Fifty Year Stretch

Reviewed by John Podmore

Stephen Shaw was the prisons and subsequently the prisons and probation ombudsman from October 1999 until April 2010. His role included the investigation of complaints from prisoners, those on probation, and immigration detainees as well as the investigation of all deaths in prisons and immigration removal centres and the deaths of residents of probation hostels (approved premises). As such it should be safe to assume he is well known by the readers of these columns. I thought therefore that ‘Fifty Year Stretch’ would be an interesting exploration of the issues for which he was responsible and would therefore be a fascinating and invaluable read. The fifty year period was intriguing. Stephen must be older than he looked I thought. The fifty years it turns out is from 1980 to 2030. In other words a canter through the last 30 years and a look ahead to the next 20. He says he saw the period as having some sort of ‘conventional charm’ and that he ‘found the title amusing’. He informs us that he has little to say on juveniles, young offenders, women, race and diversity, healthcare, the cost of prisons, privatisation and NOMS. Acknowledging that he has ‘had the mournful responsibility of opening 500 investigations into prison suicide’ I assumed some analysis of such tragedies. Sadly not. We are told that the reductions in escapes has been ‘utterly remarkable’. There is no mention of the fact that these days there is nowhere to go. He tells us that the prison service is ‘much more just’ and that the DSPD programme is ‘world class’. He later accepts there is no evidence of anything but the units are a ‘success story’. In terms of the future we are assured that Directors of Offender management will be key players for the future (they were abolished in April 2011). His predictions for the future include lower staffing levels, the closing of small jails and the clustering of others. Apparently there will also be more elderly prisoners, more foreign national and more imprisonment of the disadvantaged and those with mental illness. He omits to tell us whether bears will continue to defecate in the woods or whether the Catholic church will maintain itself as the sole provider of Popes. ‘Fifty year Stretch’: an opportunity missed.