Crises in Criminal Justice

ALL-PARTY PARLIAMENTARY GROUP ON ALL-PARTY PARLIAMENTARY GROUP ON PENAL AFFAIRS PENAL AFFAIRS CRISES IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE

The All-Party Parliamentary Penal Affairs Group aims to increase its members’ knowledge of penal affairs and to work through parliamentary channels for reform of the penal system. With the prison population increasing relentlessly and the prison estate suffering from chronic overcrowding, there has never been a greater need for an active and informed group.

This report focuses on the dominant theme of many of the meetings held in the past two years, Crises in Criminal Justice. It provides a clear indication of concerns - for the public in A report on the work of the whose interest prisons exist, for prisoners, staff and those responsible for various aspects of the prisons of England and Wales - together with details of an unprecedented raft of All-Party Parliamentary Penal measures intended to improve their functioning. Affairs Group 2006/2007 Prison Reform Trust, 15 Northburgh Street, London EC1V 0JR www.prisonreformtrust.org.uk PRISON ISBN 0 946209 85 5 PRISON [email protected] £10 Registered charity no: 1035525 Company Limited by Guarantee no: 2906362 TRUST Registered in England & Wales. 9 780946 209859 TRUST INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page i

Contents

Foreword - Lord Corbett of Castle Vale...... iii

2006 17 January The Home Affairs Committee: programme of work and current concerns - Rt Hon John Denham, MP...... 1

28 February The National Probation Service for England & Wales - Roger Hill...... 3

28 March Alternatives to custody - The Rt Hon Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers ...... 7

25 April 2006 Offender Management - Margaret Adams...... 11

23 May Criminal justice in Canada - Graham Stewart...... 15

18 July The review of vulnerable women in the criminal justice system - Baroness Corston...... 19

17 October The National Offender Management Service - Helen Edwards CBE...... 23

5 December Mental health in prison - Dr David James, Dr John O’Grady & Janice Webb ...... 27

2007 23 January Current pressures on magistrates’ courts - Cindy Barnett ...... 33

27 February The Prison Service and sustainable development - Phil Wheatley CB..... 37

20 March Neighbourhood by neighbourhood: local action to reduce crime - Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham & Juliet Lyon ...... 43

15 May Learning disability in Prison - Baroness Quin, David Congdon, Danny, Andrew & Lee ...... 49

3 July The Parole Board for England & Wales - Professor Sir Duncan Nicol, CBE...... 55

16 October - Jack Straw MP, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice ...... 59

13 November Dangerous offenders: what can be achieved? - Andrew Bridges CBE.... 63

4 December Young people who offend - Sukhvinder Kaur Stubbs, Lucie Russell, Darren and Kenny...... 67

i INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page ii

ii INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page iii

Foreword

This report focuses on the dominant theme of many of the meetings held in the past two years, Crises in Criminal Justice. It is hoped that it will allow parliamentarians an opportunity to pause and reflect on the drift in policy and practice and the need for renewed vision and leadership if we are to achieve a more just, humane and effective system.

The report includes the presentation of each speaker in the past two years. Each meeting had a separate theme. It provides a clear indication of concerns - for the public in whose interest prisons exist, for prisoners, staff and those responsible for various aspects of the prisons of England and Wales - together with details of an unprecedented raft of measures intended to improve their functioning.

The group was re-instated on the Register of All-Party Groups and the Approved List in July 2002, when I was delighted to be elected as its Chairman. I have greatly appreciated the interest and support I have received from members and fellow officers in the past six years.

Baroness Stern of Vauxhall CBE, Julie Morgan MP and Lord Ramsbotham have provided excellent support and guidance as vice chairs, as has Nick Hurd MP as the group’s Secretary. To date 147 Members of Parliament and 92 Peers have joined the group.

Finally I would like to thank the Barrow Cadbury Trust, who support the Prison Reform Trust (PRT) to provide the Secretariat and PRT and its Deputy Director, Geoff Dobson OBE, clerk to the group and Julia Braggins our minute taker, for their help in underpinning our work.

Lord Corbett of Castle Vale Chairman, All-Party Parliamentary Penal Affairs Group April 2008

iii INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page iv

iv INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 1

17 January 2006: the Home Affairs Committee: programme of work and current concerns

Rt Hon John Denham, MP, chairman, Home Affairs Committee

John Denham referred to the current to give parliamentarians a formal input into the programme of the Home Affairs Committee by consultation on sentencing guidance which will saying that there was not a huge amount that was then have to be taken into account by the of relevance to the group but that as the Sentencing Guidelines Council. programme beyond Easter was now being looked at as well the Group’s meeting could be very We have, today, decided not to go ahead with an timely. enquiry on the drug treatment of offenders. This is because we understand that there is a very He continued: “For your information two active review being done in the Cabinet Office and issues we are looking at are first, the enquiry into the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit. They will be the work of the Immigration and Nationality asking many of the same questions that we would Department, looking particularly at how it works in be asking such as is there a lot of failure of people practice as opposed to policy issues. The to complete their drug treatment, etc. It does not committee, not just under my chairmanship but make sense for us to launch an enquiry just as the under Chris Mullin and others, did quite a lot on Government is about to announce a new policy. immigration policy. We shall be looking particularly at practical issues and how things might change It shows, in answer to serious concerns that we when the new points-based system comes in over have all had, that there has been a very welcome the next two or three years. investment into drug treatment of offenders. It has not yet, necessarily, resulted in, at grass roots Second, we shall be looking at the case or absence level, the right offenders getting the right of a case for the 90-day detention. The legislation treatment and support in the right way and at the for this is still around and there is a sunset clause right time. on David Winnick’s amendment. We want to try and understand if the case was very badly argued I would now just like to touch on our activities in but that there was a case for it which is what has the fairly recent past. Possibly the most been said or whether the case for it should be important of these is the report we produced withdrawn. about a year ago on Prisons and Rehabilitation. This covered issues of young offenders, minority Third is something very much of relevance to this groups, women in prison, drug treatment group which is that the Home Affairs Committee programmes - but we focused very deliberately on now has a very formal role in sentencing policy. the relationship of rehabilitation regimes in prisons We are consulted on behalf of Parliament. We and the prospects of people getting into work shall be looking at the robbery guidelines in two when they left prison. Our conclusion, to weeks’ time and, as this is an area that is new to summarise a quite lengthy report, was that the us, we shall be developing our own expertise on prison regime considerably lacks focus on getting commenting on sentencing guidelines. The idea is people into work.

1 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 2

There are many successful projects such as drug I am not against contestability in a targeted treatment programmes but they have no relevance manner. Currently there is very little private to getting people into work. There are also many provision and 2% from the voluntary sector successful schemes such as the Transco one which provision. To restructure the entire Probation has shown very low re-offending rates. However, Service from that low starting point is very strange. it is very frustrating because whilst they are lauded by everyone there is a lack of any impetus for them Third, we were worried about the fragmentation to be adopted as standard practice. of provision possibly with multiple suppliers of rehabilitation services at local levels making it There seems to be a great reluctance to adopt complex for sentencers. The sentencers that we more work-centred regimes in prisons. There are took evidence from, judges and magistrates, were some shining examples of good practice like very worried about how the new system would Coldingley. However there is a pessimism about operate and the potential consequences that if they prison regime which seems to make it impossible began to lose confidence in community punishment for the prison day to be made more work and community provision they may opt for the oriented. more cautious option of sending people to prison. As you know, sentencers would not be able to We were very impressed by our visits, particularly take a formal role in the new probation bodies. to Germany, by the extensive use of day release. Prisoners on somewhat higher security categories Because of these concerns I think it is important to than our category D were allowed out on regular continue to pursue these issues as the government day release. develops its ideas.

The Home Affairs Committee reports often feel I have no doubt at all that it will do no harm to that they are going with the grain of change and shake up the Probation Service by introducing that things are being moved in the right direction. greater relevance through contestability. The However, this report has not yet found an voluntary sector provision has actually shrunk from audience or a champion in government in the way 7% to 2% over the last five years. It is very difficult that we would like and I think it is an issue that we to justify. In Northern Ireland the voluntary sector may need to come back to. provides something like 25% of rehabilitation services. Finally, we had a one-off meeting in November with the minister about NOMS. I have to say that the There is a case, as there often is in public Committee is, in general, very supportive of the services, for bringing in a measure of entire concept. contestability and challenge and the idea that someone else could bring in alternative The lack of continuity that we found in our prison approaches but I think it needs to be done in a report, the lack of effective supervision, the lack of more structured and less dogmatic way. following somebody’s progress through the system, etc., means that we have not been persuaded by Another concern we had was that, at least in the complaints from the Probation Service. principle at the moment, the very sensitive services like the management of very dangerous On the other hand we came out of the one-off offenders and sex offenders could be put out to session very sceptical about the urchaser/provider the private sector by contract. It is hard to believe split that it is now proposed to introduce into that this would ever be publicly or politically NOMS. Probation trusts would operate rather like acceptable but it has certainly not been ruled out. local businesses in competition with the private In fact the Minister confirmed to us that it was a sector and the voluntary sector. The reasons for possibility. our scepticism were, first, whether a regional commissioner would be best placed to commission So the two areas of the Home Affairs Committee’s services that would be much more local, second, work that have been directly relevant to this group that there was no great evidence that there were are the report on prisons and rehabilitation and sufficient alternative providers of services to make our interest in probation services. I would contestability a meaningful process. welcome ideas of things that we could look at.”

2 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 3

28 February 2006: the National Probation Service for England &Wales

Roger Hill, director of probation, National Probation Service for England & Wales

Roger Hill opened by saying that he would like formally appointed by the Secretary of State to cover a few factual issues about the National serve on the 42 boards. This made the Probation Service. organisation coterminus with the Police.

He continued, “ I have been a probation The Probation Boards are semi-autonomous officer since 1978 and I have been director of the bodies and they employ all of the staff except the National Probation Service since April of 2005. chief officer. The chief is appointed by the centre and is line managed by me. So 42 chiefs report to I would like to start by talking about the National me and it is through that rather thin network of Probation Service’s workload, its costs and its line management that the National Probation structure. Service exists.

We have about 200,000 offenders in the community In the process of becoming a national service it at any one time for whom we are responsible. moved closer to government. The Home Secretary, These will be a variety of people on community then Jack Straw, was able to account to Parliament orders or licences following imprisonment. for the Probation Service. The government set the targets and over the five years the Service has Custody Plus, a new sentence under the 2003 Act, become quite good at achieving these. I would just will come into force in the autumn of this year will like to give a few examples. probably bring an additional 50 or 60,000 to that number. In 2001 for enforcement performance, which is the responsibility of probation to take appropriate We write about a quarter of a million reports for action for offenders who do not do what they are the courts a year. That is our workload and that supposed to do, the target was set at 90%. The group of offenders comprise the very highest risks percentage being achieved is now 90% to some quite low risk offenders. In 2001 for contact with victims, those who are In terms of cost, the organisation costs just a little victims of sexual or violent offences and where the less than a billion pounds annually and there are offender receives twelve months or more about 21,000 staff. In terms of our structure, we imprisonment, the performance has improved from were reorganised and created through the Criminal 60% to 90%. Justice and Court Services Act in the beginning of April 2001, so the National Probation Service is not In terms of Basic Skills Awards, which I see as very yet five years old. At the point of its creation important, we achieved just under a thousand in probation committees, which were local the first year. This year the target was ten representative bodies, were replaced by probation thousand and this had already been exceeded by boards. These were made up of groups of people November.

3 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 4

These awards are accredited through the same UNISON performs exactly as it does in other routes that everyone else received accreditation. spheres and has recently launched a rather useful They are not something that is uniquely campaign around the ‘positively public’ note. The certificated by the Probation Service. message of this campaign is: ‘we have been very good at criticising government policy, but less In terms of accredited programmes, these are good at suggesting constructive alternatives to it’. cognitive behavioural group work programmes, UNISON is therefore engaging in some of the we hope to complete seventeen thousand of these current issues within probation whereas NAPO this year against a target of 15,000. are, I think, a little more oppositional. However, this is pure conjecture on my part. We have become an organisation where whatever is measured actually gets done. We have become I describe probation as a service that is reasonably very good at achieving the targets that the resistant to change but also remarkably innovative. government sets for us. This may sound contradictory but I do not see it as that. The resistance to change is about wishing Just to reflect on targets, I do think they have a to have things done with consultation and the value. They are part of the quality agenda. The innovation can be exemplified in many ways. One example of offenders receiving Basic Skills Awards is that victim support was born out of an initiative shows that it is not merely mechanistic. It actually by probation officers in 1979; the MAPPA changes people’s lives. At a recent conference arrangements which we have in place were also a where offenders spoke, one said that his work on probation initiative; the Department of Transport basic skills had changed his life because he could was persuaded by probation officers – and it quite now read to his children. often is probation officers at the grass roots – to fund drink-impaired drivers programmes. Meeting targets is not the whole focus of the It is an organisation that is not understood by the National Probation Service, but it is a part. public and we probably have not done enough to portray a public image. This is difficult in view of My general impression about the culture of the the weight of political and media commentary. The organisation will, I hope, be of interest. It is an service tends to be cast as being soft on crime; intelligent organisation with mainly a graduate this could not be further from the truth. workforce. They are far more likely to say ‘why’ than they are to say ‘no’. There is a proud Public opinion surveys show that there is very tradition and most people working in the service little support for the organisation but an regard it as a vocation. Probation will be one enormous amount of support for its activities. This hundred years old in 2007. It is an organisation is another contradiction. that expects some level of consultation and operates hoping for consensus in most decision This service, which as I have described, has only making most of the time. been in its present form for five years is now being considered for change yet again. It is an organisation that prefers to have things done with it rather than to it. The driver for the current change can be seen as Lord Carter’s review of correctional services in It is a unionised organisation. There are two main 2003. He provided a report at the end of that year unions, the National Association of Probation which concluded broadly that both prison and Officers (Napo) and UNISON. Napo is a small probation did well but could do better and that union which gives itself two roles, one to offending over the preceding decade had not represent its members in a traditional way and the changed substantially but that sentencing as a other to act as a professional association and response to it had changed dramatically. It had comment on the National Probation Service and become significantly more severe. Lord Carter how it is run. primarily blamed the media, and to a less extent politicians, for this.

4 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 5

He proposed the rebalancing of sentencing and legislation in an almost identical way to which they the formation of a single offender management used the previous legislation. service to include both the Prison Service and the Probation Service with a chief executive The average length of a community order rose responsible for reducing re-offending. from 12.3 months to 14.2 months. In terms of conditions, unpaid work increased by about 12% Lord Carter went on to say that each offender and accredited programmes by about the same should have an offender manager who, where amount. possible, should be the same throughout the sentence and any probation period, that There has been no legislation to require the prison should be reserved for serious Sentencing Guidelines Council to take account of offenders, that community penalties should be capacity. Consequently the rebalancing of increased wherever possible and that sentencing called for by Lord Carter is, I would sentencing should be rebalanced with an suggest, not really happening. increased use of the fine. In terms of the future there is the National Lord Carter also said that the Sentencing Offender Management Service (NOMS) which has Guidelines Council should take account of been around since 2004. There was a consultation capacity when producing its guidelines. to propose a new structure early in 2004. In the summer of that year, in response to that This was all two years ago. Since then we have consultation, that structure was abandoned and implemented the 2003 Criminal Justice Act. This there was a statement by the then minister, Paul was implemented in April 2004 for everything Goggins. There was a management of offenders except Custody Plus. The use of the fine has and sentencing bill launched at the end of increased from 972,000 fines in 2002 to 1, 2004/beginning of 2005. That was curtailed and 082,000 in 2004 but the majority of those fines stopped at the point of the general election. have been given for lower level offences. There was another consultation in October 2005 For more indictable offences the use of fines has restructuring probation to reduce re-offending to decreased from 78,000 to 65,000. which there was a significant response and the In terms of imprisonment, the prison population NOMS clauses were removed from the police and at the moment is 76,400. It reached an all time justice bill. I believe there will be further high in November last year when it was 77,800 legislation for NOMS but I do not have any which is virtually capacity. 12,000 of those are details. prisoners on remand and more than 60% are serving more than four years. The prison It is, perhaps, interesting to ask what is NOMS. It population has been increasing by two to three is a concept that has confused and provoked hundred per week since Christmas. strong feeling. For me NOMS stands first for reducing re-offending – which has to be a good By September 2005 there had been 77,000 thing, second for closer work with the Prison offenders placed on a community order or a Service to create end-to-end offender community sentence. Roughly half of those will management – which makes sound sense, third to have been sentenced under the previous introduce NOMIS (the National Offender legislation and half under the new. That is about Management Information System) – which is a 2% higher than in the six month period in the single electronic case record viewable in both the year previously. prison and in the community and has to be welcome and fourth it is about contestability. Yet With community orders and requirements, 50% it is perceived, despite the positive points I have had one requirement, 34% had two, 15% had just listed, as entirely about contestability thus three and only 2% had four or more. This seems provoking a very strong response from staff and to show that sentencers are using the new other significant groups.

