What do people on remand in prison do?

[girlfriend44]

Just wondered as its says they don't have to work, what else would there be to do then?
Also says they can wear their own clothes?
How would that work then?

Remand can be long periods of time these days as courts are so backed up. on remand, you have the same restrictions such as being locked up for long periods and also restricted exercise times.

Shocking statistics.

The majority of the people I see on remand have been charged with fairly serious offences, or are repeat offenders whose lifestyles are such that they would just vanish if bailed. They arent random "made a mistake" types. I would say that less than 10% of remanded prisoners at my prison (so not a national picture by any means, tbf) are acquitted. Many of them will walk from court, though, due to time served on remand.

My friend was remanded in custody because the police lied in the magistrates court.
Said he was a danger to the public. My friend was assaulted by the police and accused of resising arrest, which he didn't.
While on remand he became a "listener" and helped illiterate prisoners write home and helped them to write statements.
The whole trial was a farce with the alleged victim lying under oath. He had a very good barrister who just destroyed the "evidence" That wasn't difficult because there was no evidence whatsoever.
He ended up being convicted of one minor offence (damaging property) which he admitted to. Just one guilty verdict out of the 8 charges he was standing trial for. Served 3 months as a convicted prisoner

@Spangletwat thank you for responding on this thread. I’m really interested in your responses. Bet it was an awful experience.

In my experience, the police can say whatever they like in the mags and it will be repeated by a CPS solicitor who hasn’t got time to do any due diligence.

some of the police statements, whilst being barely comprehensible, make the most outlandish claims.

And then of course there’s the threshold test “no, after a year investigating, we don’t actually have evidence but we just know we will
get some soon, in the meantime, this person once saw a gun on TV so they pose a threat to the complainant”. Shambolic.

Ah so every single person involved was lying apart from your friend? The police, victim, barrister! Was the judge involved too?

@Workhardcryharder I was there. I sat through the trial

thank you. You are kind.

I might get a bit ranty! As I said I’m still dealing with this. Starting CBT on Friday.

One point to note is that some prisons are privately run and some are run by UK public services. This makes a difference in the regime as there’s a bottom line.

You can always spot the nosey buggers just like me

If you’ve not seen it in action you cannot comprehend.

The complainant is believed by the police who pay lip service to “all lines of enquiry”.

The CPS believe the police as it’s too much effort to dig into the detail. They are overworked. Insert other excuses here.

Counsel believes the CPS instruction and until the rubber hits the road in a live court interaction and where the prosecution counsel finally realises their case is built on cobwebs, you are strung up. Wilful lying? Maybe not. The consequences are the same.

10,000 completely innocent people are randomly arrested and charged each year? Really?
It seems hard to believe.

Did you have an acceptable number in mind?

Excuse me??

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

Err not really

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.

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

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.

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

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).

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.

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.

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,

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.