Welsh Prisoners in the Prison Estate
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House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee Welsh Prisoners in the Prison Estate Third Report of Session 2006–07 Report, together with formal minutes, oral and written evidence Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 16 May 2007 HC 74 Published on 6 June 2007 by authority of the House of Commons London: The Stationery Office Limited £23.00 The Welsh Affairs Committee The Welsh Affairs Committee is appointed by the House of Commons to examine the expenditure, administration, and policy of the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales (including relations with the National Assembly for Wales). Current membership Dr Hywel Francis MP (Labour, Aberavon) (Chairman) Mr Stephen Crabb MP (Conservative, Preseli Pembrokeshire) David T.C. Davies MP (Conservative, Monmouth) Nia Griffith MP (Labour, Llanelli) Mrs Siân C. James MP (Labour, Swansea East) Mr David Jones MP (Conservative, Clwyd West) Mr Martyn Jones MP (Labour, Clwyd South) Jessica Morden MP (Labour, Newport East) Albert Owen MP (Labour, Ynys Môn) Mark Williams MP (Liberal Democrat, Ceredigion) Hywel Williams MP (Plaid Cymru, Caernarfon) Powers The committee is one of the Departmental select committees, the powers of which are set out in House of Commons Standing Orders, principally in SO No 152. These are available on the Internet via www.parliament.uk. Publications The reports and evidence of the Committee are published by The Stationery Office by Order of the House. All publications of the Committee (including press notices) are on the internet at www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/welsh_affairs_committee.cfm. A list of reports of the Committee in the present Parliament is at the back of this volume. Committee staff The current staff of the Committee is Nick Wright (Clerk), Stephen Boyce (Committee Specialist), Christine Randall (Committee Assistant), Annabel Goddard (Secretary), Jim Lawford (Chief Office Clerk) and Laura Kibby (Media Officer). Contacts All correspondence should be addressed to the Clerk of the Welsh Affairs Committee, House of Commons, 7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA. The telephone number for general enquiries is 020 7219 6189 and the Committee’s email address is [email protected]. Welsh Prisoners in the Prison Estate 1 Contents Report Page Summary 3 1 Introduction 5 The prison population in Wales 6 Prison overcrowding 11 Welsh prisoners and distance from home 13 Remand prisoners 15 New custodial facilities in Wales 17 2 Female prisoners 19 Family contact and female prisoners 21 Support for families of prisoners 22 New provision in Wales for female offenders 24 3 Welsh prisoners: education, training and well-being 27 Prison healthcare 27 Mental health 27 Substance misuse 32 Welsh and other languages 35 Education and training 39 Education and training for juveniles in custody 43 4 Criminal justice and the wider community: rehabilitation, re-offending and victim support 46 Restorative justice 46 Community Courts 47 Rehabilitation and re-offending 48 Conclusions and recommendations 52 Formal Minutes 58 List of Witnesses 59 List of written evidence 60 Reports from the Welsh Affairs Committee since 2005 61 Welsh Prisoners in the Prison Estate 3 Summary The Welsh Affairs Select Committee decided to undertake this inquiry in order to address concerns about the imprisonment of Welsh prisoners in prisons outside Wales, in many cases a long way from their homes. The Government is planning to create 8,000 new prison places by 2012, including some in Wales, and it is therefore timely to examine provision in Wales. We believe that the devolution of powers to the National Assembly for Wales and current reforms to the criminal justice system offer an opportunity to develop an approach to offender management, rehabilitation and re-offending in Wales which is better suited in the Welsh context than are the current arrangements - and so is more likely to be effective. There are only four prisons in Wales, all of which are in the South of the country. There is little provision for juvenile and young offenders, and no prisons at all for women. All of this has far-reaching consequences for prisoners, their families and the agencies working with them. The current overcrowding of the prison estate means that the transfer of prisoners between prisons is increased, and the likelihood of Welsh prisoners being able to serve all or part of their sentences near to home is reduced. This then affects the delivery of health, education and rehabilitation services to these prisoners, and reduces the likelihood of successful resettlement on release. We believe that new prison places should be provided in North Wales, where currently none exist, and in South Wales, where there is a high demand for places for male adult prisoners and, separately, for young offenders. New provision is also needed for juvenile offenders. We believe there should be a new approach to the treatment of female prisoners along the lines proposed by Baroness Corston in her report on vulnerable women in the prison system. This would include