What do people on remand in prison do?

"needs" is a relative term

Hmmn. Over 80% of "on remand" prisoners are found guilty.

The remaining less than 20% are found "not guilty" which is not the same as being found "innocent".

It has to be a pretty serious crime if you're held in prison until trial.

And there are generally some huge arrows pointing at you, such as evidence or past criminal convictions.

Nope, as much as I have sympathy for the tiny minority of people who become "found not to have deserved being on remand", it's not a priority.

He got a 3 month sentence?

Can't have been that minor.

As a JP, I can confirm this. The decision to remand someone is not taken lightly by any imagination as you are depriving them of their liberty (obvs) and is taken after hearing representations from both the Prosecutor and the Defendant. There are a number of criteria that have to be satisfied for either scenario.

They're just dressed normally. To be fair in most female jails they can wear their own clothes anyway remanded or sentenced and a lot of male jails are similar. It just depends on the jail. Some allow enhanced and remand to wear own clothes some allow everyone. It works fine no different.

As for work although they don't have to.woek many opt to do work or education because it's more time out of their cell.

My neighbour was held on remand for over a year before being found not guilty. He lost his job as well. He sued the police for wrongful arrest & won, they also trashed his flat looking for evidence. The judge at his trial said he should never have been arrested. The police spent a year looking for any evidence that would stick, the main thing they used was that it was his best friend who had committed the crime. They turned up with armed officers to arrest him one Sunday morning, I ended up being three hours late to pick up ds from his dad's as they had all his property in the communal stairwell of our block & they wouldn't move it so I could get out.

To add to @Neverpostagain’s post, almost all
of the women I met were being exploited in some way by older men. Whether it be drugs charges or theft, one was a custody case which had turned very nasty, one was an extradition case which centred around a family member’s involvement with a gang. These experiences were borne out when I googled the women after I left, I sort of tick them off as their cases are completed. Exploited by men. Almost all of them.

Just to go back to the length of remand, any terrorism case is not going to be heard within 6-8 months. Absolutely not in this country. Include in this complex financial crimes and anything to do with other nation states involvement such as spying or espionage. There are plenty of long term remand prisoners.

You can say whatever you like, but the statistics say between 30-40% of remand 'prisoners' do not go on to serve a custodial sentence. Either the allegations are dropped or they are found not guilty or they are found guilty of something that doesn't attract a 'further' prison sentence.

Well, it was only a guess. 😉

I did say it's been a while and, like most 'government services', I suspect things have gone downhill due to lack of funding and staff.

I did my own laundry in my sink. The remand prisoner in charge of laundry (a role she was paid for) was a fucking nightmare and wielded it as a source of power over some groups of women. She was in no way supervised, in fact a blind eye is the best way to describe her supervision.

Gym was available as work, for which you were paid, and about once a fortnight, as recreation which you would forego “fresh air” for. “Fresh air” was only available if there were enough staff and no one had kicked off with someone from the next wing but it was supposed to be twice a day.

Engagement with maths and English is massively encourage but again the compulsion to engage is a decision for each prison.

Prisons also have mixed remand/convicted wing and don't as a blanket policy pay for chapel/faith activities.

Restrictions around sentence length dictating activity allocation will also vary from prison-prison.

If you want to make a difference, apply to be an independent prison monitor. It's a really interesting job (unpaid) and you get to know how a prison runs, from the inside, and to talk to lots of prisoners and prison staff. Here's link to the Scottish system https://www.prisonsinspectoratescotland.gov.uk/monitoring/interested-becoming-ipm I did it for 5 years and found it very rewarding.

Not necessarily. They will only have a certain amount of clothing and don't do their own laundry - it's often one of the 'work' options they may sign up to.

Depending on the prison, and on their own behaviour which affects their privilege level, they may have access to some of their own clothes or they may wear the prison uniform - this is often a sweatpants and sweatshirt/jumper and t shirt. The laundry is done communally, and often by prisoners but supervised by the workplace staff,

It's a while since I worked in a prison but when I did remand prisoners followed pretty much the same regime as other convicted prisoner.

Our prisoners were expected to be out of their cells during the day engaged in one or more activities:

• education: English and maths was compulsory until they'd passed their key skills to the equivalent of a gcse grade C/4. There were then other courses they could do from basic skills, gnvq, nvq, up to open university degrees.

• workshop training: vocational skills, some with nvq qualifications attached

• work: work within the prison such as kitchens, library, gym, religious services, maintenance/cleaning, etc

There was also things they could do, depending in the level of privileges such as library, gym, church or other religious services, etc

And there were rehab and MH services which they had appointments for where required.

Each day there was exercise time in the yard, and social time on the wings.

I did 1:1 work with the prisoners so would have appointments with them every few weeks to monitor and guide them through their time in prison.

Prisons also have different rules about which prisoners can work where- it depends on risk assessments for that particular prison but there will be paid activities available for remand prisoners. There's a lot spouted on this thread as though it applies to all prisons when there's a big variation.

A "local" prison is one which holds remand prisoners and serves the courts. Most cities have them. It doesn't mean the closest prison to a particular area. There are fewer local prisons than those which hold only sentenced prisoners.

Prisoners don't get paid for recreational gym as a policy but some prisons might choose to do this (not sure why when prisoner pay budgets are so limited and male prisoners love going to recreational gym).

Just because someone is found not guilty doesn’t mean they are innocent. Just as some who are found guilty are actually innocent.

That whole Post Office farrago has certainly made me a lot less smug about never ending up in prison. It could happen to anyone.

The majority of prison staff spend a lot of time trying to make conditions inside as decent and humane as possible for prisoners. We're not the judge and jury, it's the court that decides guilt, not the prison. Most of the time we're just trying to keep people safe.

I was trying to do the maths but you have eloquently beaten me to it.

What makes you say that?

It can happen to anyone. If you don’t believe that, you have a misguided view of how malicious and predatory some people can be. You’ve also never had a lapse of concentration whilst driving. And clearly never run a post office.

Err not really

In year ending June 2023 there were 1.08 million offenders convicted in all courts. Conviction rates are about 80% across magistrates and crown courts. Which means each year about 250,000 innocent people are arrested and charged each year. So, yes, 10,000 is hard to believe.

Stats in this link
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/criminal-justice-system-statistics-quarterly-june-2023/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly-june-2023-html#prosecutions-and-convictions