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Howard League to tackle Catch 22 over prison concerns 1

Finance | Vibeka Mair | 7 Sep 2009

Howard League for Penal Reform is meeting Catch 22, the first charity to win a bid to manage a prison, to discuss its concerns about charities running prisons.

Frances Crook, chief executive of Howard League, initially sought to speak to Charity Commission chair Dame Suzi Leather to discuss her worries about charities running prisons after Catch 22, crime prevention charity Turning Point and private service deliverer Serco won a Ministry of Justice bid to run Baghull and Belmarsh West prisons in July.

However, Andrew Neilson, assistant director and head of public affairs and policy at Howard League told Charity News Alert that the charity had now decided to discuss the issue with Joyce Mosley, chief executive of Catch 22, before speaking to the Commission.

“Our concern is not directly with the consortium,” said Neilson. “We want to discuss the issue regardless of the consortium.

“If charities are equal partners in decisions on prison boards, they could be implicated in decisions on restraints, segregation or suicide.

“This could have a reputational risk for the whole charity sector. The Daily Mail would have a field day,” he warned. “Although charities in prisons could just be doing resettlement work, the less-friendly media would not make this fine distinction.”

In a recent paper on prison bids, Neilson (pictured) also warned that reforms to the criminal justice sector and the increasing dependence of many charities on government funding could split the voluntary sector between quasi-governmental organisations and those charities that remain truly independent.

Jonathan Aitken supports charity role in jails 

Meanwhile, former Conservative minister Jonathan Aitken, who in 1999 spent seven months in prison for perjury and perverting the course of justice, has defended charities having a role in running jails.

“The upside of including charities in an HMP management team is that they will bring energy and expertise to the rehabilitation of offenders on both sides of the wall,” he said. “This joined-up rehabilitation is hardly being done at all at present. There is a gap waiting to be filled.

“The assertion that charities should not fill that gap because as 'equal partners in a consortium' they will get their hands dirty in matters such as punishment, security and the containment of riots is ideological posturing rather than practical reality. The charities concerned are likely to play a limited, though important, role in prison management.”

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