A prison visitor

We have three prisons on Sheppey and they are very important to our local economy because they employ a lot of local people.

Swaleside is a Category B prison whose inmates are serving long sentences. Elmley is a Cat B “local” prison, which houses prisoners serving shorter sentences and those on remand awaiting trial. The third prison in the “cluster” is Standford Hill, a Cat D open prison which houses low risk prisoners and those who are about to be released back into the community.

This week I visited all three prisons and if I am elected next year it will be my intention to visit them regularly, because I think it is important to understand the problems that prison staff face on a daily basis.

One of the biggest problems is caused by the high incidence of drug abuse in prisons. A very high proportion of those who are sent to prison have either a drug or alcohol problem. The challenge we face is how to wean offenders off that dependency.

I make no apologies for taking a hard line and saying that convicted prisoners who are drug addicts should be forced to undertake a short, sharp detox regime. Unfortunately, it appears that in some of our prisons a policy of what is euphemistically called “maintenance” is practiced.

What “maintenance” actually means is that prisoners with a drug addiction are weaned off hard drugs by being provided with a methadone substitute. Some prisoners are still receiving this treatment when they are released. Effectively they are addicts when they go into prison and addicts when they come out.

In my view that is a lunatic policy.

Many persistent criminals are drug addicts. If we are to rehabilitate them and make them law abiding members of society, one of the best things we can do is ensure that they are clean of drugs when they are released.

Of course, there is a risk that some prisoners will relapse when released and take up drugs straight away. This would put them at risk of overdosing on drugs too powerful for them to tolerate. To solve this problem we need to provide discharged prisoners with better support and help on release.

This might be expensive in the short term but would pay dividends in the long term.