5 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 6

We have recently seen the five-year strategy It has come a long way in five years. It has a light- Protecting the Public and Reducing Re-offending from touch centre. It has a thinking workforce that has Charles Clarke. From my perspective this is experience of innovation. It has public support for particularly welcome as it is mainly focused on its activities, even if not for its organisation, service delivery and rather less on structures. My operating at capacity with significant demands and interpretation of the strategy is that it has two a welcome five-year strategy.” key things. The first is public protection and the second is public confidence. The latter is the harder of the two issues to grasp. The Home Secretary refers to a strong commitment to protecting the public, about dangerous people being in prison for longer, about safer parole decisions, about the importance of MAPPA and, in terms of confidence, about community pay-back (previously community service). Whilst not an entirely new product, the way it is being delivered is new. Two important aspects are that unpaid work should be visible at the point of delivery and that unpaid work and what offenders do to pay back the community should be decided by communities. There has been a great deal of very positive publicity about community pay-back.

The other aspect to be welcomed in the five-year strategy is the involvement of other government departments in reducing re-offending. Some examples are education, employment, healthcare, housing, how you manage your money. These are not the core business of either the Probation or the Prison Service. However, the extent of the political debate of this process should not be underestimated.

The prospect for change for the Probation Service is colossal. There is the implementation of a new IT system, Custody Plus is coming, questions around police boundary changes and whether the Probation Service should change with them and there is contestability. So there is an uncertain future for the Probation Service.

To conclude I would say that the National Probation Service is a strong organisation that has largely delivered what the Government wanted.

6 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 7

28 March 2006: alternatives to custody

The Rt Hon Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales

Lord Phillips thanked Baroness Stern for her be my primary concern, but by no means my welcome and said that although life was quite busy exclusive concern. I chair the Sentencing Guidelines at the moment he had been very glad to receive Council, and I also lead that Council. I preside over the invitation to talk to the group. the Criminal Division of the Court of Appeal, where I have been sitting today and where I shall spend He continued, “I took up my present office about half of my sitting time. As a result, I have in October. In the previous five years, as Master of become deeply interested in what happens to the Rolls, my concern had been exclusively with offenders when they leave court, and whether all the civil law. In those five years, no less than 20 Bills aims of sentencing are fulfilled – punishment, on Criminal Justice were enacted, not least being prevention of reoffending, rehabilitation, deterrence the 2003 Act. My learning curve has been steep, and protection of the public. and I have yet to master the summit of this mountain of legislation. I would like to talk this afternoon about two new features of sentencing practice, each introduced by I do not believe that the press, and in particular the 2003 Act, which have very different aims. The the tabloids, have been particularly helpful in first is the treatment of dangerous offenders and the assisting their readers to understand changes in other is community orders coupled with what is sentencing trends and sentencing policy. In these known as custody plus. circumstances the work that your Group does in monitoring the working and effect of penal policy Most members of society would wish, I suspect, that is of the greatest value. Would that the man in the those criminals who are dangerous should be kept in street was more aware of it. detention for so long as they continue to be dangerous. Indeed there is a strong case for keeping The responsibilities that I am to take over from those who are mentally ill and dangerous in secure the Lord Chancellor on April 3, when the role of accommodation before they become criminals. Many the head of the judiciary passes from him to me, actual or potential criminals are dangerous because are so numerous and wide ranging that I shall not they suffer from personality disorders or other be able to perform the traditional role of the Lord mental conditions which can be diagnosed as Chief Justice of sitting almost exclusively in crime illnesses. Prison is not the best place to detain those and concerning himself almost exclusively with who are mentally disordered. Up to now the ability criminal justice. I have appointed Sir Igor Judge, to detain such persons in mental hospitals has been who was the Deputy Chief Justice under Harry circumscribed, first by limited resources and Woolf and is now President of the Queen’s Bench secondly by a legal regime which makes the right to Division, as Head of Criminal Justice. In that detain someone who has not yet committed a crime capacity he will be focusing his energies and dependant upon whether he or she is suffering from abilities on the criminal system. That system will a treatable illness.

7 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 8

In the meantime the 2003 Act has introduced a a lengthy period in prison, or indeed a short period, new regime which risks resulting in the detention is no easy matter. It is inevitable that some who are of dangerous offenders in prison, not simply by released will re-offend, and some in a serious or, way of punishment, but in order to safeguard indeed, horrifying manner. Nor, however closely society from the risk that they pose, when many and efficiently they supervise prisoners who have of these would be better detained in mental been released will the probation service be able to hospitals. anticipate and prevent repeat offending.

The regime of which I speak is, of course, that A gruesome repeat offence by a prisoner who has imposed by sections 224 to 236 of the 2003 Act. been released early by the Parole Board and who Offenders who have been convicted of a wide is under supervision by the Probation Service range of specified offences will be given life makes good copy. Sometimes criticism is justified, sentences or ‘imprisonment for public protection’ but not always. There is a danger that such media if there is a significant risk to members of the coverage will lead to an approach of playing safe public or serious harm by the commission of that will leave indefinitely imprisoned men, and further specified offences. In either case a some women, who have served their penal terms minimum term must be specified which the and who do not in reality pose a risk because of offender must serve by way of punishment for his the difficulty in being satisfied that this is indeed offence, but thereafter he will not be released the case. This in turn will cause capacity problems unless and until the Parole board is satisfied that in the prisons and lead to serious disciplinary he can be released to be supervised in the problems for those who run the prisons. community without this posing a significant risk to the public. I would add, in passing, that the grant of bail is also at present subject to media scrutiny. A number of features of this regime give rise to Inevitably some who quite properly are granted concern. The first was that sentencers were bail will commit criminal offences while on bail, imposing sentences of IPP for comparatively trivial sometimes serious offences. There is a possibility offences – I heard of one where the minimum that the rise of those remanded in custody term imposed was as short as two months. The reflects a ‘play it safe’ response to bail Home Secretary asked the Sentencing Guidelines applications, although I must say that Igor Judge Council to give consideration to publishing who has been investigating this possibility has guidelines in respect of dangerous offenders. We formed the view that bail does not appear to be were reluctant to do so for a number of reasons. being refused where it should be granted. The first was that the process of issuing a guideline is a slow and thorough one, involving both the That is all that I wish to say about a regime which Panel and the Council and two is likely to increase the prison population by stages of statutory consultation. The second was causing some of those who are sentenced to that we were aware of two appeals pending before custody to be detained for longer. This is also the Criminal Division which related to sentencing true, of course, of prescribed minimum custodial of dangerous offenders and felt that it would be sentences, not least that inserted into the sensible to consider the effect of those sentences Firearms Act by section 287 of the 2003 Act. before proceeding further. The third reason was that it is usually more satisfactory to see how a I now wish to turn to measures introduced with new sentencing regime is shaking down in practice the aim of keeping offenders out of prison. It is before issuing guidelines in relation to it. Home Office policy that those who commit serious offences and offenders who are violent or The other cause for concern is the pressures that dangerous should go to prison. But this is coupled the new regime is going to place on both the with a policy that offenders who are not violent parole board and the probation service. Risk or dangerous and who do not commit serious assessment in relation to a prisoner who has spent offences, should not generally be sent to prison

8 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 9

but should be punished in the community, where the next 5 years by about 10% But even that will punishment can go hand in hand with various types be a very significant achievement, and one that it of treatment that are aimed at rehabilitating the will be possible to build on. offender, compensating the community and preventing re-offending. This policy was eloquently Most of what is on offer for the offender given a and boldly spelt out by the Home Secretary in his community sentence will also be on offer to the lecture to the Prison Reform Trust last year and is offender who is given a sentence of less than reflected by the recently published NOMS 5 year twelve months custody, which will result in what strategy. is known as ‘custody plus’ - to be introduced in November. The first part of custody plus will be I am a strong supporter of this policy. It is a sad prison or detention, possibly for quite a short fact that many who are in prison are there because period. The second part of the sentence will be they are incapable of a sensible regulation of their served under supervision in the community, and own lives. Most, I would say, have lamentable family will be for significantly longer. backgrounds, or none at all. A large proportion are suffering from some form of mental disability or If these new community and custody plus illness. Many have drug or alcohol dependency. sentences are to be effective a number of things Most do not commit the most serious crimes and are necessary. First sentencers must be educated, therefore receive relatively short sentences. Within and here we are largely talking about the two years of release the majority have been re- magistrates. Some have expressed views that convicted. This statistic is proof of their custody plus will seem such an attractive sentence inadequacy, for the able offender is not all that that it will be imposed where previously custody easily caught and convicted. They are nonetheless would not have been imposed. This would be a an anti -social and costly menace to society. The disaster, leading to possibly intolerable pressures cost of re-offending by ex-prisoners is estimated to on a prison system already overstrained. The cost society £11 billion per year. Sentencing Guidelines Council has been working on a Guideline for Custody Plus, which is shortly Imprisoning this section of the criminal community to go out for statutory consultation and I have is expensive £35,000 a year on average, and, as I asked that there should be added to the statutory have said, it does not prevent them re-offending. consultees the Magistrates Association and And at the moment those who serve short representatives of those who advise and work sentences receive no rehabilitating treatment in with the magistrates. We have been at pains to prison, nor after they are released. This is not a emphasise in the guideline that if custody would sensible way to go about things, and the 2003 Act not have been imposed under the old regime, it sets out to change the approach. will be quite wrong to impose a custody plus sentence . It is no longer lawful for a court to send an offender to prison unless the offence is so serious The next thing that is needed is resources. If that a community sentence cannot be justified, and community sentences are to be imposed, there even then the court must sentence the offender to must be available the various items that the the shortest term of custody that is consistent with sentencer is supposed to have in the shopping bag, the seriousness of the offence. And the 2003 Act such as meaningful and useful unpaid work, provides for a wide range of requirements that can facilities for alcohol or drug treatment and, above be imposed by way of a community sentence. all, a dedicated probation or offender management service, and whatever that service is called, I One must be realistic. Community sentences will believe that probation officers must be at the not produce rehabilitation in every case, or even in heart of it. the majority of cases. Many offenders unfortunately are so damaged that they are beyond saving. The Next, I believe, the local community from which Home Office target is to reduce re-offending over the offender has come and in which he will be

9 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 10

performing his community sentence obligations can to better inform the public and the media must have confidence in the system. Community about the challenges facing the justice system and justice must be run locally with all the agencies in how we are addressing them. Thank you for the community working in harmony with local inviting me to talk to you and I shall now be happy magistrates’ courts. There are I am aware to do my best to answer any questions.” excellent voluntary bodies bent on explaining to local communities the merits of community sentencing, and I applaud these.

More generally, community sentencing must have the confidence not only of those imposing the sentences, but of the public in general. Here there is a problem with some sections of the media, whose agenda is to persuade the public that any offender who does not go to prison ‘walks free’ .

I have finished with complaints about the media, confident that we are all keen to do everything we

10 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 11

25 April 2006: offender management

Margaret Adams, programme director North West Offender Management Pathfinder

Margaret Adams opened by distinguishing We also looked at a work stream in relation to between a ‘pilot’ and a ‘pathfinder’. A pilot had young offenders. At that time we had minimal very clear parameters: a start, a finish, and an resources to look at how we changed the delivery. evaluation which would determine whether or not For this we were looking at working with 250 the project went ahead. A pathfinder, on the other young offenders drawn from three districts across hand, was walking the path in front of other people the north-west. This has now been scaled up to and identifying the obstacles that they may come cover the whole of the north-west. We now have across. The task was then to either move the something like 2,500 young offenders who have obstacles out of the way or find a path round them. experience offender management. Some of them It also allowed pitfalls to be flagged up so those are still going through the process and some have following did not fall into them. completed and have not re-offended.

She continued as follows: “The business The Probation Service already had a statutory case for this pathfinder came from the north-west responsibility to supervise young offenders on which already had very good structures in place release. The work that they were not doing was and a very willing and able group of chief officers of actually coming into the prison and delivering an probation and north west area manager of the end-to-end process which is what the offender Prison Service. These people were very focused on management model is all about. There was a gap in working together and on having a joined-up the middle where prison staff picked up and did resettlement strategy. Part of that was to some work with young offenders but there was no incorporate a wide variety of partnerships from the guarantee that there would be appropriate voluntary, public and private sector. The north- transition back into the community.“ west is a vibrant and creative area. It was a good area in which to set up the Pathfinder. Lord Corbett asked if these were young people on what minimum sentence. The Pathfinder was initially charged with testing out the introduction of the new Community Margaret Adams replied that it applied to any Order which was due to be implemented last sentence. She added that all young offenders had year. We had five months to test it out before statutory supervision post release. She continued, it was implemented and chose to do it with “This helped us to look at resources and see how three probation districts and the maximum we to test it out with minimal additional resources. were looking at was 1,500 offenders. Now I can Part of our brief had been to gauge what additional say that we have approximately 24,498 resources would be needed when the offenders being offender managed by 916 implementation became national. offender managers in the north-west. So the whole of the north-west is now delivering its A third work stream looked at work with high-risk Community Orders through offender adult offenders. Here, we focussed on Liverpool management teams. prison and Risley (Category C) also asked to be

11 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 12

part of the focus. Risley, together with Cheshire offender supervisors in prison to have that probation area, were already looking at ways of information. These assessments are updated bringing north-west offenders back into the regularly. north-west for release from prison into their own area. This facilitated a link between probation One of the challenges has always been, ‘what is services, the community and prisons. meant by assessment?’. The variation has been enormous. An assessment in the community We did not start from scratch. We identified good focuses on risk of harm and imminence whereas practice and built on it. when the offender goes into custody the element of imminence has been taken away. 900 of the 2,357 young offenders have had a sentence plan that has been co-ordinated by their There is a notion of tiering. Research has shown offender manager in custody. So we have had 900 that if you put too much into the lowest offenders offender managers who have set up and supervised you actually heighten the risk. Low risk is tier one plans from the pre-sentence assessment through to and high risk is tier four. The art is to allocate the completion. What is encouraging is that of those appropriate amount of intervention to the assessed 900 we have had approximately 800 families risk. participating in the sentence plans.

We are about to start working with Styal prison Tier one would look at punishment. Tier two because we were conscious that women were not would be people for whom you identify a need. If within our original scope. Styal is the only women’s you can address that need with some sort of help, prison in the north-west and the women’s estate is say, with accommodation or employment or much more geographically dispersed. Therefore our perhaps getting treatment for a mental health issue aim of bringing offenders back into the north-west at the right time, the potential for re-offending may to be released into their own area is much more be able to be stemmed. difficult for women offenders. We are engaging with the National Women’s Team and have made links However, there are some people that no matter with a variety of women’s establishments. The how much punishment or help is provided they challenge is that it crosses regional boundaries continue to offend. Here a change in the offender’s therefore it crosses different ROMS. However we attitude or behaviour is required. So people in tier have only met positive responses once people three will have possibly an element of punishment, understand what it is we are trying to achieve. This possibly an element of help but definitely an has thrown up the issue of how best to get a element of change which would be in the form of complex message across and how best to think intervention programmes that the criminal justice about applying the model in practice. system already operates.

