Blueprint to map future of NI prison service

A blueprint for the future of the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) is to be drawn up, it was announced today.

Shaun Woodward, the Ulster Prisons Minister, said plans for the direction of the service over the next 10-15 years would be completed before the end of the year.

The exercise was announced as a report reviewing the prison service’s efficiency programme was published.

It revealed that it costs more than two-and-a-half times as much to hold a prisoner in the North as it does in the rest of the UK.

The report’s key recommendation is that the NIPS should reduce its costs per prisoner in real terms year-on-year by an agreed amount.

It costs £85,000 (€126,000) a year to keep a prisoner in jail in Northern Ireland against little more than £30,000 (€45,000) in both England and Wales, and Scotland.

There were historical reasons for the huge difference in costs, “not all of which remain wholly valid”, said the report.

Among the other recommendations was the need for an urgent review of the prison estate to inform long-term investment decisions and an urgent exploration of the option to contract out the duties of officers currently used for escort duties.

Robin Masefield, director general of the service, said that he was inviting representatives of the trades unions to take part in the work to draw up the blueprint.

He said it would “create a firm platform for the service’s estate strategy and value for money investment decisions in relation to accommodation, facilities and services for prisoners”.

Even prisoners and their families are going to be given the opportunity to have their say on the future of the service.

Mr Masefield added: “This is a golden opportunity for everyone in the service to have a say in its future development.

“I firmly believe by working in partnership with the unions and others, we can agree a way forward which meets both our responsibilities to the taxpayer in providing value for money and our responsibilities to the whole community to hold prisoners safely and provide them the opportunities to make a positive contribution to society on their release.

“We should seize it with both hands.”

Mr Masefield said the reasons for the costs of holding a prisoner in the province being so much higher were diverse.

While they included the levels of staffing and pay, the key reason was a prison estate which was mainly designed in the 1960s and 1970s and was not cost-efficient.

There are currently just over 1,200 prisoners held in Northern Ireland jails and 2,000 staff.

An option for reducing costs could be some form of early severance scheme for staff who wish to take redundancy, along the lines of the Patten Report scheme used to reduce policing numbers, said the director general.

He said the service needed to get a better handle on predicted prisoner numbers over future years.

He said numbers had gone up by 12% a year for the last four years and if that continued, “it could be we are talking about more prisoners rather than less staff”.

Mr Masefield said that when the blueprint is complete, he hopes for investment to improve the prison estate .

But he added: “The money for that would be a calculation for ministers and the Treasury, deciding whether to put it into prisons or schools and hospitals.”