Britain’s prison estate has become a home for self-harm – an end to needless short sentences might help change that

Maintaining order behind bars will always be a cat-and-mouse game – one where, from time to time, the authorities will lose

Prisons, of necessity, have always been violent places. What is more surprising, and disturbing, is that so many prisoners are directing that violence at themselves. Suicides rose to 92 last year, from a still unacceptable 70 the previous year; acts of self-harm are up 23 per cent, to 52,814 incidents over the same period. These grim stories, each itself a human tragedy, unfold against a background of increasing lawlessness, fighting, drug abuse and the smuggling of contraband.

Prison never did “work” as a method of deterring and reducing crime; it is now failing on a scale that even ministers admit is no longer tolerable.

The justice secretary, David Gauke, describes suicide and self-harm rates as “unacceptably high”, while his minister of prisons, Rory Stewart, famously made the promise that if prison violence had not started to subside by this autumn he would resign.

For the first time in many years, the criminal justice system does have ministers in charge of it who at least claim to “get it”. After years of counterproductive austerity, extra funds to tighten security in prison are being found. The first airport-style screening technology is being installed in the 10 worst prisons that Mr Stewart has identified as requiring emergency attention.

The prisons minister is also to be congratulated for improving standards of behaviour among officers, and for providing them with the Pava self-defence spray. When used in preference to the baton this is potentially a useful reform, reducing the risk of injury to officer and prisoner alike.

As prison security improves, with anti-drone netting and scanning of staff and visitors, soon the only way left to smuggle drugs, contraband and weaponry into prisons will be via corrupt officers and staff, something that can destabilise a jail even more comprehensively than widespread use of potent new drugs such as spice.

Mr Stewart is right to try and make sure that the small minority of bent officers are detected and dealt with, just as the scale of the bribes offered to them starts to ramp up.

Even so, maintaining order in prison will always be a cat-and-mouse game and one where, from time to time, the authorities will lose. What has long been needed is to make sure that the prisons we do have operate to their designed capacity, and that means making sure the prison population remains manageable, and officer numbers maintained at a safe level. Neither of these conditions has been satisfied in the age of austerity – nor, to be fair, for many decades before. There are, literally, no votes in prisons.

One immediate reform would be to guide magistrates and judges to think twice before issuing very short custodial sentences. It is difficult to see what a sentence of 10 days or a few weeks can possibly achieve on any level – too short to satisfy any desire for retribution, completely useless as a method of rehabilitation; but long enough for the convict to pick up some nasty habits, nurse resentment and make them more likely to reoffend.

In Scotland, there is a presumption against imposing custodial detention of less than one year, and Mr Stewart has spoken approvingly of the results of this recent experiment. He has also pledged to make prisons less unpleasant places, and an environment that is not simply depressing its inhabitants for the sake of it. Bars, that brutal and outdated symbol, are to be replaced, it is being suggested, with toughened glass in bigger windows. That will not turn the cells into the best suites at the Savoy, despite what some in the media will no doubt claim.

No one with any knowledge of them believes that prisons are like “holiday camps” as the old cliche goes, yet this was the official view only a few years ago, when Chris Grayling was the secretary of state for justice. Mr Grayling was unusual in that most politicians, including Conservatives, who find themselves in charge of prisons sooner or later come to the conclusion that there are too many prisoners doing too little of good and much that is harmful during their sojourns at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

Prisons should be spartan, but not to the point where they drive sane human beings to slash their arms or take their own lives. One of the few rays of light penetrating Britain’s dark, dank rat-infested prison estate is that there is a chance of some much-need modernisation and reform.