Government considering exporting prisoners to 'partner countries'

The government will now also enter exploratory discussions with potential partner countries in Europe to rent prison space abroad.

One line in Justice Secretary Alex Chalk’s speech to the Conservative party conference yesterday caused concern and confusion amongst many penal commentators:

“We’re expanding and refurbishing existing prisons and hiring thousands more prison officers…And I can tell you today, conference, that we also intend to look at the Norwegian example and explore renting overseas capacity.”

Conference season does tend to throw up rather bizarre policy announcements which never see the light of day in the real world but Mr Chalk’s comments were backed up by a formal Ministry of Justice press release the same day. The press release stated that:

“The government will now also enter exploratory discussions with potential partner countries in Europe to rent prison space abroad.”

Details are sparse. The press release cites Belgium and Norway as countries which have used foreign prison places in the Netherlands over the last few years and says that our prisoners could be transferred abroad “provided the facilities, regime and rehabilitation provided meets British standards”. This last statement caused much ridicule among penal commentators who pointed out that current standards in most prisons in English & Welsh prisons have reached an all-time low and that only last month a German court refused to extradite to the UK a man accused of drug trafficking because of concerns about prison conditions in Britain.

There was no explanation of how this move might address many of the most obvious concerns including:

• How could non-English prison officers, prison educators, gym instructors, healthcare providers etc. communicate with English prisoners?
• How could prisoners maintain their links with families? The MoJ repeatedly (and quite correctly) publicises the fact that people in prison who keep up their family ties and receive visits are less likely to reoffend on release.
• How could prisoners engage in relevant education or employment and training courses to maximise their chances of successful community reintegration?
• How would they keep in contact with their home probation officers to plan for their release and resettlement?

All these major concerns may be of only speculative interest since the Government would need to introduce new legislation to make any future transfers come within our laws. The press release does commit the Government to do this but there is no timescale, merely a promise that it will get done “as soon as parliamentary time allows”.

It will be interesting to see whether the Labour Party Conference endorses or rejects this somewhat extreme solution to our problems of prison overcrowding caused by a policy of sending people to prison for longer and longer sentences