A Taste of Prison

Book excerpt: Originally published in 1976, A Taste of Prison deals with a very sensitive area of concern in the system of trial and imprisonment in Britain at the time. It describes the conditions at Winchester Prison and Winchester Remand Centre for both adults and young persons who were held in custody before trial or who were awaiting sentence. Despite the fact that many of these persons would not subsequently be sent to prison by the courts, the conditions they experienced were in many respects no better and in some respects worse than those for persons sentenced to imprisonment. Moreover, as this study shows, the special provisions for these persons embodied in the Prison Rules and Standing Orders of the Prison Department often meant little in practice – either because they remained unaware of their rights or because they were unable to take them up for various reasons. The authors discuss the function of remands in custody within a changing prison system, analyse recent trends in the numbers of persons received into the prison system on remand, and assess their contribution to the prison population. The implications of the findings are discussed in the context of the prison building programme and the uses to which existing buildings could be put. Finally, the authors make a number of proposals for the improvement of the regime for remand prisoners.