Twice the punishment
Jenny Richards is angered by what she believes is blatant discrimination against pensioner prisoners
My husband is in prison and since our retirement dreams were shattered, we have learnt a lot about justice and prisons that we didn’t know before. One of the first things we learned is that when a pensioner is convicted, the pension is immediately stopped. When someone is imprisoned they lose their freedom, but if that person is a pensioner he loses his freedom and his income.
My husband, like many others of his age, paid into the compulsory state pension scheme for 50 years. At the time he was convicted he had been receiving payments for 4 years. The government, however, classes it as a “benefit” and payment ceases on imprisonment in the same way as, say, housing benefit. This is effectively a huge fine imposed by the government (rather than the Court) and applies only to pensioners.
I have my own pension but it is much less than my husband’s because of the years I was bringing up a family. Benefits are available, but I am not eligible because we saved our money rather than spending it on luxuries.
I have been in touch with a number of well-known organisations who offer advice to people in our position and to pensioners generally. They all give me the same answer: they know the problem, they agree it’s unfair, but they have too little time and too few resources to pursue it.
Withholding the pension has a huge impact on the wife or partner. Income is halved, but the bills are just the same: council tax, heating costs, phone bills etc., and the car must be taxed, insured and fuelled for the weekly visit. Help is available for visiting, but not for those with savings to draw on.
I’ve always hated waste and kept a careful watch on expenditure, but I’m amazed at how expert I’ve become at comparing prices and looking for special offers. I make casseroles: eat one portion, freeze two. I buy the larger packs then freeze or store the surplus for later. I’ve bought thermal underwear and crocheted a thick shawl to cut down on the heating, and I boil the kettle for hot water. Soon I must move to a smaller home, to live more cheaply. Long past retirement I am still working, but I cannot do so indefinitely.
Of course people say that prisoners’ wives don’t have the expense of looking after their husbands, the prison does that. True, it does, but only on the most basic level. Food is just sufficient to keep body and soul together and is fairly tasteless, although obviously prisoners can buy their own to supplement their diet. My husband is determined to keep as fit and healthy as he can, and buys eggs, cheese, tinned fish, etc., however I don’t need to tell anyone reading this about the highly inflated canteen prices!
Some prisoners are allowed to wear their own clothes instead of the prison uniform. It doesn’t matter that you have plenty of suitable clothing at home - more must be bought from designated catalogues via the prison service.
The biggest expense for us is phone calls. He phones me each day and this contact is precious to us. It is also a necessity, so we can discuss legal and household matters. This costs around £12 a week, a 10 minute call costing over £1 - about 3 times our BT tariff.
And there is that much publicised ‘luxury’ of a TV in the cell! A small set with just 5 channels costs £1 a week.
My husband is lucky in that the prison he is in gives pensioners £10 a week instead of making them work, but not all prisons do. This doesn’t go very far towards bringing a little quality of life into the basic regime. To supplement this meagre allowance, I send money to be put into his account: over £1,100 in the last nine months.
Apart from his weekly spending of £12 for phone calls it is about the same for extra food. It has taken a long time to save up for a couple of sweatshirts, tracksuit bottoms and a pair of cheap trainers; hardly an extensive wardrobe!
The Prison Reform Trust (PRT) says men over 60 are the fastest-growing age group in prison, having tripled between 1996 (699) and 2008 (2,242). Many, like my own husband, have never been in prison before, and most have paid enough contributions for a full state pension. The UK is not alone in withholding pensions from prisoners, but many others don’t: Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Spain all pay at least part.
The PRT campaigned for pension rights for over five years, but the government claim it would be “double provision” for prisoners already held at public expense, and it would not be “publicly acceptable”. I have yet to hear of any members of the public who have been asked for their opinion on this by the government! Some would agree, but they are the ones who know nothing of life in prison for the elderly. Withholding prisoners’ pensions is not “double provision” but “double punishment”, even without taking into account the effect on the innocent partner at home.
An excellent report was published by the PRT and Age Concern in September 2006 in response to a White Paper by the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) (http://www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk/uploads/documents/PensionsPaperSept2006.pdf)
In that document, the DWP explains: “The National Insurance scheme operates as a “pay-as-you-go” scheme so that today’s contributors are paying for today’s social security entitlements and pensions, and those paying contributions previously were paying for the pensioners of that time. In other words, contributors do not accumulate an individual pension fund of actual monies they have paid, which is personal to them.”
However, if today’s pensioners have already paid for someone else’s pension, surely they should receive their own? DWP continue: “Instead, payment of contributions entitles them or, in certain circumstances, their spouses, to a range of social security entitlements ....”. Not if you’ve got savings it doesn’t!
Confirming this, in the report a human rights solicitor comments: “Removing the husband’s pension if he is in prison may lead to financial difficulties for the wife. Whilst she may qualify for benefits to help with the financial situation, even relatively small amounts of savings can effectively rule out state help. This may leave a wife with the only option of depleting life savings in order to maintain herself as the result of her husband’s imprisonment.”
The National Pensioners’ Convention considers the State Pension to be “a right rather than a benefit” and argues that “if the State is recouping some of the money spent on detaining someone in prison, why are older prisoners the only category subjected to this ‘charge’? This is discriminatory.”
Despite what the press say, prisoners actually have very few rights. However, receipt of a pension to which they have contributed is a fundamental right which is being denied to elderly UK citizens in prison.
* Jenny Richards is a pseudonym for the wife of a prisoner maintaining innocence in Leicestershire.
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