Too many Gypsies and Travellers end up in prison – this must be addressed

From the Guardian

A report released yesterday by HM Inspectorate of Prisons revealed that around 5% of prisoners in England and Wales consider themselves to be Gypsy, Romany or Traveller: the same proportion of the prison estate made up by women prisoners. Given that only 0.1% of respondents to the 2011 census in England and Wales identified themselves as "Gypsy or Irish Traveller", this is a huge over-representation.

Huge, but sadly unsurprising. Imprisonment is the purest form of social exclusion and there is a depressing array of statistics to support the case for Gypsies and Travellers being among the most excluded groups in British society. Life expectancy is 12 years below the national average, infant mortality is higher than for any other group, illiteracy rates are off the scale and 60% of Gypsies and Travellers have no formal qualifications.

In my work with Travellers in prison, I've seen firsthand the crippling effects of illiteracy and innumeracy on community members. The inability to obtain health and safety certification, pass a driving theory test or complete an invoice means many Travellers are now excluded even from traditional manual occupations and are pushed into the illegal economy.

On numerous occasions I've spoken to frustrated probation officers who have had to recommend custody rather than a community sentence in pre-sentence reports because the Traveller offender in question lacked the literacy level needed to enrol on an offender behaviour course in the community.

In 2011, recognising the high social cost of low educational outcomes in Gypsy and Traveller communities, the coalition government made a commitment to highlight Gypsies and Travellers as a vulnerable group in a revised Ofsted framework. However, when the revised framework was released in 2012 it made no mention of Gypsies and Travellers.

Meanwhile, coalition cuts have resulted in specialist Traveller education services being drastically reduced or abolished and, according to Linda Lewins, president of the National Association of Teachers of Travellers, "20 years of hard work being pulled apart".

The government's broken promises on Traveller education are bad not just for Gypsies and Travellers but for society as a whole. At a rough estimate, keeping 4,200 Gypsies and Travellers in prison is costing the country £168m a year. Given the firmly established links between poor educational outcomes and offending, urgent investment in Traveller education should just be common-sense economics.

There is also much work to be done inside prisons to reduce reoffending. The inspectorate's report found that a smaller proportion of Gypsy and Traveller prisoners had prison jobs or were engaged in training or education than non-Traveller prisoners, while a larger proportion were held in segregation units.

Prisons are currently ill-equipped to provide prisoners who lack basic literacy and numeracy with the intensive support they require to make progress. Although a few, such as HMP Ford, have successfully used embedded support workers and peer support to improve access to education, this is the exception rather than the rule.

Tackling educational disadvantage is a vital step towards tackling the over-representation of Gypsies and Travellers in the justice system. But it isn't a panacea.

Beyond the measurable outcomes of disadvantage, we also need to acknowledge the insidious effects of widely accepted prejudice and discrimination on offending behaviour. According to Trevor Phillips, former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, for Gypsies and Travellers "Great Britain is still like the American Deep South for black people in the 1950s. Extreme levels of public hostility exist … fuelled in part by irresponsible media reporting of the kind that would be met with outrage if it was targeted at any other ethnic group."

A few months ago I was talking to an Irish Traveller prisoner in the West Midlands. He reeled off accounts of bullying at school, of being moved on time and time again, of police harassment and discrimination in the labour market. "Settled people hate us," was his simple conclusion. "They don't respect me, so why should I respect them?"

Is he right? Does exclusion and discrimination excuse his criminality? No. And he didn't speak for the majority of law-abiding Gypsies and Travellers. But his bitter cynicism revealed that for him at least, the social contract was broken.

As a society we pay a high price for telling an entire community that they are not wanted.