preventing ill-treatment in detention. In every jurisdiction of the UK –Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales – the bodies in this network have the job of inspecting or monitoring every place of detention with the aim of preventing the ill-treatment of those detained. These inspection and monitoring bodies provide essential protections for anyone detained anywhere in the UK, many of whom are vulnerable.

Whether a person is compulsorily detained in a prison, an immigration detention centre, a psychiatric hospital, as a child in a secure training centre, or in any other kind of detention, there is an organisation designed to ensure that ill-treatment will not be tolerated. The UK’s NPM was created to comply with the United Nations’ Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OPCAT). The UK ratified OPCAT in December 2003 and designated the NPM in March 2009. Indeed, the UK was one of the first countries to ratify the agreement and set up a domestic oversight body.

Inadequate conditions

While you might think that this sort of body will be more of a pressing concern in countries such as Saudi Arabia or Thailand, NPM members continue to witness and report on alarming treatment of people in detention in this country. Just last year (2018/19) two NPM members – Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMI Prisons) and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) – reported that over 10,500 people were detained or deprived of liberty in places deemed inadequate or poor for safety.

NPM members who monitor mental health detention have reported on the difficulties people living and working in these settings face. These include overly restrictive environments, excessive lengths of stay in detention far away from their loved ones and abusive, undignified treatment.

Similarly, NPM members routinely find that the safeguards in place to ensure survivors of torture are not detained do not always work.

Recent concerns

Readers won’t be surprised to learn that the NPM had many core concerns to raise in its most recent annual report in respect of prisons. In particular, the report highlights the damaging rise in levels of violence and the use of force and restraint in a number of prisons, with not enough being done to address the underlying causes of this violence.

NPM members often found there was inadequate governance around the use of force, leaving some organisations to raise concerns about the rollout of PAVA spray – a synthetic pepper spray which temporarily incapacitates – in men’s prisons in England and Wales. Another strong area of concern was the continuing and indeed disturbing levels of self-harm in prisons.

As we have seen, the NPM is not just concerned with prisons but all places of detention in the United Kingdom. The current report calls yet again for a strict time limit for immigration detention. For many years, NPM members have documented the damaging impact of indefinite immigration detention. The report raises the issue that the safeguards supposedly in place to prevent vulnerable poor people being detained in immigration centres were not working effectively.

The report also comments on recent revelations about cases of alleged abuse at a number of hospitals where vulnerable people with learning disabilities and/or autism are held on the presumption that they’ll be cared for, kept safe and supported. Many readers may remember the Panorama programme which reveal the shocking treatment of patients by staff at Whorlton Hall. Also in the last year a police investigation into CCTV footage at Muckamore Abbey has already identified around 1,500 alleged crimes, including physical and mental abuse of patients by staff at the hospital.

Conclusion

Many readers will be familiar with the Dostoevsky quote: “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” We are indebted to the work of the organisations which make up the NPM for exposing the ill-treatment and neglect of some people detained in the UK. Surely it is time that the Government placed the NPM on a statutory footing and gave it the powers it needs while guaranteeing its independence.

Certainly, we will need an independent review of how prisoners and prison staff were treated during the current coronavirus pandemic, once we are, hopefully, able to return to a more normal way of life.