Our task was to implement the national offender Then there is the dangerous group (tier four). Here management model. This model is where a single as well as punishment, help and intervention there offender manager has responsibility to assess the is the element of control. risks and the needs of an individual offender. It focuses on the offender and puts the offender at With the tiering in place, resources can be the centre of the process rather than fitting the allocated more efficiently. It enables the most offender into what the organisations already have highly-skilled staff to be allocated to the offenders in place. The next step is to devise a sentence plan with the greatest risk. This is the purpose behind that responds to those risks and needs. It is using the tiering framework. the national offender assessment system, OASys, as it is called, which is basically the offender With resource allocation the split between assessment system. It is a comprehensive tool that management and intervention roles is being looked is very well received. Whilst there have been IT at by both services. Where there is a lack of glitches across the two services we do now have availability the ROM will be able to commission ‘connectivity’ with the result that assessments can services to fill the gaps. now go with the offender into prison for the

12 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 13

The acronym - ASPIRE - has been adopted in the one), the case administrator and a range of key model: workers responsible for delivering different interventions.The person who writes the sentence Assess, Sentence Plan, Implement the plan, plan now manages that plan throughout. Review the plan and Evaluate to see if the plan was effective. The Pathfinder has been able to test out whether it is appropriate to have specialist offender management The offender management model also focuses on teams. This has been possible particularly in large the four Cs: Continuity, Consistency, metropolitan areas such as Manchester. Commitment and Consolidation. Although the setting up of generic teams was An offender knows when you are just going difficult at the beginning, real benefits are now through the motions. On our initial walk through becoming evident. Performance has been analysed the system we found 32 duplications of requests and taking Bolton as one example over the past for the same information. It is obvious that if an twelve months there has been improved offender finds himself being asked for the same performance in some of the five performance information 32 times, then no one is listening. indicators and unchanged performance in others. In the prison now we have an offender manager This is particularly encouraging as in an area like unit where the offender manager comes in and co- Bolton which is a very complex office and is in a ordinates the sentence plan. It is an event. Families very high crime area. come in, different providers come in – all focussing The key to all this is how we have approached the on the individual. The practice in probation areas is staff who are delivering. There has been a ‘bottom not so inclusive. Both the offender managers and the offenders would like something similar to be up’ acceptance because of the visible benefits. One developed in the community. This needs work. probation officer of 29 years standing who was all set to give up because he had had enough is now We have built on best practice and harnessed a lot singing the praises of offender management. of what was already in place. We have identified At first the prison staff were very critical of the clear roles. The offender manager is the probation officer or the probation service officer in the probation staff because they never saw them. The community. The offender supervisor has been a probation staff were very critical of the prison staff prison officer but has also been a seconded because it was felt the prison staff ignored probation officer in some cases with high-risk everything done by the probation staff. Staff in the offenders. They take delegated authority from the two services are being brought together through offender manager whilst the offender is in custody. the Learning and Development Strategy. Through this strategy we are bringing together existing skills The message that is coming across is, because the and making the best use of what is already there. offender knows and can see his plan being effected, This is building respect one for the other. he is far more likely to comply. Many probation staff were not confident in going The model includes the role of a case into a prison and chairing a sentence plan review so administrator. The case administrator can log all the prison staff would do it for them thinking they the eligibility dates of offenders so that the were being helpful. Long term this was not helpful sequencing of interventions can be appropriate. If because the probation staff needed to develop an offender is due to be released in six weeks it is those skills. Both sets of staff are now beginning to no good referring them for a 22 week programme. understand the other’s working culture and trust is enhanced as a result in addition to the feeling of The case administrator will also diary in assessment working as a single team. reviews so that when an offender manager visits a prison, he/she can conduct, say, five or six reviews While all this sounds very good there are still on that day. The case administrator is also the challenges. Some of these challenges cannot be driver in the case of performance and is integral to solved or overcome by a pathfinder. An example of the team. This team consists of the offender one of these is IT – there are lots of different IT manager, the offender supervisor (where there is systems. There are five probation areas but they

13 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 14

cannot talk to each other because there are three The big piece of work of understanding the different IT systems in place. The introduction of population profile and matching the estate to that the National Offender Management Information profile has already begun. We hope it will lead to System (NOMIS) is going to be absolutely crucial to being able to reduce the risk level and reduce the the long-term success of NOMS. The staff who are security level because we will know, if offenders delivering services have contributed to its have to be moved, where they will be going. At the development. Those who are designing NOMIS moment this still seems to be an ad hoc process. have actually come and spoken to staff so that they understand the processes and can incorporate The categorisation within the Prison Service is a big them. The Pathfinder is operating with interim issue. It is about people escaping and committing arrangements at the moment. further offences once they escape. The tiering framework is much more about identifying levels of There are issues also around human resources with risk and need and deciding on the interventions and regards to defining roles and responsibilities. There the levels of restriction that need to be delivered. are industrial relations issues which will require negotiation. Staff seem happy to continue to deliver I will finish by talking a little about the research even with the current uncertainty of job evaluation which had three stages. schemes and other changes. This was conducted between November 2004 and The Prison Service is undertaking something called March 2005 and was action research and was about the Skills Elevator. Prison officer training has not feeding back very quickly to me as the programme changed for a number of years and it has been director. recognised that new and different skills now need to be promoted. This was conducted between April 2005 and April 2006 and was a process evaluation. Are the areas There is also the huge issue of the design of delivering in the way they say they are? Although NOMS. Once you start to deliver offender not yet published, the answer is that they are. We management you see why there is a need to look have 100% compliance. at organisational design, to look at a commissioning role, how do you access the right Next year we will be focussing on the outcome services based on the assessed need? The role of evaluation. We can demonstrate what is being the ROMS is not down to individual police delivered but does it make any difference to officers or prison governors or chief officers of reducing re-offending? probation boards. It is actually looking at the needs of the offenders. I have some information on 326 young offenders of whom 135 have completed their orders. Indications The other big issue has been around Estate. The from the five regions taken between June 2005 and Prison Service obviously has a population February 2006 are that the re-offending rate is 6%. management strategy. We were aware that this was Whilst this is only self-report indicative data there going to be a factor from the very beginning. We is consistency in the lower re-offending rate have invested in the north-west in video through this process. conferencing facilities so we will now go into the process of testing and developing them. The issue All the learning from the north-west can be applied is how we communicate so that mobility is not an nationally. All the five regions are quite different. issue but making a transition from one They cover Cumbria, Manchester, Cheshire, establishment and another is. Merseyside and Lancashire. There are seven prisons in the north-west directly delivering We have to consider how we use the offender management. establishments. Are we going to keep those serving short sentences in the local They include local prisons, training prisons, open establishments and those who are serving longer prisons, women’s prison, young offender institutions. sentences to those further away? Will this then We have had a good mix to test out the robustness enable to long-stay establishments to deliver of the offender management model. The results we more consistently? have had so far are very, very positive.”

14 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 15

23 May 2006: joint meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Learning and Skills and the All-Party Parliamentary Penal Affairs Group

Graham Stewart, chief executive, John Howard Society of Canada

Graham Stewart opened by thanking the group number of organisations started to take the name for the invitation to speak and also for taking an and later we came together to form a national interest in the correctional scene in Canada. society. It was not an organization that started at the top and worked its way down. He continued, “The John Howard Society in Canada is a network of organisations, primarily It is my job, aside from doing work with the service based. They arose out of the need to network of John Howard societies across the provide assistance to prisoners. The original John country, to try to build standards. It is also my Howard Society was created by the then chief of responsibility to encourage progressive criminal police in Toronto after he was visited by a justice policies and so I take the society’s views to prisoner who was released from the old Kingston the federal government. That’s what I would like penitentiary - old by our standards but probably to talk to you about today - what I have seen over new by your standards. He was released to the last 30 or more years of watching the federal Toronto in 1929, just at the beginning of the criminal justice scene in Canada. depression and was desperate to find work and In Canada the criminal code is exclusively federal make a safe transition to the community. In a last jurisdiction. Only the federal government has desperate bid he decided to visit the chief and authority to create a criminal law. It also handles somehow out of this meeting a transformation the imprisonment of all those who are sentenced took place. The chief came to the conclusion that for two years or more. Those serving less than the whole criminal justice system was a failure if two years are under provincial jurisdiction. we don’t do anything to help people leaving prison and he committed himself for the rest of his life to Virtually 80% of the population of Canada is that process. That is the story that was repeated within two hours drive of the US, so you can by different people - sometimes teachers imagine that we are under considerable influence sometimes clergy and even ex-offenders - in other from the US. At the same time we have a strong parts of the country who saw the need to create sense of independence and we worry a lot about an organisation to provide after-care for released being absorbed culturally or otherwise into the prisoners. US. One of the areas we can see this is with our criminal justice system and related policies. We took the name John Howard, as this was the name that stood out in our history, It was also a Twenty five years ago the US and Canada had time in Canada where it became popular to not incarceration rates that were almost the same; use a name for an organisation that would be seen about 130 per 100,000 for the US and about 120 as stigmatising the clients. So the organisation per 100,000 for Canada. Since then the US “Prisoners Aid Society” changed its name to “John incarceration rates have grown to 750 per 100,000 Howard”. Simultaneously across the country a and the incarceration rates in Canada has actually

15 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 16

declined to 108 per 100,000. That’s in spite of the have made a shred of difference to crime rates in fact that, with the exception of murder and gun Canada but it has reduced what was a very high crime, the crime rates in the US and Canada are incarceration rate for youth through a much more about the same. Indeed, based on international positive and enlightened mindset in which youths victimisation reports it’s about the same for all of are seen by the judiciary and the correctional us. Most European countries, Britain, Australia, professionals as people that have a future and etc., have victimisation rates that are astonishingly potential. That’s important in giving priority to alike with very little variation between them. finding ways to disengage them from crime.

So what we have been able to do in Canada is to We’ve also invested a considerable amount over manage a criminal justice system that seemed to the years in research with respect to prison and have the same impact on crime as the US at the prison programs and with what is referred to as fraction of the cost - not just in terms of the the ‘what works’ literature. I think that term is a economic cost, but in terms of the implications bit grandiose, because I don’t think we know that the US faces 2 million people in jail every “what works” in all cases, but we do know year and then hundreds of thousands being something about what works and we know what released from jail every year after having been in doesn’t work and that information is increasingly an environment which is hardly seen as anything driving the polices and the principles of the other than damaging and destructive - leaving operations of corrections. We have slowly people much less able to cope than before. developed respect for the notion that evidence should lead practice. Just as we would expect that The primary reason incarceration rates in Canada in medicine, we would expect that in corrections. have not expanded as in the US is because of Having said that, I would not want to leave you sentencing policy. The US adopted harsh mandatory sentencing guidelines and other with the impression that everything that is done is sentencing measures that were intended to according to that evidence rule, but it is beginning increase the prison population. They were to be recognised within the correctional system successful. A primary cause of the growth has that we should have evidence for what we do. been in drug offences where sentence length, by Canadian standards, seems to be breathtaking. As I think it was quite astonishing that Canada was well as the mandatory minimums there were such able to chart its own course, when we consider things as three strikes legislation leading to very that we are juxtaposed with the US with its long periods of incarceration. enormous power and influence. Regrettably, since our last election, things have taken a dramatic Canada on the other hand adopted sentencing turn for the worse. We have an excellent principles that gave clear priority to using prison example of how a criminal justice system could be only as a last resort. We do have people serving modest, recognising that most of the social very long prison terms, but the emphasis has been problems that we see in criminal justice are on using prison as a last resort. That seldom best dealt with in prison. interpretation has been upheld by the Supreme Court in reviewing sentencing policy and over the Our new government has brought in a whole of years the judiciary has been increasingly able and series of bills which are intended to dramatically willing to exercise very careful restraint in the use increase the prison population, even though our of imprisonment. crime rate has been consistently dropping for ten years. They are bringing in measures that will In the area of youth justice, in particular, we effectively undermine conditional sentencing. This replaced our youth justice legislation about three is one of the measures that substantially reduced years ago with new legislation that had the effect the use of imprisonment in Canada as it allowed of reducing our number of youth in custody by the judge to give a community sentence, in a case almost 50% in one year. It was a dramatic change where a period of up to two years imprisonment - even though we saw the potential for change we was warranted and the person was not being were still surprised to see the size of the effect. considered for probation but considered for jail So far there is no evidence that these changes and if the person did not present a risk. The

16 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 17

person could be put on very stringent but gradually murders by such gangs in Toronto in one year. reducing community based supervision -, usually Toronto still has one of lowest big city murder involving some electronic monitoring requiring rates in Canada - well fewer than 2 per 100,000. them to stay at home much of the time, with very The rate for Canada as a whole is about 2 per limited access to the community. 100000, the rate for some comparable US cities is 30 per 100,000 and in some cases it is close to 50 Conditional Sentences accounted for about 10% of per 100000. So it’s not really that Toronto is a prison-bound cases in Canada. In less than two murder capital, but for a few days it was seen that years after the provisions were enacted they made way and that was enough to shift history. It a very significant contribution to reduced shifted the election, and it shifted policies. incarceration as they were used by judges as they were intended - which surprised me amongst The election was also influenced by a scandal that others. Often such alternative measures end up the current government had become embroiled in being add-ons to probation and they don’t really about use of funds that had been set aside to fight affect the prison-bound group. But this measure did the separatist referendum. Some of the money had and largely because of how it worked it’s way been misused. This was a major political scandal in through the Supreme Court. Initially some judges Canada that helped bring the government down. made some orders that seemed strange and became a target publicly and are cited even today, The change brought in a government that put even though those certain circumstances haven’t being tough on crime as one of its major arisen again. platforms. It has decided to introduce legislation that would raise the age of consensual sexual In addition to restricting conditional sentences the activity from 14 to 16. The reason for this was to government has introduced a number of new provide some protection to young people from mandatory minimum sentences. Such measures are cyber predators. How it would do that was never an effective way to push up your prison population explained. if you are wondering how to do that. It’s such a strange measure because if takes the least The national drugs strategy in Canada was deserving of harsh punishment and gives them working towards decriminalising marijuana. The harsh punishment. Amongst those in any category measures that were being proposed didn’t really of offence it is the ones who have the most decriminalise but they did de-penalise it to some mitigating circumstances that are most affected. extent for a person who has small amounts of marijuana. Most Canadians do not support harsh We have introduced these mandatory minimum measures for drugs. Nevertheless, new measures sentences, largely initially in response to gun crimes. with mandatory minimums are being introduced, We had the unfortunate circumstance of the particularly around distribution - they will stop the shooting of a young girl in the Eaton shopping move towards decriminalisation and will introduce centre, which is one of the largest shopping centres new offences. in Canada in down town Toronto It occurred on Boxing Day when some black youths were involved They also decided to stamp out another problem in a gang fight over drugs. She was, unfortunately, - one which most people didn’t know about - in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although street racing. Street racing is just as it sounds. there had been a spate of shootings of this sort in People have automobile races and they use public streets to do it at night. It’s very dangerous and Toronto over the course of the previous year, most there have been some very terrible accidents, but involved black youths. Imagine the public outrage it’s also illegal, always has been, and there are about this young white girl having been shot. The some very serious penalties attached to dangerous lid blew off and within two days all the political driving and negligence. Nevertheless, it was parties were proposing long mandatory minimums something they picked up on. for gun crime. So we ended up with a consensus before the election even occurred that mandatory They are making other serious changes, such as minimum sentences would be the resolution. I making it much more difficult to get bail in some should point out that although there were 25 circumstances, much more difficult to get parole,

17 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 18

abolishing the measure to allow some people who otherwise been prepared to plea bargain and that are serving life sentences to apply for parole backs up in the courts and throughout the system. somewhat earlier than the 25 year minimum that otherwise applies. And they will, if they do what The provincial remand centres are already places they say they’re going to do, effectively abolish that are terribly overcrowded, to the point that what is called ‘statutory release’ in Canada. Up until judges are routinely giving two or three days credit 1969, your sentence was reduced by up to one off the sentence for the time spent there prior to third through remission. Remission was time off trial. And they’re doing this in some cases because your sentence for good behaviour. It had been in of the conditions that they see in these centres. place since the late 1800s. It was introduced as a reward for being a good prisoner. They found that These centres are not able to cope with the the warders giving pins and badges for good expected expansion in imprisonment. We are behaviour was not sufficient and they declared that going to have people who are already three in a the best reward for a prisoner was freedom and cell, sometimes five in a cell. We can’t even imagine they began to give remission. Later they how it’s going to be dealt with. And the tragedy is introduced parole and came to see that that that most of those who are under these conditions supervised gradual release was effective – when are those that would otherwise be subject to very people were released this way from prison they had short sentences. We have this situation already in a better chance of success. To deal with those who Canada, where people are effectively serving their had not been granted parole, because they were sentence before their trial, because of the credits considered high risk, and still provide supervision that I mentioned. It seems peculiar indeed to they removed the remission and make it into incarcerate people and have them serve their time supervision - very similar to, parole except for how before they have gone to trial. This can only be you earned it. made worse when we have this huge shift in imprisonment. It is also going to cause a huge shift The problem was that the public never understood in cost of imprisonment. the difference between Statutory Release and parole and very quickly it was thought of as During the election there was no mention of the “automatic parole” for the worst offenders. Well, costs and nothing was put forward as to how it that just doesn’t make sense, that you have would be funded. We know it takes seven years in automatic parole for the worst offenders but the Canada to build a prison and the impact on our best offenders have to earn parole. The politicians, I existing prisons will come much sooner. It is very think, quickly found they were never going to difficult to imagine the source for the billions of explain this satisfactorily to the media. Therefore, dollars that it would take to expand the system. So they started to see it as a problem. One of our much that is being done in terms of treatment, Solicitors General even called it “a loophole in the protection work, research and other areas that law”. This government is proposing to effectively Canada has worked very hard to develop for years abolish Statutory Release. In so doing the federal is really under threat. prison population would likely grow by 25% in little more than a year. It’s a breathtaking growth. When I don’t know as to what extent, our current you add to that mandatory minimums, restriction government, given that its so new, really on parole, other sentencing measures, we are understands the implications of what’s being bracing ourselves for a dramatic and sudden proposed, but I thought it would be useful to bring increase in prison population beyond anything we it to your attention - at least my perspective on have ever had to deal with before. what is happening to what was really a relatively successful model of criminal justice. We may be We will be putting our distinct prison infrastructure throwing it out the window overnight, and adopting in crisis. The place where it’s going to be felt first the very worst excesses of the American model. and, most dramatically, is in our remand centres We will become a country that will now be under which are under provincial control and provincially tremendous stress to try and cope with a criminal paid for. As soon as you introduce mandatory justice system, and correctional system in particular, minimums people will go to trial who would have which I believe will be growing out of control.

