Prison security is a fundamental responsibility of any prison system. Prison security levels are set according to the severity of the crimes that the prisoners have committed, the risk the prisoners represent to the good order of the prison in which they are held, and the risk presented to the general public should the prisoners escape. Security in prisons is vital in order to maintain high standards of custody, care, and control. It is essential to minimize violent conflict, for example, assaults and prison riots, and to manage effective and purposeful regimes.
On a daily basis, security measures and practices determine the movements and activities of prisoners, for example, the times they are locked up and unlocked from their cells, and may be subject to cell and body searches. They also determine the quality of life in prisons. Prison security is integral to the degree of legitimacy inmates view the prison as having, the standards of care provided to vulnerable prisoners such as those who are mentally ill or at risk of self-inflicted death and self-harm, and staff–prisoner relationships.
This article focuses on the different security levels and systems that have been implemented to ensure prisons are well ordered, safe, and secure, and also humane and purposeful, and in which human rights norms and standards of care, respect, and fairness are upheld.
Types of Prison Security
Prison security is commonly considered in terms of physical security, procedural security, and dynamic security. All three of these elements together are essential to the maintenance of good order in prisons and a safe and humane prison environment.
Physical security encompasses both outside and inside security and is primarily aimed at deterring and preventing escapes. This is achieved through the physical design and architecture of prisons: the perimeter wall; observation towers; cells, including designated areas of isolation and solitary confinement; gates and fences; and also surveillance and detection systems, for instance, cameras, X-ray machines, metal detectors, and alarms. Although not exclusive to them, physical security is normally associated with high-security facilities such as the so-called supermax prisons, which operate highly restrictive regimes characterized by extended periods of solitary confinement and limited human contact with staff and other prisoners.
Procedural security consists of measures and practices undertaken by staff to control everyday routines and regimens, including counting prisoners; deciding how, when, and where prisoners are allowed to move around prisons; the methods used for cell and body searches; and the maintenance and enforcement of disciplinary rules and regulations. Procedural security also involves contingency planning and being vigilant to potential security risks such as inter-prisoner violence. Separating prisoners using instruments of restraint and supervising prisoners in areas of isolation and solitary confinement are important procedural duties. Unlike physical security, which is static and consists of the physical infrastructure of prisons and the use of equipment and technology, procedural security requires high levels of interpersonal engagement and is dependent on the deployment of a sufficient number of competent and well-trained staff.
Similarly, dynamic security is dependent on high levels of staff–prisoner engagement. Considered to be an outcome of constructive and responsible relationships between prisoners and prison staff, dynamic security stems from staff having knowledge and understanding of the prisoner population.
An outcome of staff treating prisoners with dignity and respect is that prison environments are safe and peaceful and encourage higher levels of prisoner involvement in regime activities that aim to support their reintegration back into society.
Categories of Prison Security
It is typical for prison systems throughout the world to categorize prisoners according to the level of security they require. Prisons range from extremely high levels of physical security for prisoners assessed as presenting a serious risk of harm to open prisons that comprise much lower levels of physical security and allow prisoners’ relative freedom of movement and the opportunity to work outside in the local community. In between are closed prisons that provide intermediary security categories and may function as training or resettlement prisons. Many prison systems are progressive in that prisoners may be reassessed and reallocated to different levels of security depending on their behavior in prison, incident history, and the length of their sentence. For example, many life-sentence prisoners are eligible for recategorization to progressively lower levels of security so they may prepare for their eventual release. Another example is adult male prisons in England and Wales that operate according to four security categories (Category A, Category B, Category C, and Category D), the first three of which correlate with the security categorization used in U.S. jurisdictions (maximum security, medium security, and minimum security).
Category A or maximum security prisons are for those whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public and national security. Such prisoners include prisoners convicted of murder, rape, firearms offenses, possessing or supplying explosives, importing or supplying Class A controlled drugs, and terrorism offenses. These prisoners are typically divided into standard risk, high risk, and exceptional risk.
Category B or medium security prisons are for those whose escape would present a serious risk but for whom the highest security measures are not necessary. This includes prisoners held on remand.
Category C or minimum security prisons are for those who cannot be trusted to open conditions but who do not present a serious risk of escape.
Category D prisons are for those who are trusted not to escape and who have been assessed as being eligible for temporary release and home leave.
Women and children (12–17 years) and young people (18–21 years) are typically held in separate prisons with different security levels.
Political and Cultural Context of Prison Security
In all prison systems throughout the world, prison security levels are subject to political and cultural change. The institutional and operational frameworks, policies and procedures, staff instructions, and prison rules and orders that govern the way prison security is managed in a country at any one time are strongly influenced by its constitution and legal arrangements. Official reconsideration and reprioritization of prison security is also likely to be influenced by particular incidents and events in prisons and the official inquiries into them such as high-profile escapes, riots, and changes in the overall composition of the prison population. Such events may trigger anxiety and concern within the general public, which, according to some criminologists, has resulted in growing demands for tighter security and harsher regimes particularly in the United States and United Kingdom. Finally, levels of investment, the physical infrastructure, and the staffing resources made available to prison systems affect prison security. In some countries, physical security is prioritized over procedural and dynamic security to compensate for inadequate levels of investment and staff shortages. In others, prison staff have left control in prisons in the hands of violent prison gangs.
