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Investing in family ties?


Today’s prison reform speech by David Gauke certainly provided some food for thought. I was most interested in his commitment to investing £7 million into in-cell telephony for men and women in prisons. In this blog entry, I wish to discuss the potential benefits and risks associated with this development.

Firstly, in-cell telephones will certainly offer more opportunities for people in prison to stay in contact with their friends and relatives. This, in a very basic sense, is a welcome development because, as Lord Farmer stressed in his recent report, family ties are associated with an over 35% reduction in recidivism. Aside from this instrumental benefit, it is also innately humane to make it easier for people in prison to stay connected to their loved ones.

However, a word of caution. Phone calls are expensive, and allowing greater access to telephones could create pressure for people in prison to call their families more often, thereby incurring greater expenses. These expenses are often borne by the families themselves. Likewise, families might feel obliged to constantly wait on their phone, even when they might wish to have some time alone, go into a meeting or otherwise plan around the time when, previously, the person in prison would not be able to call them.

Thirdly, there is little indication that the issues of privacy will be solved by introducing in-cell telephony. Prisons are overcrowded, and having a cell-mate listening to one’s private conversations is less than ideal. Officers may, likewise, monitor calls. In my research on partners of long-term prisoners, women expressed a real concern over not knowing which calls were listened to, and what, exactly, the officers were listening out for. This created a sense of uncertainty and made some hold back things they might not have otherwise. Families need to know exactly what sort of things they cannot discuss over the phone, beyond the obvious (e.g. escape plans).

Finally, in-cell phones alone will not, as if by a miracle, create wonderful, close familial relationships. Maintaining relationships across prison walls is difficult, especially when a sentence is long, as I discussed in my recent article. Conversations can be awkward and stunted if the person in prison and his or her relatives have very little to talk about because they have been living apart. For example, a father may feel pressured to call his child frequently because he has in an-cell phone, but may then find he knows very little about the child’s day-to-day life, her friends, hobbies, etc. As one woman put it in my research –

By the end of the visit you’re frantically scrabbling around trying to think of something to say. You know? [...] I suppose at the moment it’s the hard fact of leading separate lives. Very often some of the things I have in my life, he just wouldn’t understand, wouldn’t relate to.

Overall, this is a step in the right direction, but the Government needs to a well-rounded approach to family ties in the prison context, one that goes beyond just in-cell telephony to encompass a full range of programs designed to support family ties. This could include parent-teacher evenings, homework clubs, evening meals with partners, longer, more comfortable and more private visits, and so on.

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