18 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 19

18 July 2006: the review of vulnerable women in the criminal justice system

Baroness Corston

Baroness Corston thanked Baroness Stern and Therefore, I decided to look at the range of introduced Jenny Hall from the Safer Custody vulnerabilities and see which combinations of Group in the Home Office. She told the meeting these might lead to a woman being in prison. I that she would briefly cover the background and would like to give some background and then a the terms of reference and would then turn to profile of women in prison now. the challenge that had to be faced. At the moment there are 4,400 women in prison She continued, “The background to this and there are 73,000 men in prison. There was an review was the spate of deaths in women’s 196% increase in female prison receptions on prisons, principally in Styal Prison in 2003. I think remand between 1992 and 2002 whilst male it had got to a pitch where ministers would come remands increased by 52%. From this you will see to work terrified that another woman in prison that the rate at which women are being taken into might have died. prison is galloping ahead.

All the women who died in Styal in 2003 died in Also in 2002 there were 12,650 women initially the first month of being in prison and there was a received into custody. 4,100 were sentenced and call for a public enquiry. Ministers asked Stephen 8,350 remanded. Their average stay was 42 days, Shaw, the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman to just long enough to lose their homes and their conduct an independent investigation into the children. sixth death and to consider any features common to all the deaths. As to the profile of women in prison: over 60% are single. This compares with 17% in the general The terms of reference of this review are focused population. 40% have not had any work in the on vulnerable women in the criminal justice previous 5 years. Only 39% have any qualifications system, call for a definition, call for an at all whereas 82% of the general population have examination of their pathways into, through and some sort of qualification. 10% of these women out of this system and to make recommendations. have significant problems with reading, writing or understanding general instructions. 34% are lone One of the things I decided was that I would not parents. define ‘vulnerable’ because I found that it could be used both as a label and an excuse. Previously the A survey undertaken by the chief inspector of term had been ‘poor copers’ and then prisons found that two thirds were mothers and ‘inadequates’. On admittance a certain number of had been living with their children prior to prison. boxes would be ticked and then the label of ‘poor A third have a child under 5 years but only 9% of coper’ or ‘inadequate’ would be on that file. All those children are being looked after by their ‘poor copers’ or ‘inadequates’ would be put fathers while the mother is in prison whereas 72% together; they got bullied by other prisoners and of the children of fathers in prison are looked they themselves adopted the label. after by the mother.

19 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 20

There is a huge issue of mental health. 40% of all self harm to try and make themselves clean or to women in prison sought help or treatment for let the badness out because they feel somehow mental health problems prior to imprisonment. This they must have been complicit in the abuse. is double the rate for men. Over 66% of women prisoners interviewed for a national survey were Self harm is much more prevalent in the assessed as having depression, anxiety and phobias. women’s estate. 55% of all incidents are by The comparable figure in the community is 20%. women prisoners although they comprise only About 50% of women prisoners have some sort of 5% of the prison population. Most staff personality disorder. Sectioning is frequently delayed working in prisons, which is essentially a male until a bed can be found. Therefore we are expecting environment, find themselves completely prison staff who are not trained in mental health overwhelmed by the degree of abuse. The problems to deal with these very disturbed women. effect on both staff and other prisoners can only Provision has improved but there is still a problem. be imagined. It is no wonder that many prisoners end up asking for sleeping pills because With reference to attempted suicides, 44% of of the noise and disruption of these self harming women on remand have admitted to attempting incidents. suicide at sometime in their lifetimes. The comparable figure for men is 27%. I, together with Jenny Hall, have set up a reference group including Juliet Lyon from the The biggest issue is drug misuse. 60 – 70% of all Prison Reform Trust. We meet monthly and are women received into custody require clinical consulting a large number of people and visiting a detoxification. This compares with 40 – 50% for lot of prisons. men. Many can be using up to 9 different types of substances simultaneously and consequently need There is a belief, which I respect, in the prison concurrent detox for alcohol, bensiodiazepines and system that we should treat people the same but opiates. Whilst there have been improvements there women and men are different and therefore to is still a lot of misunderstanding among prison staff treat them the same is not to treat them equally. about the management of detoxification. The war on Part of that is not understanding women’s lives drugs is not being won. We are just taking a lot of and what has occurred that leads to them being in prisoners. prison. Angela Cannings who was one of the women who was imprisoned on a false allegation Many women prisoners disclose previous abuse. that she killed two of her children said that in her Prison can often seem like an abusive environment:- experience most of the women in prison were being shut in a small space, footsteps outside the there because of a man. Examples are drugs, door at night, etc. There is also a huge correlation prostitution, ‘would you mind keeping this in your between sexual abuse and self harm. 41% of self house for a bit’ i.e. receiving or handling. It is harming women have been sexually abused. The extraordinary how often the trigger point was a figure for men is 18%. relationship with a man.

The scale and degree of self harm has to be seen to Women’s lives are defined by home and children. be believed. Those of you who have had experience Most present little risk to the public. Others have of prison situations may not be shocked but others described them as troubled rather than would find it unimaginable. There are women who troublesome. spend their whole lives looking out for things in prison with which they can hurt themselves and the I have looked at what the pressure points can be. ingenuity they use is extraordinary. All too often they are dismissed as attention seeking. This is to The first night in prison: one third of the suicides misunderstand that these women are trying to deal occur in the first week of being in prison. with who they think they are. Many of these Efforts are being made to make a woman’s first women had been the victims of paedophiles and they night feel safer.

20 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 21

Women are treated more harshly by sentencers - wishes. In her early life she had suffered terrible an example is the treatment of Myra Hindley as physical and sexual abuse from her step father and against Ian Brady. she said that all her life she had been able to blame someone else for her situation. Whenever Women try to mother from the inside: very she had been in prison she had been able to difficult to do. Men tend to shut down because identify someone whose fault it had been. But the children are generally being looked after. coming to the Asher Centre had made her take some personal responsibility. The consequence is that women are marginalised in a system designed for men. This would not work with everybody but I think it would work with a large number. After the BBC We went recently to the therapeutic community programme on Styall Prison I believe that there is at HMP Send and we were talking to a group of more sympathy for women in prison and I hope women who were in this first-ever therapeutic that that is something on which we can build a community in a women’s prison about why they more humane and appropriate system. This might were there. They explained how difficult it was to then apply to men in prison as well. deal with the issues that had got them there. One woman said she had sought help all her adult life I hope through this review we will be able to do but never got it and finally killed someone. When more with these women and help them to evolve she went to prison she was told by a prison for the benefit of them, their families, their officer (since retired) to get her head down, do children and their communities where, at the her sentence, forget about outside, forget about moment, they are often a nuisance before they her family and forget about her little girl. Her little have gone into prison.” girl was three. That is what is said to men, ‘Get your head down and do your time’.

This is not a very intelligent way to deal with a man but for a woman it is crazy. To suggest that a woman can shut off from a three year old for the next ten years is crass and it would be irresponsible to do so. We need to turn these women’s lives around. There are some great beacons of hope where a women-centred approach is taken, firstly for women on a path where they might end up in prison and secondly for women who have just come out of prison.

The government is spending £9 million on projects under what is called ‘Together Women’ in Yorkshire, Humberside and the North West to try and explore what this women-centred approach might mean. It seems to me that it might promote self esteem and inculcate a sense of responsibility.

I will close with another anecdote about a woman we met at the Asha Centre in Worcester. She was 41, had three children and all she had ever wanted was to live with her children. This had never been possible. One of them had been taken away from her and put forward for adoption against her

21 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 22

22 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 23

17 October 2006: the National Offender Management Service

Helen Edwards CBE chief executive, National Offender Management Service

Helen Edwards thanked Lord Corbett for his I know that most of you know the statistics as invitation to address the group, and for his well as or better than I do. But here are just introduction. some of them: prisoners are 13 times more likely to have been in care, 13 times more likely to She continued: “I’m very pleased to have have been unemployed, and 10 times more likely been given this opportunity to be here, and to to have truanted. Some 80% have skills at or explain what we’re trying to achieve, because, as below the level of an 11 year old. And it’s still the you said, I don’t think we’ve got off to the best of case that when they leave prison, a large starts. I do think there’s a story to be told but I proportion still have no proper address to go to. don’t think it has been told. So, there are big social exclusion, and big We have got two objectives: to reduce offending resettlement challenges. And my calculation is and to protect the public. Both on the face of it that, in terms of what will be needed resource- very straightforward: both are very easy to say, wise, at least 50% will have to come from sources and both are much harder to achieve. In the outside the criminal justice system. So how we hinterland of NOMS, as you know, was the Carter can get other parts of government, other report, and before that the Social Exclusion Unit organisations, to work with us is very important. report. They were looking at very similar issues with a strong focus on reducing re-offending, a People often say that our target of reducing re- strong focus on resettlement, and concerns about offending by the end of the decade is not very the disjointed nature of the system. There were ambitious. But actually it’s hugely ambitious. concerns that we weren’t managing to do more, Because by the time offenders get into the adult both to manage people through the criminal criminal justice system, their behaviours are often justice system, and to resettle them afterwards. very entrenched and they can be hard to change.

And as you know there were three planks to the And despite all the improvements there have been Carter report: the first was a new system of to the system in recent years, and there have offender management, the second was about been a lot, and despite a big increased investment rebalancing sentencing, and the third was about in probation – resources have increased by about introducing commissioning and contestability into one third since 2001 – we’re still not yet seeing the system. The reports between them drew the impact on reducing re-offending. attention to what needed to be done within the criminal justice system and also outside it, in Rates of re-offending remain stubbornly high: relation to health, education, employment and Almost 60% of adults and a higher proportion of housing. young offenders are reconvicted within two years.

23 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 24

Admittedly, our current measure is possibly not problems are and what needs to happen. We’re the best: and it’s one that I want to improve. It’s a joining up OASYS across prison and probation and very lagging measure, it looks at what happened we want to make sure that other people who two years before. And it is very absolute – we are deliver services within our system such as being judged on whether people who were voluntary and private sector organisations have sometimes committing a lot of offences before, access to it in due course. desist completely for a period of two years. So there are things about the measure we need to We’re building a new case management system improve but nevertheless on the face of it we’re called C-NOMIS – an electronic case management not doing very well at all. system. At present prisoners can start a course in one place, they get moved, no-one knows what When we look at the statistics, over half of crime they’ve done or how far they’ve got, they get that is committed is committed by those who assessments repeated, and they have to start have already been through the criminal justice courses again. This is a new system by which the system. Improvements and changes have been offender can be managed and tracked right through made, lots of processes have been speeded up, the system. It’s an electronic case management enforcement has been tightened up, we are record. I’ve seen it working, and it is impressive. processing many people through our prisons and There are some things it doesn’t do well enough through the system more efficiently than before. yet, but it’s potentially a very powerful tool, and But what we’re not yet doing is getting enough of there’s a training programme rolling out across the them to a position where they’re not committing country to support its introduction. further offences. Carter also recommended commissioning. Not Our view is that we need to do much more, we everyone is a fan of commissioning, but I think it need to get better results out of the system, and does something quite interesting. It allows us to we need to ensure that public money is being start from the basis of what we need to reduce spent as well as it can. offending, rather than what we’re currently getting. Now what we need might be what we’re So we have a significant package of reform and already getting, but it might not. there are a number of key elements. I just want to run through these. The first is offender So the regional offender managers, who are the management. It came from Carter, and what it commissioners in the system, will each year does is take us beyond managing services to produce a plan about what is needed in that managing the offender: it is about managing region in terms of work with offenders. They will offenders through the system, across custodial and need to consult lots of people through their community boundaries with the aim of reducing offending. It’s looking at the system through the regional reducing re-offending boards – and not eyes of the offender. What will it take to get this just people who work in the criminal justice person to stop committing offences? What system but more widely. And they will also have interventions are needed, and in what order and to consult locally too: There’s so much you can what support will it take? It is about making sure do at the regional level, but you do need to that courts get the information they need to pass consult locally. And we are looking carefully at the right sentences, that there’s a proper sentence how to get the local arrangements right. plan and that it gets delivered. The offender manager is at the heart of this system But what we don’t want to do is to put more machinery on the ground, more partnerships at a But there are some other things we need if we are local level, because everybody is telling us that to get the best out of offender management. We there are too many already. So a key question for do need good assessment and case management, us is whether we can work with crime and and so we are improving OASYS, which is the tool disorder reduction partnerships, whether they can that is used to assess what is required with a share the responsibility? Can we also get local particular offender so that it’s clear what the criminal justice boards to take a closer interest?

24 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 25

So, we are introducing a system based on How far would one want to go with this? Again I commissioning. We’re introducing it gradually: you think it’s a matter for debate. It seems to me can’t do these things over night. It would not be inconceivable that you will not continue to have a sensible to, especially when we’re working with strong probation service at the heart of the systems under so much pressure. system. Speaking for myself, I see them as being the offender managers. I think courts will expect We do need better partnerships: There’s been a probation officers to put information to them, and lot of debate about whether commissioning will will expect probation officers to be the people fragment the system. That’s the last thing we’d who supervise offenders and certainly the want to do. Much depends on how you do dangerous and the high risk. But do they have to commissioning, you can commission for do everything? Do you have to have a trained and partnerships, because you can say you expect skilled probation officer to deliver unpaid work? people to work together. You can also Or is a third sector organisation arguably better commission to promote diversity and equality: placed to do that? commissioning can be a very powerful lever for change. You can say to people: ‘this is what we I happen to believe that third sector organisations expect to see you doing.’ are very well placed to deliver some things. They are specialist organisations, niche providers: very But also, because as I said earlier so much of what heavily committed to what they do, they bring a is required to reduce re-offending is delivered by very strong value-added element. And if you look other people, we need wider partnerships and at the position with probation boards, the role alliances with them too: with Learning and Skills that third sector organisations played in recent Councils, Primary Care Trusts, with the health years has gone down. There was a target that 7% sector more generally, with employers, with local of probation services should be delivered by third government and others – with voluntary and faith sector organisations. Now that’s running at organisations. I think part of the trick with all of something like 2- 2.5%. Probation will say, and this this is to get people to work together and play to is right, that certain things they used to do are strengths. There are some things that some now being delivered through the Learning and players are better placed to do than others. Skills Councils and others - and that’s a fair point. But if you look at Northern Ireland for example, I Now if you are to get real value out of understand that something like 25% of services commissioning you do need some choice: how are delivered by third sector organisations. much, is a matter for debate. This brings me to the part of this whole reform programme that is The sector similarly is well placed to deliver the most contentious: contestability. Contestability certain things: For example, we currently look to means lots of different things. To me it means: the private sector to deliver things like electronic how do you bring challenge into the system so tagging, escort services, property and facilities that you can be sure that the service you are management and logistics as well as prisons getting is as good as it can be? So it’s just as much themselves. A lot of this is about playing to about challenge as it is about markets. different strengths.