small, community-based residential units for female offenders offering a range of rehabilitation services, and small custodial units for those serving longer sentences. These arrangements would, we believe, address some of the considerable needs of female offenders and allow those that are primary carers (the majority) to maintain better contact with their children. In the short-term, we recommend that more support and better visiting facilities are provided for families visiting prisoners who are held a long distance from home. We heard evidence of high levels of mental ill-health and self-harm amongst the Welsh prison population, particularly amongst women. Providing appropriate support services to prisoners with mental heath problems and transferring prisoners with severe mental illness to secure mental health units is problematic, and more should be done to address these issues. Levels of substance misuse amongst prisoners are also high and, although there is some good work being undertaken in Wales to address this, more needs to be done to link prison and community-based services. There are some serious concerns around Welsh language provision for Welsh prisoners, in particular for young offenders, which could be addressed most effectively by the provision of prison places in North Wales. There is poor information on the number of Welsh- speaking prisoners, and consequent under-provision of Welsh language materials in prisons in which they are held. Welsh medium education should be provided for all 4 Welsh Prisoners in the Prison Estate juvenile offenders who need it, and better Welsh language materials should be provided for adults. Providing effective education in prison is made more difficult by the rate of movement of prisoners between establishments, and by the increasing number of those serving short sentences. The transfer of information on prisoners’ education and training achievements needs to be improved in order to eliminate the unnecessary duplication of assessments. A greater consistency in the educational and training courses provided by different prisons would also make it easier for prisoners to continue their courses on transfer to another prison. More information is needed on the effectiveness of prison education for Welsh prisoners, particularly in terms of its impact on re-offending. We believe that the restorative justice programme piloted at HMP Cardiff has the potential to make a useful contribution to the support offered to victims of crime, the rehabilitation of offenders and the development of a more community-based approach to criminal justice in Wales. We welcome the development of community courts in England and Wales, and the proposal for such a court in Merthyr Tydfil, and believe that such arrangements hold some promise for a new approach to criminal justice that would fit comfortably into the Welsh context. The rehabilitation and resettlement of many Welsh prisoners is hampered by their distance from home. Losing contact with families and communities makes resettlement more difficult for prisoners, and the distances agencies are required to travel places a strain on their resources and restricts the scope of their work. NOMS should take account of these factors when allocating resources to probation and other resettlement agencies if they are to achieve the reduction in the high re-offending rates expected by the Government. Wales now has an opportunity to develop its own distinctive approach to criminal justice which better reflect the needs of Wales and which could serve as a model for developments elsewhere in the UK. Welsh Prisoners in the Prison Estate 5 1 Introduction 1. Our inquiry into the experience of Welsh prisoners in the prison estate has been undertaken at a time when the criminal justice system in Wales is undergoing significant change. Recent reforms to the criminal justice system have led to the creation of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) which aims to provide ‘end to end’ management of offenders throughout their engagement with criminal justice services, and embraces both the prison and probation services. As part of the National Offender Management Service, Wales has its own Director of Offender Management who works in partnership with the Welsh Assembly Government and a range of other relevant agencies, and is responsible for commissioning both custodial and non-custodial services for offenders from Wales. The relationship between NOMS and the Welsh Assembly Government is crucial to the reduction of re-offending in Wales since, although responsibility for prison and probation services falls to the Home Office1, responsibility for many of the services that play a key role in prisoner resettlement and rehabilitation are devolved to the Welsh Assembly Government. 2. The Offender Management Bill currently before Parliament proposes the introduction of ‘contestability’ into new areas of the Criminal Justice System, including the probation service, thereby creating opportunities for the provision of services in the field of probation by private and voluntary sector organisations which the Government believes will improve efficiency and increase innovation.