THE Prison Officers Association (POA) has long warned it’s impossible for the government to build its way out of the prison capacity crisis.

Instead we believe the billions of pounds earmarked for new jails should be invested in the ones we already have and in community support to reduce offending.

It’s therefore disappointing that the new Labour government is continuing the Tories’ programme of building a new generation of mega-prisons, each holding up to 2,000 inmates and run by the private sector for profit, when we know smaller units run by the public sector for public good are far more effective in supporting rehabilitation.

And quite simply, we lock up too many people in this country. As this union told the justice select committee last year, “there are many prisoners who quite simply do not belong in prison and whose criminality would be better addressed in the community or specialised institutions. These prisoners are disproportionately represented in cohorts such as mentally ill prisoners, non-violent offenders and female offenders, especially those who have experienced trauma.” 

The comments last week by Nick Hardwick, a former chief inspector of prisons and Parole Board head, that “I don’t think it’s a good way to spend money to build big new prisons” because “we are spending billions on an untested model that we don’t know works” were well received by the POA and the officers on the front line we represent.

Hardwick is also correct that it would be “better to reinvest that money in trying to stop people going into prison in the first place” and that, “even if in the longer run they work, by the nature of these prisons they will have new, inexperienced staff, so you are going to have real problems in some of them, I think.”

Labour at least grasps the scale of the multiple overlapping crises in the prison service and appear to be moving at pace to address some of them.

Our meetings with new ministers have been very encouraging but warm words need to be backed up by positive action to empower prison officers, who are currently overwhelmed, under-resourced and pushed well beyond breaking point.

We agree with the new Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, that “our prisons are in crisis and are at the point of collapse” and fully support her emergency measures to reduce overcrowding.

Although it seems unthinkable for a secretary of state to admit this, we also agree with her that, “if we fail to act now, we face the prospect of a total breakdown of law and order.”

But the capacity crisis is only the tip of the iceberg. There’s the vicious circle of violence and lost experience, a complete collapse in staff morale and retention, and a total absence of rehabilitation — in fact, the reverse is true, with people leaving prison more traumatised, more criminalised and more drug-addicted than when they arrived.

At the heart of this disaster lies a fundamental injustice that has festered for 30 years — the ban on prison officers taking any form of industrial action, enshrined in Section 127 of the Criminal Justice Act 1994.

Because of this draconian restriction of their human rights, my members have been stripped of their industrial muscle and left at the mercy of ministers and prison service management.

With no power to protect their pay, terms and conditions, prison officers have been ruthlessly exploited by a succession of short-sighted and incompetent governments, fuelling the numerous crises we face today.

Many POA members have bitter memories of betrayal by New Labour, who promised in opposition to ensure that “prison officers are treated in the same way and with the same working rights as other public servants” — but who then promptly reneged on this in government.

Now, with Labour elected on a platform to repeal Tory anti-trade-union laws such as the disgraceful minimum service levels legislation, we insist that the much-hated Section 127 must also be included. The new Employment Rights Bill, although rightly welcomed across the labour movement, will be a betrayal of prison officers if it does not address this historic injustice.

Alongside national chair Mark Fairhurst, as POA general secretary I have been threatened by Tory government lawyers in the High Court with imprisonment simply for protecting my members from danger — or in the court’s view, when handing down a six-figure fine to the union in 2017, for illegally inducing them to take industrial action.

However, the European Court of Human Rights recently accepted our latest case against Section 127 and we expect proceedings to start shortly.

Now is the time for this Labour government to make up for past mistakes and to trust the loyal workers they ask to put their lives on the line every day to protect the public from the most violent and dangerous people in the land.

Give my members back the right to strike — as the Scottish government did in 2015 — or raise their pay, terms and conditions to a level where they would never need to!

The prison crises prove that the POA must be seen by ministers and management as part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Restoring our right to strike — and the dignity at work that comes with this — is a vital step towards achieving justice, boosting morale and taking back control of our prisons before it’s too late.

Steve Gillan is the general secretary of the POA.