At the moment the duty to provide probation What it does mean is that having monopoly services rests with probation boards. With providers doesn’t really work. We are also prisons, the duty to provide services rests with reforming our structures. People think that the Secretary of State. So the proposal is that the NOMS is about joining up prison and probation: duty for probation should mirror that on the it’s not. We do want to work across the prison side and the duty should move to the boundaries of custody and community. We don’t Secretary of State. So that the Secretary of State want that huge division. But if you think about it, does have the option of saying that others, they are very different services. Prisons are a alongside probation, can deliver the services which central agency of government: Her Majesty’s currently probation delivers. Prison Service, managed from the centre. All the

25 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 26

staff are civil servants. Probation has a very So that’s what we’re trying to achieve. We are different tradition. Developed in local areas with a rolling out elements of the reform package strong local tradition and local boards who already: we are rolling out offender management. employ most of the staff. The chiefs point in two Our IT changes are well on the way and C- directions at once: they point to the centre but NOMIS starts to go live from December this year. they work in local services to local boards. Our We have our commissioners in place, we have had proposal for probation trusts points to the local the first round of service level agreements this links of probation. It will give them much more year. Next year we’ll do more and gradually we’ll autonomy and less interference from the centre. move to a system which is more based on a commissioner-provider basis. The final bit in our package, and this is important in terms of everything else we are trying to We are putting a lot of emphasis on performance, achieve, is work with sentencers. We need to do looking at how we can get better performance more and in particular we’ve not yet got the out of the system, and better measures of balance right between custody, community performance. Many of our targets are not sentences and fines. The 2003 Act was attempting sophisticated enough. For example our target on to strike a balance, and we reflected that in our public protection is about doing assessments in five year strategy, published earlier this year: prison five days. Well that’s important, but it’s not for the dangerous, violent, serious offenders and enough. So we are working on how can we get community sentences and fines for the rest. We better, more comprehensive performance are getting longer sentences, we are certainly assessments. imprisoning dangerous and violent offenders for longer. But we are still seeing fines going down. And while all this is going on we’re reforming There have been five years now of stricter fine ourselves. We are radically restructuring NOMS enforcement. People said the use of the fine wasn’t headquarters with the commitment that it will be credible, because it wasn’t enforced. Well at least half its size by 2010, and reduced by a enforcement has improved but its use is still going third by 2008. So there’s a lot of work we are down. There’s a debate to be had about that. Who taking forward and that includes our planning for are fines intended for? And if sentencers don’t feel legislation. able to use them, why is that?

Our community sentences do not seem to be being used so far as we can tell for people on the threshold of custody. We still have a lot of people going into prison for short term sentences often related to drug misuse. And all the evidence is that prison is least successful for those short term prisoners who then recycle through our system. In fact if anything the danger is we make them worse. So we have got a lot to do in terms of rebalancing the system, because whenever our prisons are overcrowded, and whenever we’ve got inflation in the system which means prisons are being used where community sentences might be better, and community sentences where fines might be better, and people being brought into the court system where arguably they could be dealt with outside, then it will be difficult for us to see the improvements in reducing re-offending, that we want.

26 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 27

5 December 2006: mental health in prison

Dr David James, consultant forensic psychiatrist in the North London Forensic Service and academic secretary of the Forensic Faculty of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Dr John O’Grady, consultant forensic psychiatrist and chair, Forensic Faculty of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Janice Webb, mother of a mentally ill offender who committed suicide

Dr O’Grady thanked Lord Ramsbotham for his Looking at things like unemployment, that’s about introduction and mentioned that he would be 5%-7% in the general population currently, but speaking to the printout of slides, which most 65-67%, before imprisonment, in the prison members of the meeting had before them. population. Homelessness (on a fairly wide definition) runs at about 1% in the general He continued: “We must start with first population, but about 30% in the remand principles, and the first is that of equivalence, which population in particular. is uncontested: that those in prison are entitled to equal rights of access and standards of health care Add to that mental disorder and it’s overwhelming. as the rest of the population. I don’t think we need About 5% of people in the general population have say any more about that: it’s generally accepted in two or more mental disorders – but this rises to Britain. 70% or so in the prison population. So when you start looking at this group they’re a multiply Now when you start looking at the mentally handicapped group of people, with handicaps across disordered in prison you have to put them in all domains: mental health, literacy, ability to find context. And when you start looking at the employment, ability to find loving partners, a home comparisons between the general population and to live in, and friends. Most also misuse drugs and the prison population, they are a multiply alcohol to a very high level which adds to their handicapped group, across all domains. Mental problems. health is only one domain, and it may not even be the most important one. When you start Our ability to try and work with this group of looking at things like being taken into care, in the people – and I have spent a large proportion of my general population it’s about 2%, but in the professional career actually inside prisons working prison population it’s 27%. If you start looking at with people, so I speak from experience – is people being excluded from school, that runs at bedevilled by two images. The first is the wicked about 2% of the general population but for male and dangerous offender who terrorises the local sentenced prisoners it’s almost 50%, for female population, who is a prolific offender or a sexual or prisoners it’s about 33%. When you start looking violent offender, and who deserves imprisonment, at numeracy and literacy below the age of 11, containment, and incapacitation. The other image that runs at about 20% or so of the general we have of people in prison is that of the population but about 65% of the prison vulnerable, distressed, multiply handicapped person population. If you look at IQ it’s skewed towards who self harms and has major mental health the lower end of the intellectual spectrum. problems.

27 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 28

I’m sure you know they are one and the same or healthcare or anything else. And then you have person. You cannot divide the prison population first world countries, and I work in one of them, into sheep and goats in a very easy way. The kind of the medium secure units, where you really do get people in society that most wish to have excluded state of the art treatment, which is about as good are those with the highest level of psychiatric as you will get probably anywhere in the world at morbidity. And that is something we have to live the moment. with and work with. Now there are different ways we could do that. The first and most obvious is to Now it’s formidably difficult to get a visa to move have proper diversion schemes at the very start of from the third world country to the first world the process that allow you to stop people getting country in health. Section 48 and 49 of the Mental into the system. Once you get into the machinery of Health Act are the visas which allow you to get in. criminal justice, getting out the other side is But most people in prison don’t bother even formidably difficult, especially if you are mentally applying for them because it’s so difficult to disordered. Now why haven’t people thought of achieve. You can also get permanent residence that? It’s such an obvious idea. Well they have, but through section 37 of the Mental Health Act but they have failed to implement it and David’s going to again that is for a small number of people. So what speak about that, so I’ll shut up about it now. you’re left with is a small group of people getting state of the art treatment in our secure services, The second way that people have approached this is and an impoverished third world country, that is the transfer from prison to the health system of prisons, with very little service available and very mentally disordered offenders, particularly as in- poorly resourced. patients. And that is one of the jewels in the crown of English legislation. We have section 37 (of the Now I’m among politicians so you won’t be Mental Health Act) in this country which allows surprised to hear that the third way is the way one people to have a mental health disposal at the point has to look at it. I commend to you chapter 6 of of sentencing. Now people don’t realise that that is the Social Exclusion Action Plan published in 2006. quite unique in the world. There aren’t many It gets it absolutely spot on in relation to mentally jurisdictions with such an enlightened and liberal disordered offenders. What it talks about is the approach to criminality and mental health. We do super-excluded: that group in our society that have the ability to transfer people easily and without prison acts like a sump to drain off, and put into difficulty from prison to hospital. But if you look our institutions. Their characteristics are, that any over the last decade, in spite of an expansion in the one of their disorders, their mental health, their secure units, in spite of investment and despite drugs, their education, their intellectual abilities are everything else, the number of people transferred sub-threshold. In other words they don’t meet the from prison to hospital has hardly changed. There is criteria for admission to those services. So with very little variation over that time. mental health, for example, the majority of people in prison will have disorders that most community Just a few statistics and figures: there are c 78,000 mental health teams will exclude. They don’t take people in prison, annual receptions are c 90,000 and them on. For drug and alcohol services, most are the annual turnover is c 160,000. Of the people not dependent on opiates, and therefore don’t get diverted from prison to health in 2004, prison into services that easily. They are poly-drug, transfers were 831. Now that is hardly denting the chaotic drug users. They’re all sub threshold. It’s mentally ill and disordered portion of the prison only when you look at the person as a complete population. The expenditure on the secure services entity that you suddenly see how handicapped they part – the in-patients side of our business, and that are – right across all the domains. includes people sent to us on section 37 - is something like £500m. The amount put into prisons, And I think the Social Exclusion Action Plan gets it spent on in-reach, is something like £25m. Now right when it says that the approach to that should there’s obviously a problem here about how we be a proper multi-agency one: across criminal approach the allocation of resources. The way I look justice, health, social services, housing, education – at it, in imagery, is to think of prisons as a third everything. And MAPPA is a good model for that, world country: an impoverished country with very because it has worked pretty well for that group few facilities, with very little ability to get education, who are seriously violent in our society. And we

28 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 29

have to get away from the two images: evil and These are both locations through which people into the criminal justice system or vulnerable and charged with criminal offences will pass. We know into the health system. We have to deal with the from work undertaken in London that at least 1.5% real people, who are actually committing serious of those passing through police custody suites are criminal offences, and who have multiple handicaps, suffering from these forms of serious mental and work to a MAPPA type approach to meeting disorder. We also know that those with such their sub threshold needs. None of our agencies mental disorder who have committed relatively can meet their needs by themselves. minor offences are generally released without the opportunity being taken to place them in contact And that means too that we have to overturn with health or social services. Indeed the some of our time honoured principles. We have to impression is gained from the literature that they get mental health services actually in prisons, are released until such time as they offend working with the people who are in there, and sufficiently seriously to cross the barrier that is working in conjunction with probation, with prison necessary in order to achieve some form of access officers and with the whole system. A third of the to health care. prison population will by 2010 be on life sentences for public protection. Now that means that if we There are in the community resources which are going to be equitable and do them justice, then should be available to police at police stations and their risk is associated with some degree of mental help that could be accessed by the mentally disorder. So mental health must be integrated into disordered passing through those locations. There the risk management systems for those people are community mental health teams, there are homeless mental health teams, assertive outreach society considers to be too dangerous to allow out teams, drug and alcohol teams, there is a host of except under very special conditions. So we have a possible places to which people could be referred. massive agenda here. But the custody sergeant in the custody suite has So there, I think, is prison health in seven minutes, access only to two of them: the police surgeon, or which is a record even for me”. forensic medical examiner, who comes to the police station on an item of service basis, and looks only at two things; fitness to be detained and Lord Ramsbotham thanked Dr O’Grady for his fitness to be interviewed. Then there is the presentation, and introduced the next speaker, Dr approved social worker who can be called to the David James, consultant forensic psychiatrist in police station in order to institute an assessment the North London Forensic Service and Academic under the Mental Health Act (MHA). These are Secretary of the Forensic Faculty of the Royal busy people, and the number of hours that it takes College of Psychiatrists, who would focus before such a person is able to attend the custody specifically on diversion. suite at the police station is a disincentive to their Dr James began by explaining that his being called. focus was on the seriously mentally ill, “those with However, in Westminster initially, and then in psychotic disorders characterised by delusions and other parts of London, we instituted an hallucinations, who are among the most ill and intervention. And this intervention has also been most damaged to enter our criminal justice system. undertaken in various other areas. We took The main point that I wish to make is that it is community forensic psychiatric nurses and placed possible to divert such people out of the criminal them on call to custody suites at police stations justice system before they reach the anonymous and when the police were worried about chaos of the prison system. And it is possible to do someone’s mental health, this person was called this at two locations: the police station and the in, took a history, did a report, and immediately magistrates’ court. Over the last 15 years there accessed the relevant services. In our first year in have been new initiatives at both these locations Westminster, a third of the people referred were which have been properly audited subject to Home transferred under the MHA from the police station Office investigation and there have been papers to local psychiatric hospitals. published in specialist scientific journals which demonstrate their efficacy. I will deal with the If I were allowed to use PowerPoint I would show police station first and then the magistrates’ court. two slides which visualised it. There is the custody

29 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 30

sergeant, surrounded by a whole series of all the responsible for 12% of the section 37 admissions options available in the community, but he only has in England and Wales in one year and indeed 6% access to the two I mentioned. You place the CPN of the sec 48 transfers of remand prisoners to in the middle of that and suddenly, through him or hospital for treatment, merely though this her, the police have access to all the services. This concentrated mechanism. works. It’s liked by the psychiatrists and greatly liked by the police. Now there were supposed to be 150 of these arrangements around the country, they were Next the magistrates’ court: a magistrates’ court is encouraged under the National Service Framework a point where people are funnelled and for Mental Health, and after the HO funding ran concentrated from police stations. Normally at a out, local purchasers were encouraged to adopt magistrates’ court if a psychiatric opinion is these practices as a standard part of their mental required on somebody who is detained they are health provision. Unfortunately reports by Nacro sent to a remand prison, often distant from the looking at the efficacy of these schemes across the area in which their local psychiatric service is country show that over the past few years the located. It is a complicated process to identify the number has declined, the resources put into them correct psychiatrist to come and see them in have declined, and the picture is one of a system prison and the psychiatrist who gets there will have that is declining rather than expanding. access to little information about the person’s background, unless he brings it himself, and indeed Now I first came and talked to this group, I was about the offence. And it can take a matter of reminded, 10 years ago about these matters. And weeks to procure a report and a further matter of I’m disappointed that in the interim nothing much weeks until the person goes back to court. And has happened to improve things. However they indeed if a person is placed on an order to go to remain a cost effective and mechanically very hospital it may takes weeks again until someone effective way of increasing identification of mental has a bed at the hospital to which they can be illness and avoiding people being remanded into custody in the first place. They should become a transferred. How much simpler, then, to put a standard part of ordinary psychiatric provision. But psychiatric team in the cells at the magistrates’ we now find that PCTs see them as the soft court in order to short circuit the entire process, option: somewhere to make cuts. So unfortunately to collect information, interview people, prepare a unless there is encouragement from the centre report for the court and arrange transfer, under these effective mechanisms will be on the wane”. the MHA forensic provisions, of people to beds in local hospitals on the very day that they were Lord Ramsbotham thanked Dr James for his sentenced. presentation. He well remembered that, when Chief Inspector of Prisons, he had tried to find out Now these schemes were initially encouraged how many diversion schemes were in operation under a piloting arrangement by the Home Office and he couldn’t get the information from the NHS, which lasted a few years and a number of results or from the courts, or from the police. Eventually from these were published. As early as 1991, he got it from the then National Schizophrenia our paper in the British Medical Journal Foundation, who were the only people who were demonstrated that such schemes increased the gathering information – not wholly complete but at recognition of mental illness at the magistrates’ least they were making an attempt. court by 400%. They (this has been a finding from other groups) speeded up the admission to Lord Ramsbotham then introduced the third hospital in terms of days, from arrest to speaker, Janice Webb, mother of a mentally ill admission, by a factor of seven. Other research prisoner who had committed suicide in prison, and has shown that such schemes can deal with said how much her attendance was appreciated. serious cases as well as minor cases and we had a He recalled that, when preparing a report called series of homicides that we diverted into hospital Suicide is Everyone’s Concern, he had spent the day beds within days of the homicides occurring with ten families who had gone through this through such mechanisms. One of our schemes experience. It was a day he would never forget. was so powerful that I personally found myself

