At the UK Covid-19 Inquiry: what happened to prisons at the start of the pandemic

Yesterday I gave oral evidence at a public hearing of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry. I spoke alongside Pia Sinha, Chief Executive of the Prison Reform Trust, and later that afternoon the Inquiry also heard from Charlie Taylor, HM Chief Inspector of Prisons. The hearing was one of a series on Module 10 of the Inquiry, which covers the impact of the pandemic on society. It has a particular focus on key workers, the most vulnerable, the bereaved, and on mental health and wellbeing. 

The Howard League’s evidence focused on the impact of the pandemic on prisons and on prisoners, drawing upon legal action (along with the Prison Reform Trust) that we considered taking when Covid-19 first struck in 2020 and on surveys we conducted in early 2022 with our members in prison and with their family members.  

What I want to focus on here is what happened to prisons at the start of the pandemic, when some important decisions were made that would have lasting consequences. 

Public Health England made recommendations to the government in March 2020 that the prison population should be significantly reduced to prevent the spread of infection, suggesting around 16,000 people in prison should be released early. Similar advice was made globally by the World Health Organisation. We commissioned our own advice from Professor Richard Coker, Emeritus Professor of Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who described prisons as congregated settings that would work as ‘epidemiological pumps’ spreading the virus both within the prison population and to the wider community. 

Eventually the government did introduce an End of Custody Temporary Release scheme, with a relatively modest target of 4,000 releases, but even that was barely used. Only 262 prisoners were released under the scheme, with a further 53 released early on compassionate grounds. 

In giving evidence to the Inquiry, I drew attention to how this might compare with other jurisdictions internationally. 

The decision not to release more people early in 2020 was to have a devastating legacy

There were 83,077 people in prison in England and Wales in January 2020. Just over 300 early releases amounts to less than 0.4% of the prison population as it was at the beginning of the period the Inquiry is looking at. 

By contrast, to give some international examples highlighted in 2021 by Penal Reform International, Turkey released over 114,000 people in response to the pandemic – some 40% of its prison population. Portugal released over 2,100 people (17% of its prison population) and Norway released over 440 people (15% of its prison population). These examples show how limited England and Wales was in the use of early release to help our prison system cope, despite the public health advice. 

We also know, as the government’s recent independent review of prison capacity pointed out, that the Ministry of Justice’s own prison population projections prior to the pandemic suggested that the number of people in prison would outstrip the supply of prison places by August 2020. In the event, this did not happen because there was a natural reduction in prison numbers as Covid-19 saw the criminal courts close.  

The decision not to release more people early in 2020 was to have a devastating legacy, however – one I have described as arguably more serious than that faced by any other public service, including schools and hospitals. The prison system was forced to run isolating and dehumanising regimes for a very long time. Prisons then struggled to move away from these extremely limited regimes to a pre-pandemic level of activity. Meanwhile, the system did not have the resilience or capacity to deal with the surge of demand when the courts came back online and began pushing the population back up again. 

In other words, the capacity crisis inadvertently avoided in 2020 by the onset of Covid-19 was merely postponed. And in a bitter irony we have since seen successive governments introduce various types of emergency early release scheme, releasing thousands of people from prison, whereas we only offered a few hundred individuals early release when there was an urgent public health argument to do so. 

You can watch a recording of the hearing, or read a transcript, by visiting the Inquiry website. 

Andrew Neilson
Director of Campaigns

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