Study reveals impact of COVID measures on prisoners

Prisoners suffered dramatically increased levels of anxiety and depression due to prolonged solitary confinement under COVID response measures, newly published research has found.

Coping with COVID in Prisons identifies that one third of prisoners showed symptoms of “severe anxiety disorder”, indicating high levels of post-traumatic stress, following the pandemic.

The study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, was a partnership between the ex-offender led charity User Voice and social scientists at Queen’s University Belfast. One of the most comprehensive studies of life in prison during the pandemic, it involved training nearly 100 serving prisoners in research methods to survey their peers. Over the 18-month project, they completed more than 1,400 surveys with fellow prisoners across nine prisons in England & Wales.

It concludes that prolonged isolation and the simultaneous reduction in support services resulted in widespread deterioration of mental health and the erosion of the rehabilitative function of imprisonment. Among the key findings:

• 85% of prisoners surveyed were confined to cells for 23 hours for the majority of the lockdown period;
• 59% of prisoners surveyed had not had a single visit with family during the lockdown;
• standard screening tools suggested depression and anxiety scores were almost five times higher than the standard for the general population;
• more than one out of three prisoners were scoring at the level of "severe anxiety disorder", indicating high levels of post-traumatic stress;
• two thirds of survey respondents said that access to mental health support had worsened, instead of improving, during the lockdown;
• 56% felt that staff-prisoner relationships had deteriorated.

A majority (54%) also disagreed that lockdown had reduced violence and bullying, with many saying that verbal bullying and coercion had become more common instead.

"The mental health impacts described in this report will not have magically lifted just because restrictions on movement have lifted to some degree", the report states. "Such an interpretation is to misunderstand the nature of mental health. Potentially, repercussions of this lockdown will be felt for years to come in both prisons and in the wider community, especially among family members and those released from prison."

User Voice’s founder and CEO Mark Johnson MBE said: "When almost no one was able to get into prisons, we were able to conduct one of the largest studies of prisoner experiences. This research has been led by prisoners, using our innovative approach developed over the past 15 years and now validated by academics.

"The report reveals one of the darkest and most hidden results of the pandemic, the true effects of extreme lockdown and confinement on prisoners and ultimately, on the public. It shows that we need to talk about criminal justice. Are prisons just for punishment, or are they failing prisoners and the public if they don’t offer the support which leads to rehabilitation?"

Professor Shadd Maruna, Professor of Criminology at Queen’s University Belfast, added: "Prisons were in crisis before the pandemic, and remarkably some voices have claimed that life in prison has actually improved because of the COVID lockdown.

"Our research definitively demonstrates that the social climate in prison has become dramatically worse after the lockdown, and a great deal of work is going to be needed to restore a sense of trust and legitimacy among the incarcerated. Peer-led models, like the kind that drove this research project, have the potential to do just that if implemented correctly."