30 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 31

Janice Webb began: “My son lies under a There were numerous attempts at rehabilitation grave stone. He died by suicide in HMP and care in the community but the options Manchester, suffocated by a plastic bag while alone available for the care of the mentally ill with an in a segregation unit. He was 33 years old. addiction are woefully lacking. Vulnerable mentally ill people are often without sufficient support. 13 years before his death in Manchester Prison Their disordered and chaotic thinking often results Richard had graduated from Manchester University in arrest. I will describe to you how Richard was with a first class degree in physics. Sadly at the age arrested. of 22 while studying for a PhD in astrophysics he suffered a nervous breakdown. It began with Richard lived in Newcastle – there he was well serious suicide attempts – including setting himself known to the mental health services. Any incident on fire, resulting in serious burns and six weeks of would be dealt with by his care team and would treatment and skin grafts in a burns unit. usually result in hospital admission. A few months Schizophrenia was diagnosed soon after this. before his arrest he met and began visiting a girlfriend at her Manchester home. During this From this time on, Richard was seriously disabled time he was drinking excessively and smoking by his mental illness. He spent the next 10 years in cannabis. While in Manchester he purchased a and out of psychiatric wards in Newcastle – replica Beretta airpistol. He was fascinated by guns sectioned for months and years at a time. The and the idea of suicide by shooting. He threatened suicide attempts continued and he became to shoot himself during a phone conversation with increasingly dependent on alcohol as a means of his sister. She called the police as she was in fear self medicating. Alcoholism and mental illness are a for his safety. My daughter explained that her common dual diagnosis. brother was mentally ill and threatening suicide. She asked the police to remove the gun safely from Mental illness is no respecter of background or him and to keep her informed of the outcome. intelligence. Richard’s background was middle They did not - and we thought he would be safe in class. He was a bright, able, highly educated young a psychiatric unit. Richard had no history of man. How did a highly intelligent young person violence and had only ever harmed himself. with a long and well documented history of serious mental illness end his days in prison? Our society Five days later we discovered that Richard had is failing many vulnerable mentally ill people who resisted arrest and in a struggle the gun was cannot cope with living alone. The long term discharged twice. Richard was taken to a police mental hospitals or asylums (here we should not station and from there to HMP Manchester. lose sight of the fact that ‘asylum’ means ‘place of Following his arrest there appear to have been no safety’) were closed following the introduction of systems in place to give Richard appropriate care. modern anti psychotic drugs. The care provided His psychiatric history in Newcastle was not by the asylums has not been adequately replaced. investigated – despite the information provided by There is no longer a place of safety for people like his sister. There were serious breakdowns in my son. communications between Manchester and Newcastle. He was not given a list of mental health When he was very ill Richard was an inpatient and specialist solicitors. The criminal justice system safely cared for in a hospital environment. With was unable to recognise his mental disorder and to specialist care and modern drug treatment he respond to it appropriately. would reach a stage when he was considered ready to leave the acute ward. He would then be Government policy is to promote the diversion of discharged home with a written care plan in place. mentally ill offenders from the criminal justice In reality the care plan provided him with a one system to health or social services at the earliest hour visit per day from a health care worker. He opportunity. This diversion scheme was not in lived alone in a council flat. He was often anxious, place at the Manchester court . For whatever lacking in motivation, with disrupted sleep patterns reason: lack of hospital beds, poorly informed and a serious drink habit. Social isolation and the lawyers, pressure on the system, communication effects of stigma and fear by his local community failures, poorly trained judges, lack of funding – increased his fragile mental state. Richard was entirely failed by this “policy”.

31 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 32

Once in the prison system – there was nothing we “You must understand that one of my beliefs, at a as a family could do for Richard. I wrote letters to deep level, is that the world is a dangerous and the Prime Minister, Home Secretary, Secretary of malevolent place – this is common with my illness. State for Health and to the MPs in Manchester and As a result, I do assume that everyone is out to get Newcastle. I received almost identical replies me - hence the olanzapine (the drug Richard is from each – describing how diversion schemes treated with) - and it does not help when were in place to “ensure that people with mental everyone is. I do not want to go to another jail, health problems do not go to prison except Grendon Underwood where I am supposed inappropriately” and explaining the policy to to go, and I definitely do want to stay on Rule 45, provide mental health services within prisons. as I am vulnerable because of my mental illness.

Visiting was difficult; applications have to be made You can see that I am in a terrible situation, in advance, and are restricted to one hour only. segregated, hated by the entire jail it seems and We were unable to telephone him – prisoners are not knowing what will happen next. Someone not allowed incoming calls. The period of remand could come to my door at any time and tell me I was far too long - from October through to May. am off to some alien jail, unwanted by this The judge in the final hearing either through establishment, only to find myself clawing out ignorance or prejudice was unable to see beyond some kind of existence amongst a new set of the replica firearm. Richard was sentenced to 5 threatening criminals. I hate this kind of life and I years. have considered actual suicide. I am by myself and the cell is cold. Richard did not cope well with prison. Care for the mentally ill should be therapeutic and in The rumour that I am a racist may well travel surroundings conducive to peace and recovery – from jail to jail and I do fear for my life. I don’t not the barred, noisy, stressful and gardenless want to be battered or slashed, and I don’t see prison. Those of you who have visited prisons will what I have done to deserve all this. My crime be aware of how unpleasant and entirely unsuitable was a few seconds of behaviour while intoxicated. a place they are for the mentally ill. The whole penal system is geared towards Prisons spend more than half their health budget breaking people down, and segregation is an extra on mental health care. They have health care ordeal. On top of that there is no TV or radio” units, employ psychiatric nurses and have in-reach teams – who do their best, but prison can never The following day he took his own life be an appropriate place for the mentally ill. His treatment was drug based and not therapeutic. Things progress grindingly slowly. Richard was on remand for 10 months before sentencing. More Richard was locked up for up to 15 hours a day than two years on we still have no date for the and had only 2 hours of association with other inquest. I am not eligible for legal aid and I will prisoners per day. He was bullied and treated with appeal against this. In the case of deaths while in suspicion by most of his fellow prisoners – partly care of the Government, legal aid should be because of his illness and partly through the fact he just did not “fit”. Middle class graduates are not publicly funded, not means tested. It seems the norm in Manchester Prison. Prior to his death entirely improper that bereaved families should be Richard was placed in the segregation unit for his denied legal representation at inquests through own safety after a rumour spread among the lack of funding. prisoners that he was a racist. I will read an My son was not a criminal. He was in prison extract from a letter written the day before he because there was no alternative place for him to died: be.”

32 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 33

23 January 2007: current pressures on magistrates’ courts

Cindy Barnett, chairman, Magistrates’ Association

Cindy Barnett thanked Lord Corbett for his but because there seems to be a lack of cohesion introduction. and therefore effectiveness in the various initiatives. She began: “Thank you for giving me the invitation to speak to this group tonight. The date Lack of resources is the cause of many of these was arranged some time ago, and it is chance that frustrations. It is not our role to employ staff, the meeting coincides with publicity today about administer the budgets or maintain court buildings, our voicing quite a number of magistrates’ but we can see the effect of financial constraints concerns about pressures on our courts. I hope on the delivery of justice in our courts, and that is it is a useful chance and one that will help precisely and exactly our role. Of course we are understanding of the issues I am going to set out. aware that there are financial constraints in many areas at present, not just the courts, and that I would like to begin on a positive note. There unlimited funding is not realistic, but our prime are currently 30,000 magistrates in England and concern is that we have reached a stage where Wales, a very welcome increase in numbers after money may come before the interests of justice a worrying drop in the last few years. We are all and we find that wholly unacceptable. committed to our role; we find the work worthwhile and deeply interesting; and we still We value local justice, and are very worried about deal - from beginning to end - with over 95% of all anything that might dilute that. There are criminal cases which range from motoring matters problems with the court estate (not just to fraud, theft and violence. In the family sphere magistrates’ courts, but all the buildings now we have jurisdiction in both private and public law administered by Her Majesty’s Courts Service, matters. The workload in this area is lower than HMCS) as there is simply not enough money to it used to be but there is heavy pressure to move carry out all necessary maintenance. There are work back into our courts and we are looking rats in court buildings – there are leaking roofs – forward to this with great enthusiasm. other health and safety problems that can affect everyone who has to come to court. The None of us perform this role full-time. We are comprehensive spending review (CSR) settlement ordinary people, members of the community with recently announced contains money to “make a work and family commitments, but the start on reducing the backlog in routine commitment both to sitting in court and maintenance of our buildings” which is hardly undergoing training and appraisal is freely encouraging, as well as starting on “some” new undertaken. However, the avalanche of change projects. over the last few years, both in legislation and administrative matters, has increased the burden If lack of maintenance leads to court closure, then and has led to a great deal of frustration. Not another part of the country will lack a local because we are against change and certainly not courthouse. The government has plans for because we are against moves to improve things, ‘courts on the move’ (courts sitting in temporary

33 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 34

accommodation) but it is ironic when you strain which can mean delays in reports being consider that 148 courthouses have been closed prepared. So in a stream of examples, there are since 1995. And the justification for this is taking delays and frustrations that we face every time we courts back into communities! That is something sit in court. that magistrates, local people, find irritating and annoying. All this is said against a background of criticism of magistrates’ courts for being slow, which again is In order to deliver justice we need to have very hard for magistrates to take. We have buildings in which we can sit in court, and we absolutely no interest in wasting time (ours or need administrative support from court staff and anyone else’s) and every desire to move matters legal support from our legal advisers. There is on. This is also at a time when there are highly great unhappiness at present amongst the staff successful pilot projects going on, as part of the over pay which has led to a work to rule and government’s CJSSS programme (Criminal Justice: some strike action and we see no resolution in Simple, Speedy, Summary) to speed up the sight. This has a variety of effects:- courts every movement of cases through the courts, which we day finish earlier than they might otherwise have fully support and wish to be wholly successful. done, Saturday and Bank Holiday courts cannot These rely on preparation being done at an early run as they usually do. People’s cases are delayed stage so that there is sufficient information before or put off with enormous strain caused to the court at the first hearing for a plea to be defendants, victims, witnesses. taken, and – if that plea is not guilty – a trial date to be set immediately with no need for any extra There are other effects too. Court buildings are hearings. All the difficulties outlined above pose a used for meetings and training events and it is threat to this project, and in addition there are important that these can be offered in the the recent changes to legal aid which have had a evenings and at weekends as magistrates have negative effect on the gains being made. The other commitments. This is no longer possible in reintroduction of means testing in the magistrates’ many areas of the country as the money is not courts has run into difficulty and markedly available to pay the staff. I must stress this point increased delays – which frankly drives us to is not being made because of our convenience, but distraction. We support the principle that those because it is very important that the magistracy who can afford it should contribute to the cost of continues to be as diverse as possible with very legal advice, but were well aware that earlier wide representation and that means that training schemes had not been a success because the cost for instance has to be offered at different times of administering means testing outweighed the and in accessible places so that those who work, contributions received. The present scheme was as well as having other commitments, are able to forecast to reduce the numbers of people applying attend. for legal aid, but in its early stages has thrown up several difficulties to do with getting information Moving cases through the courts properly – by and processing forms. We are promised that which I mean as swiftly as possible while ensuring these are being addressed, but it is an enormous that justice is done – is also seen as under threat. pity that they were not foreseen and dealt with There is a lack of prosecutors in some areas (we before introduction as it is yet another example of understand because of money) so it is not possible different policies pulling against each other and to have a full number of courts running. Legal causing confusion and a reduction in confidence. adviser recruitment is threatened by rates of pay that are higher elsewhere, and we cannot sit The whole question of the legal aid budget is without a legal adviser. Cases can be delayed another major concern. There is one amount of because the strain on police and prosecution money that has to cover legal aid, staff costs, means that papers are not prepared or witnesses maintenance costs for the whole of the system. have not been warned. Magistrates, when We say that is wrong and that they are entirely sentencing, rely heavily on advice from the different matters. Legal aid is an essential service probation service yet that service is also under that society must provide in the interests of

34 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 35

justice. Of course there has to be some control deeply alarming. It is constantly stated that such over the amount available, but for this part of the out of court disposals are intended for low-level budget to be used as a control mechanism for offences, yet the existing list of offences for which court maintenance or staff costs cannot be right – a penalty notice for disorder (PND) can be it simply damages other parts of the system. imposed include criminal damage up to £500 and retail theft up to £200. Proposed extensions to I have previously mentioned our legal advisers, PND offences have, in the past year, included and would now like to focus on our principal legal common assault, carrying a knife or offensive advisers, the justices’ clerks. The relationship weapon, and public order offences involving a real between magistrates and justices’ clerks is fear of violence. A conditional caution can apply fundamental to the delivery of justice in our to any form of criminal damage and also to non- courts. Under the new arrangements for unified residential burglary, and although this has now administration of all the courts they have become been amended following protests, an earlier list civil servants, line managed within HMCS, but they included affray and assault. None of that sounds have statutory independence when advising or low-level to us. In some areas the workload of training us, and if they did not have that the courts has dropped dramatically while the independence then ours could be under threat. number of PNDs has increased dramatically – and Over the last ten years their numbers have we feel that we, the public, are not being best dropped dramatically, from over 200 to the served by listing so many matters as “offences current total of 70. We are concerned that the brought to justice” when what is meant is a ticket numbers may drop further, reducing the essential being handed out. links that exist at present. All this affects magistrates’ morale and adds to this My final point relates to the cases that do, or long list of current pressures on our courts. It more importantly do not, get to the courts for us does not affect our strong desire to continue our to deal with. Diversion is a highly unpopular role in delivering justice, but we welcome this concept with magistrates – not because we chance to express our feelings and set out our believe for one moment that everything has to be wish for the system to work together and take full criminalised, but because we are convinced that advantage of what I consider to be the wonderful serious matters that should appear in court are system of magistrates’ courts in England and being dealt with elsewhere for the wrong reasons. Wales”. Fixed penalties, penalty notices for disorder, simple cautions, conditional cautions – there are a plethora of ways in which police and prosecution (and other “authority figures” to use a government phrase) can hand out penalties without a matter coming to court and we are increasingly convinced that money and targets are being put before justice and public confidence. It is an essential part of our judicial role that we do not and cannot sentence anyone in order to fulfil a target. Sentencing is a matter for sentencers – those who have taken a judicial oath and deal with matters entirely impartially – and we see a dangerous blurring of roles with the powers of police, prosecution and others impinging on sentencing. Recent government proposals have referred to a “quasi-judicial function for offender managers” and have asked whether a proposed extension to penalty notices for disorder is cost- effective. That cannot be right and is in fact

35 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 36

36 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 37

27 February 2007: the Prison Service and sustainable development

Phil Wheatley CB director general, HM Prison Service

Phil Wheatley thanked Lord Corbett for his So that’s how we got into it, and we think that the introduction. Prison Service has a good story to tell about what we are doing. It has been achieved with some He began: “The report is mostly about direction from the centre, with some high quality waste and energy. It is also importantly about what leadership and thinking, but it has engaged we are doing on the broader rehabilitation front, establishments too. What’s particularly pleasing is because sending people out who are less likely to to see how many prison staff have become offend is also part of a sustainable development involved. They like doing it. They find it quite programme for prisons. exciting, and feel good about it. It can feel a bit make-do-and-mend in prison because we’re often The Prison Service has been pursuing the being pushed to do a lot with few resources. The greening/sustainable development agenda since idea of being economical and careful and making 1999. We are pursuing this agenda for several sure we do things that help the environment long- reasons; because: term just appeals to our approach. So it has been fairly easy to engage prison staff to work • It is a government requirement; we do what enthusiastically. we’re told. We are quite obedient in the Prison Service, though you may not always We’ve put some resources in – for example we’ve think that spent some £9 million over past seven years on waste, energy, water, environmental management • It benefits the environment, which made systems, biodiversity, and raising staff awareness. In good sense to us terms of our total budget of £2billion it’s not a fortune. But when money is scarce it’s a real • It encourages good housekeeping which can investment and we’ve made sure that’s targeted. bring financial benefits. We’ve been required We allow establishments to bid for funds to to make savings, and ways of operating more improve the environment, and very often save efficiently certainly make sense to us money in the process. So it’s ‘spend to save’.

• It provides resettlement opportunities and We’re big energy users. Because we’re open 24 skills development for prisoners. Actually hours a day with lots of people - 79,500 and rising there are lots of jobs in recycling. It’s a new at the moment – we do use a lot of energy. Our industry, and as the government requires us annual bill for energy, including water, for this to recycle, suddenly opportunities are financial year, 2006/07, is £86 million. We can opening up. These are quite appropriate jobs show that, as a result of what we’ve done, we’ve for prisoners because you are not barred made savings, and we’re aiming for a 12.5% energy from them because of criminal convictions. and water efficiency target by 2010. These are real jobs, with proper pay.

