Mental Health, Covid-19 and the UK Prison System

Joe Strange / Jan 27 / UK Prison System

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With the country currently grappling with ever-changing tier systems, a reflection on the impact of coronavirus on prisoners, for whom restrictions have remained fierce and constant, is worthwhile.  

This article aims to bind the potentially disastrous impact of Covid-19 on prisoners’ mental health with the overpopulation of the prison system. The UK’s punitive approach to incarceration has seen the prison population grow to the largest in Europe and with that create the need for strict coronavirus regulations.

Controlling and stopping the spread of a pandemic within a confined space is laced with obvious obstacles. Social distancing is the very antithesis of incarceration. Lockdown measures have already been shown to have a detrimental impact on mental health in regular society. Its detrimental impacts have only been exacerbated in prisons.

This impact is best represented through the analysis of two key restrictions. The inmates’ opportunity to socialise and interact was taken away, often spending up to 23 hours in solitary confinement. On top of this, opportunities for education, exercise and skill training were all removed in the hope of containing the virus.

The scuppered potential for rehabilitation carries the potential to be the most harmful impact of coronavirus in prisons. Indeed, it is something that threatens both the long-term mental health of current inmates as well as their ability to stay out of prison once released. The mental health of inmates is not a new issue in prisons and, particularly for the UK, is not one that was being effectively dealt with prior to the pandemic. Within UK prisons, during the 12 months leading to December 2019, self-harm incidents reached a record high of 63,328 cases. Alarmingly, this highlights that a dangerous deterioration of prison morale pre-empted the onset of coronavirus. 

With this, the impact of days spent largely in solitary confinement takes on an increasingly sinister outlook. It is not just the day-to-day prison morale that is threatened here, but perhaps also the capacity for inmates to maintain productive and energising relationships with relatives on the outside. With communication severed both within prisons and between prisons and the outside world, there is a dangerous possibility that mental health may spiral even further out of control. While there is no doubt the prioritisation of the physical health of inmates was the correct priority, this should not have come at such an expense to the mental wellbeing of the prison population. It is this surrender of mental health that is tied explicitly to the countries punitive approach that left authorities with their hands tied.

The dramatic reduction in education and skills training imposed by the restrictions further suffocates opportunity for inmate rehabilitation. It is a fundamental aim of prisons worldwide to equip inmates with the mindset and capabilities to give them the best chance of avoiding reoffending. This is an objective that seems completely lost amidst the coronavirus response. As hours spent learning and developing new skills are lost to these stringent restrictions, the inmate’s ability to nurture skills that can help support a seamless integration into society quickly dissipates. This is a predicament worsened through consideration of the climate they will be stepping into. As Britain is struggling with recovery from the first covid-induced recession, the opportunity for inmates to find meaningful and well paid work seems bleak at best. Financial worry and criminal activity have a long, sinister and intimate connection and one that will be reinvigorated by the economic hardship that will likely face prisoners on their release.

It is important to stress here that when put up against the aim of controlling the virus these restrictions worked. At the end of August, the 560 cases of coronavirus recorded in prisons was a tiny fraction of the 77,000 cases that was forecast at the beginning of April. While it is important to celebrate the success of this containment, it is vital to understand its cost. With the physical aspect of health no doubt the main priority in prisons since lockdown, the mental wellbeing and rehabilitation potential of the inmates has been sacrificed to a damaging extent. Questions must be asked as to whether such restrictive policies would be required in prisons had the UK not employed the unforgiving punitive approach which led to the overpopulation of its prisons.

There is no doubt a more sophisticated approach to incarceration is needed. One that not only stalls the needless growth of the prison population but one that also renews the vigour and emphasis placed on the rehabilitation of inmates. In terms of rehabilitation, a government survey of 99 prisons exposed that 95 of the selected prisons failed to meet their target of employment rates for ex-convicts six weeks after their release. Disturbingly, this highlights a prison system that severely underwhelms when it comes to offering effective rehabilitation. As such, it would be naïve to solely blame the onset of coronavirus on the system’s current failure to accomplish this, as this was an agenda that appeared to lose impetus long before the chaos of coronavirus.