什么造就了进步的制度？进步制度的经验与改进机会

Experiences of Progression Regimes and opportunities for improvement A report by the HMP Warren Hill Building Futures Working Group and Dr Ailie Rennie About the Building Futures Programme Building Futures is the Prison Reform Trust’s five-year programme funded by the National Lottery CommunityFund, exploring the experiences of people serving long prison sentences. The programme aims to give avoice to people serving sentences of over 10 years in custody, providing them with the space to advocatefor themselves, bringing about change from within the system and shedding light on the human cost oflong-term imprisonment. Through consultation, advocacy and research, Building Futures works alongsidethose with direct experience of long-term imprisonment to demonstrate the true impact of ever-increasingsentence lengths. prisonreformtrust.org.uk/project/building-futures Acknowledgements We are grateful to the staff and prisoners who participated in the survey and focus groups. To protectidentities, we have not named individuals, but their contribution was invaluable. We would like to thank theGovernor and staff at HMP Warren Hill, particularly Jo Hopes for enabling these groups to take place andMarta Karatysz for her input. We would also like to thank the Building Futures team who supported theprocess, including David Maguire, Vicki Kerr and Marc Conway. We are also grateful to Ella Walsh and AilieRennie for their support and guidance in producing this report. The HMP Warren Hill Building Futures Working Group (BFWG) is part of the Building Futures project. Madeup of five prisoners serving more than 10 years in custody, the group meets on a fortnightly basis withmembers of PRT to discuss prevalent topics at HMP Warren Hill and relating to the wider prison system.Our role is primarily to feed information back to the PRT about long prison sentences, but we have alsobeen given the latitude to carry out our own work and generate this report. It has been created by the BFWGmembers with the support of PRT and the senior management team at HMP Warren Hill. Contents Findings............................................................................................................................................2 Introduction.......................................................................................................................................5 Understanding of a progressive regime.........................................................................................9The progressive regime at HMP Warren Hill................................................................................11Reaching, and moving beyond, a progressive regime................................................................16The role of staff in implementing a progression regime...............................................................17 Executive summary This report explores what makes a prison regime ‘progressive’, how it is experienced, and how it can beimproved. Drawing on surveys and focus groups with prisoners inside HMP Warren Hill who were servingsentences of 10 years or more, as well as surveys with staff working in the prison, this report highlights boththe promise and limitations of a progression regime (PR) in practice. In doing so, the findings demonstrate asignificant gap between how progression regimes should be run in theory and how they operate in practice. Progression regimes were developed for those in the men’s prison estate – in particular, for those servingindeterminate sentences – who have been “excluded from open conditions, serving the recall period oftheir licence in custody, or having difficulty progressing through their sentence via the usual routes”.1Anindividual may also be considered eligible for a move to a progression regime if they are within four yearsof their tariff expiry (with priority given to indeterminate sentenced prisoners who are post-tariff and havehad two or more negative parole hearings) or are within two years of their Parole Eligibility Date (if they area parole-eligible determinate sentenced prisoner).2 The Progression regime was originally developed in the aftermath of policy changes introduced followinghigh-profile media coverage of prisoners absconding from open conditions, most notably the case ofMichael Wheatley in 2014. In response, the then Justice Secretary imposed a blanket ban preventingprisoners with any history of absconding from progressing to open prisons, a move intended to demonstratea tougher approach to risk and public protection. This policy was later ruled unlawful by the High Court,which found it conflicted with long-standing parole guidance requiring a phased progression from closed toopen conditions to test readiness for release. In seeking to reconcile public protection concerns with lawfulprogression requirements, the system moved towards more structured and tightly controlled pathways forprogression which laid the foundations for what bec