37 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 38

We can show that since we began this work in reuse in the prison, and there’s also a lot that can 1999 there has been an absolute reduction of 4% be recycled and sold – as local authorities do. in our energy use. If we do that on a square The Prison Service produces 55,000 tons of waste footage basis – because as you will understand we per year that we need to dispose of. So we are: have been growing in size since then - that amounts to a 17% reduction in energy and water reducing the amount sent to landfill; use, which is well worth having. I’m quite pleased with that. reducing the costs. We think that the cash savings amount to at least £1.35m per We’ve got targets for establishments which we annum as a result of the work we are monitor, which include the target for CO≈ doing; and reduction, and also a target on reducing the use of water. This also reduces our sewage charges, providing employment and training since these usually relate to the amount of water opportunities for about 350 prisoners you put down the system. So there’s a real pay off employed in waste management units. for us. We are achieving an average recycling rate of We’ve tried to move into using ‘greener energy’. about 41% of our waste, which is better than we 10% of our electricity is from renewable sources. were aiming for, 6% above our target, and better We’ve also entered into a partnership with the than most people manage. Severn Wye Energy Agency working with prisons in Wales and the south-west to offer advice to We have an innovative pilot scheme to recycle prisoners and their families about energy use. white goods at Onley. We’re taking in the kind of Energy surveys have been completed at several things that rich people throw away when they get establishments too. So this is giving us some real the fancy new fridge, or the very best and latest gains, and going broader than just prisons. washing machine. We take the old stuff in and redo Prisoners’ families often don’t have a lot of cash, it. You can’t just pass it on to people; very often so need to use their energy carefully. the electrics in old appliances are dangerous. By recycling and doing it carefully we can pass those We have solar power in 3 prisons: Prescoed, out to the local council who can then use them for Askham Grange and Cardiff. Cardiff, which is big needy families. It seems to me a sound piece of prison, uses solar power to help heat the water work. Prisoners are doing useful work. We don’t for the laundry. We’ve got some interesting make money out of it but we’re helping the rainwater recovery schemes in new establishments. environment. Those things don’t get sent out to be The new-build at Whatton – a new prison disposed of - with great difficulty in the case of alongside the old one - uses a rainwater recovery fridges - and we’re helping people who otherwise system to flush the toilets. This saves a lot on our wouldn’t get hold of things like that, or who might water use from normal suppliers. buy things that were cheap but dangerous.

We also sort waste. Waste is another expensive We provide accredited waste management training problem for us, and we’re in danger of creating a at 9 establishments: 194 prisoners were on lot of landfill, which is hardly green. So trying to training schemes, achieving 151 NVQ qualifications reduce our waste, and to recycle, helps the in the last year. It’s not the answer to crime. But environment and helps us as well. for the prisoners concerned it counts, and does lead to real jobs. We’ve now got 78 establishments with proper waste management units, in which we go through So those are the big bits where a lot of money is our waste and recycle what we can. Prisoners are tied up. We are making savings and using often not careful what they throw away. Providing resources better, as well as helping the country we sort our rubbish, there’s often a lot we can with its targets.

38 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 39

We’re also piloting Environmental Management • protect native species and habitats; Systems (EMS), a bespoke system for the Prison Service that we’ve designed and trialled. It aims to • manage the land responsibly. We don’t just provide advice on all the things you can do to help stick a mower round the edge to make the environment, and we hope to get management everything look neat and tidy. We have to in establishments to concentrate on that. Not just ensure the security perimeter is observable, to worry about whether they have got enough but we leave the habitat in a form which places for prisoners but to think: ‘Can we encourages wildlife organise this place better?’ • provide opportunities for prisoners in the We’ve trialled that in four areas. We’re talking community . A particularly nice example is about simple things like putting in the right sort of at Springhill where prisoners working at light bulbs, and putting in switches which only Aston Rowan nature reserve gain both work when people enter the room so you don’t qualifications and job experience. leave the lights on – you may have been to meetings where, if you stay still too long, the We’re pleased with this, and it’s worth something. lights go out. We’ve got lots of things like that. In It has inspired lots of estates staff, too. 70 HMPS the North West, which was one of the early staff have been given accredited training users, we think we’ve saved about £600,000 as a certificates in biodiversity, and we have an result of the changes made. We’re hoping to roll environment manual which helps them do their that out across the estate over the next year. work. If you go and look at the land outside some of our high security prisons – Full Sutton or The Service is a major landowner - the second Whitemoor for example – you’ll see we’ve largest in central government. (The biggest is the created quite a pleasant area. It offers a good Ministry of Defence.) We have lots of habitat for local wildlife, and makes much better establishments and lots of land round them, greener use of the land we’ve got. although we have sold off a large number of our farms. We’ve mainly got out of farming, because As regards construction, and buildings, we used to farming was not the ideal thing to do with design and procure our own buildings. It’s now prisoners in terms of getting jobs nowadays. done by NOMS. As I am nowadays merely the Farming is so capital-intensive now that it no provider of prisons, I am in effect working in other longer provides the sort of jobs we want for people’s buildings. But we don’t quite think like prisoners. Even so, we have a lot of land left. that. We have 137 scheduled or listed buildings – a product of having very old prisons. This includes: We own or operate on sites of international importance, like Dartmoor and North Sea Camp. • Victorian Italianate mansions like Hewell North Sea Camp is on the edge of the Wash. It’s Grange, rather an elegant building, nicely reclaimed land alongside the marshes. That’s done and with good use of marble; Grade 2 environmentally a sensitive area. listed I think;

We manage Dartmoor – we don’t own Dartmoor, • Lancaster Castle. we pay a rent for it. That’s probably one of the Prince of Wales’ most undesirable rented • Some others, such as bomber bases, which properties. But we look after a very sensitive area. are not yet listed but may be eventually; like And we have 67 other sites of either national or Lindholme, a bomber base, in which we county importance. have all the original buildings

We have a Biodiversity Plan, looking after our • Some very elegant Victorian buildings, like crested newts and all the variety of wildlife living Pentonville, which may not be our favourite on our land. We try to: prison, but is the ‘model prison’ on which all others were founded.

39 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 40

So we know we have got to look after them, and And at Guys Marsh we’ve got a biomass boiler. So not just say ‘Let’s get rid of the nice pitched roof we’re trying to use different methods that are and put in a flat roof because it’s cheap’. We likely to save energy, to reduce the amount of employ a full time conservation officer, now CO2 we’re putting into the atmosphere and to use working in NOMS, to make sure we do that. sustainable sources.

We rather like our older buildings. I was talking Similarly we buy a lot of things through earlier about working in a sixties-build, which I Procurement. For example we use recycled didn’t feel at all sentimental about and was stationery products. If you’d got a copy of anything probably the worst building I ever worked in we supplied, rather than printing it off from email, anywhere. The Victorian buildings are much easier it would have been on recycled paper. We’re to work in, and still make good prison buildings if trying to make sure we reduce packaging. We’ve well looked after. got contracts for use of transport that allow us to monitor emissions, so you can see what you’re In carrying out our new building we need to make doing by way of burning a hole in the atmosphere; sure we design in a sustainable and energy efficient you can’t ignore it. We’re making changes to the way. We expect prison buildings to last a long way we buy food, and in assessing some contracts time – regrettably often longer than their design currently – I can’t say what they are as I don’t life. We try to make sure that we meet all the think they’ve been formally announced yet - we’ve energy efficient targets we are required to do, and played in the amount of transport that will be exceed them. We try to get 10% energy efficiency required to move the food around. We’ve not just above the requirements of Building Regulations. In said ‘Which is the cheapest through the gate?’ the long run, that makes sense. We will make We’re looking at the environmental impact. savings over time. The biggest problem we haven’t found an easy way We are trying to make sure that waste to solve yet is how to get rid of mattresses. We’re minimisation is included in construction: hence the participating in a cross-departmental group to try rainwater recovery projects that can be used for and find an answer to that. We use foam flushing toilets. We’re trying to ensure that we get mattresses. With 80,000 prisoners, and a lot more an ‘excellent’ rating under BREEAM (which I’m going through prisons in the course of a year, a told is the Building Research Establishment number of whom are de-toxing and not entirely in Environmental Assessment Method), and we’re control of their bodily functions, we have a lot of also trying to ensure we use a 20% minimum of mattresses we need to get rid of. And dumping recycled material in construction. We make sure lots of foam rubber mattresses in landfill is not a that we use sustainable sources for getting hold of good way of aiding the countryside. So we are wood. We specify that in the contract, so that we trying to find a more environmentally friendly way don’t discover, as I understand some do, that large of disposing of the ones we have to get rid of. amounts of rainforest have been chopped down to We’ve not a lot of choice but to use the sort of make the rather more elegant bits of the building, mattresses we do, which have to be safe, and with somebody asking questions later, not having relatively re-usable, and easy to move around the put the spec in first. establishment. Going back to old-fashioned spring ones does not sound a good idea and would also We’ve got some excellent examples of good be very expensive. Going back to the flock ones construction practice. For instance, the new block that I remember, that were impossible to sleep on, at Highdown has achieved the ‘excellent rating’ would not actually help prisoners to feel under BREEAM. comfortable in prison. People aren’t used to sleeping on that kind of thing nowadays and we In some places, with smaller cell blocks, we can might precipitate a riot out of it. So we’ve got to use geothermal heating systems. get that right.

40 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 41

We also have industries. They are relatively small worse offer you drugs for free and you end up industries but again we’ve tried to look at them to back into crime. If we can get people through that, make sure they are operating in an so that they have a soft landing as they go out, we environmentally friendly way. So we’ve been know that improves their resettlement prospects. introducing higher standards of energy and water We’ve done quite well at getting people jobs and a management in our laundries. We do most of our home to live in. own laundry, and it’s an expensive process in terms of energy use. So being careful how you use We use what we rather fancily call a multi-modal both water and electricity is very important. technique – that is, attacking people’s problems on a number of different levels. We offer basic We include environmental issues in tender education; offending behaviour programmes; we requirements and assessment for anything to do try to combine that with learning something that with industries; we’re using recycled paper in our may leave you with an employable skill; we try and print workshops. deal with people’s drugs problems; and we try and give them the right religious support. We’re developing guidelines for recycling material that you have to recycle as part of an industry – It is interesting to look at the latest reconviction building that into our waste management data – I don’t want to claim too much: I don’t programme. And we’re using industry to try and want to say we’ve found the philosopher’s stone. make sure we can train prisoners – which is back However big tranches of discharged prisoners are to the broader definition of sustainable followed up each year for a two year period – the development. first quarter of each year’s discharges is followed through to see what happened to them. We’ve I hesitate to claim too much for prison industries, got the expected reconviction date, which is based because prison industries are also simply providing on a very solid prediction method, and we know a way of occupying people. They often have to do what their actual reconviction date is. And what that on a pick-up-and-put-down basis. In a prison that shows is that, for our short-termers, their with a rapid through-flow of prisoners, you’ve got reconviction rate is 1% worse than if they had to have something that people could learn to do never arrived in the first place. Not entirely within a day. If it took three weeks to train them, surprising because those are the people we’ve by the time you’d trained them they’d have moved done least with. They’ve probably been with us somewhere else. So much of that work is fairly for days, and the most I would claim is that we’ve boring repetitive stuff, and I don’t want to pretend probably de-toxed them and not a lot more. that prison industries are the answer to everybody’s employment problem – though we’re With the group serving 1-2 years we’re making a trying to use it as intelligently as we can. 4% difference, which is worth having. With the 2-4 year group the gain is about 8%, which is big and The major work we’ve done on sustainability with the 4 year and over group it’s 9%: a 9% concerns resettlement. We’ve been trying to reduction, at best, in the expected reconviction concentrate more on the practical issues: can we rate. So if we were expecting the reconviction get somebody somewhere to live which is rate to be 50 out of 100, a 9% reduction means relatively crime-free and safe to be? Can we get it’s about 45 out of 100. The figures are in the somebody into work before they leave, so there RSD data, and have to be mined out of it. They isn’t that awful gap as people go out of prison, are figures I only employ on occasions when I having convinced themselves that everything was think I’ve got an intelligent group who are going to be perfect. Prisoners often do that, interested. Because I’m petrified that someone will because it helps you to do your imprisonment. go to the media and say ‘the answer is long Then when you get outside it isn’t really like that, sentences’. The data doesn’t reliably support that. and there’s a gap: it isn’t the perfection you The difference between a 4 year sentence and a expected. There is no money. And within a day or 2-4 year sentence is only 1% on the figures I’m two, your mates stop buying you a drink or even giving you. So I’m very worried about how the

41 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 42

data will be used. I think it is real information, which suggests that if you operate on a number of different fronts you can make slight reductions in the extent to which prisoners return to re- offending. You have to have the chance to work with people. And in overcrowded local prisons I do not claim we are doing much work with short sentence prisoners. It would be very difficult to do that on the current resourcing. We’ve always worked pretty solidly with the longer sentenced prisoners. And the old data (going back to 2000) suggests that we’ve always made a bit of a difference. The difference we’re making is increasing’.

42 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 43

20 March 2007: neighbourhood by neighbourhood: local action to reduce crime

Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham, Local Government Association

Juliet Lyon, director, Prison Reform Trust

Cllr Sir Jeremy Beecham thanked Lord most part. Rates of truancy, for example, and early Corbett for his introduction. He began by noting parenthood are very high amongst offenders. that this report was a follow up to the LGA’s Going Educational attainment is generally very low, and Straight report, published in 2005. This latest that leads, amongst other things, to very report addressed particularly what local disturbing figures around self harm and suicide, for communities could do to reduce re-offending. young offenders and women in particular.

He continued: ‘David Waddington, when he It has also struck me as incongruous that while was home secretary 20 years ago, said that prison there is perfectly properly a great degree of was an expensive way of making bad people concern about any death of a looked after child in worse. Since then, the prison population has the community, whether looked after by parents doubled. The cost of re-offending alone, according or by the local authority, there is very little outcry to the Social Exclusion Unit’s report a few years about the number of deaths of young people in ago, is £11 billion a year. And the rate of re- prison. It does seem to me that we need to look offending has gone up since then from 58% to very carefully at how we deal with young people 67%. So despite the fact that crime has actually in custody. My own view, and I hope the LGA may been falling, the impact of the prison system has go in this direction, is that we should be moving not been notably beneficial. away not only from the numbers of people going to prison, but also towards considering whether There is no evidence that incarceration rates really some institution other than the Prison Service affect crime figures. In America, Texas has much should be responsible for the custody of young higher incarceration rates than New York. Yet people. New York’s crime rates have fallen faster than those in Texas. In this country, a 1% reduction in Of course we have to recognise that prison is crime is the result of a 25% increase in appropriate and necessary for some people: incarceration rates. So there’s no real relationship serious, particularly violent, offenders need to be between the two. And that’s not particularly taken out of the community, maybe for very long surprising when you think of the prison population. periods. But in general there are too many people 70% of adult offenders, and 80% of young in prison both for their own and society’s good. offenders, suffer from two or more mental The overcrowding in prisons makes it very difficult disorders. All the symptoms that you would for the rehabilitative processes that successive expect to characterise offenders make the case governments – and particularly this one - have that we are dealing with a particularly wanted to see implemented, to take effect. For disadvantaged section of the community for the example one welcomes the shift of responsibility