Today, a number of human rights instruments set out internationally recognized standards of imprisonment. These include the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (the Nelson Mandela Rules, 2015) and the European Prison Rules (revised, 2006). Nevertheless, political and cultural variations remain in the security measures adopted in any particular country. To illustrate, it is instructive to consider how some of these political and cultural changes have played out since the 1960s in England and Wales.
Prison Security in England and Wales
Throughout the 1960s, political and public concern over security levels in prisons in England and Wales was prompted by a steady rise in the number of escapes from prison, most notably of three high-profile prisoners: two of the Great Train Robbers, Charlie Wilson in 1964 and Ronnie Biggs in 1965, and the spy George Blake in 1966. The subsequent Mountbatten Report, published in 1966, recommended the introduction of a new categorization system (see Categories of Prison Security section); an intensification of security measures throughout the prison system as a whole; and that the most difficult and hig-hrisk prisoners be concentrated in one top security prison to be built on the Isle of Wight. With respect to this last recommendation, concerns over the difficulty of controlling such a prison and the likelihood of it becoming overly restrictive and repressive meant that the policy was never implemented. Instead, ever since, high-risk prisoners have been dispersed and held along with the mainstream population in a small number of category B prisons with upgraded security.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the prison population continued to grow in England and Wales, rising from 39,820 prisoners in 1975 to 48,872 in 1988. A failure to build new prisons to accommodate the extra numbers resulted in severe overcrowding throughout the existing prison estate. For many commentators, this was the context for the Strangeways Prison riot of April 1990, which lasted for 25 days and triggered a series of copycat protests in other prisons throughout England, Wales, and Scotland. However, the subsequent inquiry into the causes of the riots, conducted by Lord Justice Woolf and published in 1991, cited the corrosive effects of severe overcrowding, unsanitary and squalid conditions, and repressive regimes, and called for prisons to be founded on the tripartite principles of custody, care, and justice. Any intention of the government of the day to pursue such a progressive agenda of penal reform was soon overtaken by the high-profile escapes of five Irish Republican Army prisoners from a Special Security Unit at Whitemoor Prison in 1994 and three life-sentence high- security prisoners from Parkhurst Prison in 1995.
As with the previous Mountbatten Report, the subsequent inquiries into the escapes resulted in increased levels of physical and procedural security, including improvements to perimeter walls, an increased use of technology, more frequent and thorough cell and body searches, the introduction of mandatory drug testing, and a reduction in home leave.
Since the 1990s, government reforms to the prison system in England and Wales have continued to prioritize physical and procedural security while also seeking to modernize prisons, diversify and extend provision between the public and private sectors, transform rehabilitation outcomes, and reduce costs. A report published in 2015 by the House of Commons Justice Committee criticized the pace of change, concluding that estate modernization and reconfiguration and a reduction in operational costs had resulted in a significant deterioration in safety. Specific challenges to security were identified as an increase in prisoner complaints regarding the imposition of restrictive regimes; staffing shortages and diminishing staff–prisoner relationships; an increase in the availability of drugs, including the so-called legal highs; and significant rises in the number of assaults and self-inflicted deaths in prisons.
Balancing Prison Security and Care
This account illustrates the tension often apparent in prison systems around the world between, on the one hand, ensuring prisoners are held securely and, on the other, that a duty of care is in place to ensure prisoners are treated fairly, with humanity, dignity, and respect. The two core objectives of imprisonment are interdependent. The degree to which security is compatible with care influences whether prisoners acknowledge the legitimacy of their incarceration and the authority of prison staff to maintain governance and control over them. Some prison authorities have attempted to balance physical, procedural, and dynamic approaches to security. For example, since 2004, Her Majesty’s Prison Service in England and Wales has put into operation the so-called decency agenda that has affirmed the importance of good staff–prisoner relationships, treating prisoners with respect and dignity, and making available adequate resources and purposeful activities to promote their resettlement after release. In the United States, for example, prisons known as direct supervision jails have been developed to balance physical security alongside an active management strategy to reduce problem inmate behavior based specifically on principles of dynamic security. Yet the danger that security considerations will prevail over all else and be implemented illegally, unnecessarily, and disproportionately, thus increasing the risk of disorder in prisons, is a constant one. For penal reform organizations, human rights lawyers, independent monitoring boards, trades unions, government committees of inquiry, prison officials and prisoners alike, and the overuse of physical security—increasingly in the form of surveillance and solitary confinement—remain pressing problems to contend with.
References:
- Cavadino, M., & Dignan, J. (2007). The penal system: An introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
- King, R. D., & Morgan, R. (1980). The future of the prison system. Farnborough, UK: Gower.
- Liebling, A. (2004). Prisons and their moral performance: A study of values, quality and prison life (assisted by H. Arnold). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Penal Reform International. (2013). Balancing security and dignity in prisons: A framework for preventive monitoring. London, UK: Penal Reform International.