AS ONE of Britain’s leading prison governors, Mike Newell accepts that life in the Prison Service will always generate a fair degree of turbulence.

While the public are usually happy to remain blissfully ignorant of prison life, their demands for action to deal with crime has profound effects on life behind bars.

Newell, president of the Prison Governors’ Association, has lived with the consequences of public anxiety about crime since he took up his role three years ago. “I think we will always be a Cinderella service and I think we will always as a service have to manage turbulence and accept that for what other people is a major crisis is for us mild turbulence,” he says.

The crisis of the past few years has been the steady rise in the jail population to reach a record 74,300, and the consequent overcrowding and daily efforts to find extra places to hold inmates.

Newell, 53, is highly critical of the Treasury attitude towards overcrowding which he says is based on the simplistic proposition that if there are 75,000 prisoners and the same number of places, then there cannot be overcrowding.

“They have no understanding of the geography of the prison estate, the ages and gender of prisoners, which all have an effect,” he says. “At the moment there is an overcrowding crisis. It won’t be the first and it won’t be the last. We manage it, but at a cost which is not immediately seen.”

The effects of overcrowding are now starting to be felt in areas which are crucial to the Government’s longer term agenda of trying to curb re- offending and end the revolving door syndrome in which prisoners are released only to return a few months later, having committed further crimes.

Newell, presently governor of Durham jail, praises the Government for attempting to do something about rehabilitating and resettling prisoners. He gives Labour credit for providing extra resources, but is concerned that too many people do not recognise that resettlement is also an issue for the those living outside the walls of a jail.

“Unfortunately overcrowding, which they are not prepared to do anything really serious about, is beginning to affect the work we can do in jail.

“I think there is a real danger that prisons will be saddled with all the responsibility for resettling prisoners when the wider community should also take responsibility.”

A future key performance indicator for prisons will be the number of prisoners it finds accommodation for before they are released from jail. It is an admirable idea, as 30,000 of the 90,000 prisoners who left jail last year were homeless on departure.

Newell recognises that providing former inmates with a home is a key part of the drive to try to stop them re-offending — along with literacy skills and a job. But he says: “We cannot do this alone. The community has a responsibility for providing housing. I can try to find accommodation but if I cannot, then local councils and housing associations must take some responsibility. There must be much greater joint effort.”

His message has been heard by the Government, though Newell remains sceptical about the will to sustain it. “We have always been short of long-term strategies that governments stick to. Everyone gets knocked off-line by what happens in politics.

“There is no cross-party consensus on prisons and as a result the nearer it gets to any general election . . . then toughening the approach to law and order is always a good way of increasing the vote. The effect on prisons is forgotten.”

Born: May 6, 1950, in Bradford, Yorkshire

Career: Degree in chemical engineering. Joined the Prison Service in 1974. Governor of Hull, Holme House and Durham prisons. President Prison Governors’ Association since 2002

What he says: “The association has tried to make sure the debate about prisons is balanced. But we have a lot of work to do to help the general public make a decision about what they wish prison to be and to be realistic about what it can do”

What they say about him: “Not a maverick. He is a canny politician and knows how to handle ministers”

Little known fact: Took up skiing at 47 and now looks forward to winter

Richard Ford is the Home Correspondent of The Times

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