Perhaps the biggest thing that happened to public sector organisations in the past 30 years is what I will call the Professionalism Revolution, referring to the modernisation of working practices and the implementation of things like service standards and performance indicators. Unfortunately, it is my experience that these modernisations have not yet reached the coal face of the Scottish Prison Service.

To be clear from the outset, there are mottos and tag lines – “Transforming lives, unlocking potential” is the one we see everywhere. I semi-rhetorically asked a guard, once, how I was having my potential unlocked and he just glared at me. The SPS does have an operating task:

“Helping to protect the public and reduce reoffending through safe and secure custodial services that empower offenders to take responsibility and fulfill their potential. We achieve this through:
Custody – managing safe and secure custodial arrangements.
Order – providing stability and order that helps offenders to transform their lives
Care – supporting wellbeing and treating with respect and humanity all in our care and
Opportunity – providing opportunities which develop the potential of staff, our partnerships and the people in our care.”

The SPS even has a “Competencies for Success Framework” which sounds wonderful or, at best, aspirational.

The problem is that I do not recognise any of this. Quite frankly, when I read “supporting wellbeing and treating with respect and humanity all in our care”, it makes me feel angry because it is simply not true. What does resonate as more accurate are comments made by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and other independent bodies who have been highly critical of a number of areas of prison life.

I’m trying to avoid stepping up on a soapbox, here, but you can maybe forgive my passion. After all, this is my house we’re talking about. This is about my day-to-day life and my future, too. It’s also about the whole of Scotland since what happens in prisons affects everyone. Put simply, a successful prison system makes everyone’s life safer ad more secure but a failing prison system makes everyone’s life worse.

So it is my strongly held opinion that although there are modern-style mission statements etc, the actual practical reality of the prison service is 30 years out of date and it has not been touched by the glossy words.

Of course there are inspections but the inspection criteria isn’t aligned to the SPS rhetoric. His Magesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland (HMIPS) have nine standards on which they inspect:

1. Lawful and transparent custody
2. Decency
3. Personal safety
4. Effective, courteous and humane exercise of authority
5. Respect, autonomy and protection against mistreatment
6. Purposeful activity
7. Transitions from custody to life in the community
8. Oranisational effectiveness
9. Health and wellbeing.

Maybe it should be no surprise that the lived experience of a prisoner in Scotland is so poor when the SPS does not know what it is trying to be. At the moment, maybe it is impossible to achieve its role in “helping to build a safer Scotland” (yet another cute sound bite) because its role is not properly defined.

Unfortunately, there seems little will from our politicians and other decision makers to even look at those issues, let alone commit to the reforms required. This means that the SPS will continue to have a negative effect on every member of the population of Scotland because it is thirty years behind.

NaN.