43 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 44

for healthcare from the Prison Service to the and hopefully gained some self respect and a skill NHS. But of course the NHS struggles to make which will be useful later. Key to this was the the relevant services available. involvement of the local authority with other agencies – in this case the Prison Service. It does seem to me therefore that we need to move towards deliberately targeting the reduction What we’re saying in these reports is that you of numbers of people in prison. Therefore we need a localised approach. We’re slightly nervous have to have other measures in place: community about the concept of the neighbourhood punishments, better fine collection, and better management service operating regionally, and supervision for people when they come out - commissioning regionally, when what you need is particularly people on short sentences who get a much more locally based approach. This might little or no support when they come out and are involve developing projects using the mechanism the most likely to re-offend. There is a complex of local area agreements, given that local of issues here which we need to tackle, and the authorities have so many different services which evidence suggests we need much earlier are relevant to the needs of offenders and also to interventions, diagnosis of potential problems, an the communities from which they come, and to enhanced dedicated psychology service and the which they will eventually return. There’s hardly a like, to get to potential offenders at an early age, local authority service, whether it’s education or deal with the range of problems that they have housing, public health or leisure, which does not and divert them into a more productive life. That’s relate to the needs of people coming out of a massive agenda. prison. And together with our partners in the third and private sector, and also with government This report, and Going Straight, concentrate on departments, such as Work and Pensions (because what we can do to prevent re-offending. And benefits issues are so important), and of course there are a number of factors that make a the Learning and Skills Councils, we think there is difference: the availability of housing and very considerable potential for joint working. employment when people come out of prison are critical in deflecting them from re-offending. Of There are some very good examples of that. I’ve course predilection is a serious issue, and that been supplied with a note about a scheme called does complicate treatment both inside and outside Exodus which works in the South East. There are prison. But nevertheless a number of schemes up 5 projects, and the one in Southampton, led by and down the country, many of which involve the the local authority, has apparently had a huge council, demonstrate that particularly dealing with success in diverting people from re-offending. 96% the housing and employments problems is key to of the 100+ people who have gone through this preventing re-offending. scheme have gone straight and kept straight, which is a remarkably high rate. Other re- There have also been some very interesting offending schemes have seen re-offending cut by restorative projects. Restorative justice is a term about half, which is very significant. The target is which is very elastic. At one end of the scale it 5% over the next few years, and 10% by the early means schemes confronting offenders with their teens. That would be helpful, of course, but a victims, working on a personal level. In another 10% reduction wouldn’t take us back to the level sense it can mean offenders and prisoners putting of three or four years ago, given that the re- something back into the community. In my part of offending rate has gone up from 50% to 86% or the world, the North East of England, there have 87% in that time. So there’s a huge area to cover. been two particular schemes which have demonstrated that vividly: the restoration of two But given a localised approach, and by using the Victorian parks, one in Middlesborough and one in new mechanisms of local area agreements, and Gateshead, where offenders from local prisons getting buy-in from government departments and have been trained and given some skills, and have other agencies and partners, I think there’s a real done remarkably well in restoring these amenities. possibility of turning the situation around. That They have put something back into the community does mean an endeavour to lead public opinion

44 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 45

and to avoid the temptation of running before the to you, and some support. They are the absolute tabloids, with their incessant pressure for tougher bedrock – to any of us. sentencing and the like. Sentencing policy has to be addressed, and some members of the judiciary One of the things we feel could happen, and have been pressing for that. But we do need a doesn’t yet, is that if prison were reserved as a positive programme to go alongside any change in genuine place of last resort, then opportunities for sentencing policy, and I’m hoping that we and our people to take responsibility could begin in prison. partners can help lead that debate’. I say that with a lot of caveats. Tim Newell, who was a very long-term governor of Grendon, said it Juliet Lyon thanked the meeting for their best when he wrote in his book about restorative invitation. prisons: ‘Prison can be a place of transformation, but She continued: ‘It’s really helpful to be able it should never be promoted as such’. I thought that to focus on local solutions to crime. We all know was a very helpful distinction he was making. that offenders come from communities and are Having worked long-term therapeutically with going to return to communities. But sometimes people at Grendon, he understood that some we forget it, as people are ‘processed’ through the people needed that period of time to change their system. And this is one of the things that PRT is lives. But the idea that prison would somehow do very concerned about on a number of levels. So people good is deeply misleading. I think it’s we welcomed the idea of joining a coalition which helpful that we have a Director General of the consists of Clinks, Crime Concern, the Prison Service who constantly says to governors International Centre for Prison Studies, the LGA, ‘I’m perfectly prepared for you to talk publicly and which is very much the lead in this coalition, the explain that prison does harm and we do our Prince’s Trust, Smart Justice and the Probation absolute best to minimise that harm’. I think that’s Boards Association: a group of people who have a very healthy outlook. ‘Use it sparingly, it cannot come together with a certain degree of but do harm’. Because it will separate families; it commonality. I think there are points where we will uproot people from their neighbourhoods don’t agree, and it’s interestingly acknowledged a inevitably; and in an overcrowded system, what’s couple of times in this document. more, they will be moved around in a perpetual state of uncertainty. I think that I should say, first of all, that probably PRT, and a couple of the other organisations I’ve PRT has just engaged in a programme about named, have more concerns about the Offender learning disability and learning difficulty – some of Management Bill and the implications of that, you here came to the launch – and one of the should it go through without amendment, than issues that is particularly important for people perhaps the LGA have. I’m happy to respond to with learning difficulties is managing that degree of questions about that afterwards. But the major change, being able to understand who’s there for point of agreement is that if we are to have a them, and to have some degree of certainty. So saner, more coherent criminal justice system we we’re particularly mindful of this at the moment. have clearly got to look to local solutions. Local authorities have the remit to determine all the This meeting is very timely. It follows the recent things that we know prevent offending, whether report on vulnerable women in the criminal it’s housing, employment or education – they have justice system by Jean Corston who addressed the solutions tantalisingly there, within their areas this group last year at its Annual Meeting, and of responsibility, already. It has always seemed talked then about what she was discovering about bizarre that criminal justice should somehow have women offenders and the situation for them. I been pulled apart from that. Everybody who think it’s pertinent to an overall look at works with people who offend knows that the Neighbourhood by Neighbourhood. Because what things that help them to go straight are the Jean Corston has recommended is a new and ordinary things: having enough money in your radical approach, long waited for, which would pocket to survive, having a roof over your head, involve setting up a new commission for women. having some people who care about what happens There would be an inter-ministerial group which

45 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 46

would take into account those areas I’ve budgets at a local level, was to close this revolving mentioned already: health, education, support for door - in particular by providing more supervision families. They would gradually work towards a and support on release, by focusing on the need solution – over a period of ten years, it’s not an for employment or training immediately on overnight solution - where there would be small release, by focusing on the importance of local custodial units, where women would be kept continuing treatment for addictions. It’s not good as close to home as possible, which would make enough to have someone in prison simply for a things rather more bearable in terms of separation drug detox. In fact it’s deeply misleading I think. from small children. And in the main, because The courts now feel quite reassured that if they women aren’t violent offenders, she is looking for send someone to prison they will get a detox. But solutions attached to women’s centres and the they won’t get much else, and they will return to development of a network of women’s centres, drugs as quickly as anything, and we know that. I based on the model of the Asha Centre at was in Holloway recently and there was a queue Worcester, the Calderdale Centre in Halifax, and of people coming in, with very high levels of Centre 218 in Glasgow, all of which have been addiction - 70-80% of the women arriving were well evaluated and demonstrate that they are addicted to class A drugs. But the detox unit was providing a genuine robust alternative to custody overflowing because there was no room in the with much better outcomes. prison to move them on. It’s not a place of treatment. That’s the pity of piecemeal I think Jean Corston’s work is extremely helpful in improvement in the prison system. Very important terms of providing a way of approaching offending improvements have been made by the NHS in which equally – and she acknowledges this in her prison health, important improvements by the review – could apply to vulnerable children for DfES in terms of prison education. But one of the example, could apply to vulnerable men in prison. unintended consequences has been to make If there’s been any criticism in the press reaction, prison a kind of capacious social service. people have said ‘What about men who are mentally ill?’ Well indeed. What about men who So we really welcomed the opportunity to think are mentally ill? Jean Corston had a brief from the what could be done on a local level, by people Home Office to focus entirely on women. But her who are trained and have the capacity to run conclusions have much wider implications. health services, to run education services, to respond to homelessness. There were other One of the things in Neighbourhood by issues that clearly needed attention, and they’re Neighbourhood that we looked at were the perhaps not addressed as thoroughly as they could opportunities for local prevention, and ways of be, as yet. There were two I wanted to mention diverting from the criminal justice system early on, particularly, and one, which is very timely, is the to avoid this banking up that is unnecessary within discharge grant. You will know that a report was the prison system. There is already quite a lot of published today by the Citizens Advice Bureaux, preventative work going on, but there could be talking about advice for prisoners and more. As Jeremy has said, we particularly looked resettlement. One of the things they have at how you close the revolving door of prison. recommended is that we sort out, at long last, an How do we stop people simply returning to their issue raised initially by the Social Exclusion Unit communities very briefly only to offend again? back in 2002, in its report on preventing re- 67% is the ball park figure. If you look at the18-20 offending by ex prisoners. We need to stop the olds you’re talking 78%. If you look at under 18s situation where somebody is released from prison you’re talking about well over 80%. So the idea with currently an average of £47 which, if they are that prison works is a bit of a nonsense. I find it not going immediately into employment, is meant impossible to understand quite why we cherish to last them for at least two weeks before they the phrase when it so blatantly doesn’t. can claim benefit. This is shooting ourselves in the foot. It’s just a silly thing to do, and also a very One of the things we felt could happen, using local harmful thing to do. It must in part explain the area agreements, and the opportunity to use very high reconviction rate for petty offenders.

46 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 47

How are you meant to survive on £47? It’s a solutions to crime – as did the University of bureaucratic muddle, as I understand it, with the Strathclyde. Two pieces of work we’ve been Department of Work and Pensions, which surely involved in: one by Smart Justice and Victim can be sorted out. That’s the central Support – the only poll we know that was actually recommendation of the report published today. of victims of crime. Of 1000 victims, 2/3 said categorically that they didn’t think prisons worked The second thing that needs sorting out is the to prevent non-violent crime, and they were Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 – and indeed whole-heartedly in support of parental the government did a very good consultation supervision, treatment for addictions, community paper on this, called Breaking the Circle, which payback and mental health care – all of which are proposed an important set of amendments which there in localities. Smart Justice for women very would have maintained public safety. Clearly there recently polled, through ICM, 1000 people across were some people who couldn’t have their the UK, 86% of whom said ‘we would support offence expunged, but there were a number of local centres for women’, places where women people who, in the view of those who drafted that could address the roots of their offending, get consultation, could have a far shorter period of treatment for addictions, mental health care and time when they had hanging over them the need opportunities to take responsibilities for their to declare an offence. For many young offenders it children. I do feel that there is public support and would have meant simply wiping the slate clean. that we shouldn’t be terrified by negative tattle in It’s high time that the Breaking the Circle the tabloids. So I’m hoping that the government consultation was dragged off the sea bed, and we will take this on board. I understand it’s in had a look at it again. Because it would help discussion with the Prisons Minister, who’s also people survive after prison. Minister for Probation. This document just lays a much more sensible pathway which could be I don’t think we’re talking only about petty followed’. offenders. There is another issue about people who go back and back to prison. We’ve also got some good examples of sustained work to prevent people who’ve committed serious crimes offending again. The one example I’d draw to your attention is Circles of Support, the scheme run by the Society of Friends (Quakers) which is supporting people who have committed serious sexual offences returning to the community and enabling them to lead a responsible life: a very difficult piece of work, very well done, and with good outcomes. So it isn’t all bleak, and we can’t imagine that people will always return to crime.

The last thing I want to say before I finish is that members of the coalition believe that if the government were prepared to be clear in the leadership it gives on this that public opinion could be favourable. I think we often misread public opinion for what a few tabloid editors – or indeed owners – would like us to read. I had a quick look at the public opinion polls based on local solutions to crime – how do people actually respond when they’re asked? The Esmee Fairbairn Foundation did an important opinion poll which showed quite clearly very strong support for community

47 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 48

48 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 49

15 May 2007: learning disability in prison

Baroness Quin, chair, advisory group for No One Knows: offenders with learning difficulties and learning disabilities

David Congdon (for Dame Jo Williams), head of campaigns and policy, Mencap

Danny, Andrew and Lee members of the Working for Justice Group

Joyce Quin began by saying how pleased she was academics, and practitioners in various fields, to have the opportunity to talk about the No One including a prison governor and a representative Knows project. However she had to begin with an of the prison officers. So it’s a good cross section, apology: she would have to slip away before the and given the nature of the Advisory Board it’s end of the meeting as she was attending a probably a particularly useful board to talk about memorial meeting at 6pm. She continued: to a tripartite meeting of all party parliamentary groups such as this. ‘The No One Knows (NOK) project is a project led by the PRT but with Mencap as its partner The board certainly has very open discussions. organisation, and that’s why I’m very pleased that Although people come from these various sharing the talk about the project with me is organisations and backgrounds they do look at the David Congdon, who is the policy chief for issue very freely, and we have a good discussion Mencap and who is standing in for Jo Williams and I believe spark off each other in terms of today. knowledge and areas of expertise. The project is all about looking systematically at what happens to The NOK project, I should stress at the beginning, people with learning disabilities and learning is a UK wide project – so we do look at difficulties in the prison system. We look at how experience in the penal system across the whole they are identified, how they are treated and how of the UK, and indeed have strong representation they are processed through the criminal justice from Scotland and from Northern Ireland, as well system and through the prison system in from as England and Wales. I chair the advisory particular. board, which meets every three months or so, which looks at the progress of the project and I must say that I had personal reasons for steers its work. The advisory board consists of a accepting enthusiastically the position of chair of number of people who are knowledgable about the advisory board, because in my brief tenure as the criminal justice system: healthcare Prisons Minister, I remember one or two of the professionals, social care, learning and skills, very positive experiences I had when I came

49 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 50

across some prisoners who for whatever reason Obviously sometimes you may be talking about had failed completely in the educational system, people with low IQs, sometimes you may be and had very great learning difficulties and yet in talking about people who combine relatively high some of these cases their lives were changed and IQs with another kind of disability or difficulty turned around in prison. And that made me feel such as dyslexia. Basically therefore the very committed to positive regimes in prison, and programme simply focuses on people within the increasing the chances of this happening to criminal justice system who have difficulties with individuals within the system. certain activities which involve thinking and understanding and who need additional help and As well as the board guiding and steering the support in their every day living. So it’s as wide as project we also have a Working for Justice group. that. They are people who have had direct experience in the system. I am delighted some of the The early work of the project has really focused members have joined us here today. I know that on two different things. Firstly a literature review there’s Danny, Andrew and Lee, who I hope has been undertaken. ‘Literature review’ might will be able to say a few words to the groups sound a fairly simple thing to say, but actually it during the course of this meeting. They will be has involved looking at a huge amount of able to tell you something both of their information across a number of different fields. experience, and indeed of the work they are doing The second aspect has been a detailed for this project at the present time. questionnaire which has been sent to prisons in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, Let me say too that I’m glad that Jenny Talbot is which David will talk about – particularly the here, who is the project director for NOK. She’s findings of the questionnaire which I think are sitting in the front row. She has put a huge and significant and hopefully will be of interest to the enthusiastic effort into running this programme. I parliamentary groups. must say I’m particularly grateful that she’s here, because there may well be questions that I can’t In the literature review, I have to say we were answer which I can direct towards her. faced with a huge variation in estimates of the numbers of people with learning disabilities and I mentioned the fact that the programme is about learning difficulties – anything between 0% and people with learning disabilities and learning 85% of the prison population – and of course that difficulties. By using that phrase I think I’ll have is partly because of the definition problem that I already indicated to you that we’re talking about a have already mentioned to you. wide group of people. The definition is quite important here. One thing that has motivated this But it is also because of other things as well: project has been the realisation that many studies different assessment tools; at what point in the done up to now have often had a fairly narrow system someone might be assessed; the level of focus, looking at people with a particular learning training of the people doing the assessing. As you disability, or a particular set of criteria. Whereas can imagine there are a number of factors that actually we were aware that there are a lot of influence this. But Dr Nancy Loucks, who has people, including borderline people, within the been doing this survey for us, has obviously prison system who are often not catered for with looked at averages in terms of trying to get a an over-narrow approach. So for that reason, reasonable conclusion. She has also looked at the although the definition might look very wide, it is most recent surveys very closely, and indeed some deliberately so. It has a deliberate vagueness built of the most comprehensive surveys that have into it, in order to try and ensure that we do taken place. actually look across the whole of the system, and see all those people who could benefit from A couple I’d like to briefly refer to. There has better and different interventions in the system been a study done by the University of Liverpool than happens at present. which focused on three prisons: a male local

50 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 51

prison, a women’s prison and a YOI. The work problem meant that people who were very willing was very thorough, and the results of that have to undertake this kind of work felt frustrated at been informative for us. Then Dyslexia Action also every turn. And that’s obviously a very important did a large scale survey a couple of years ago. aspect of the current situation.

After undertaking this review, the conclusion we So there is a big problem. But if I can conclude my have reached so far is that between 20% and 30% brief remarks by saying that I also believe that of offenders have learning difficulties or learning there’s a willingness to tackle it. I know that the disabilities that interfere with their ability to cope All Party Penal Affairs group had Phil Wheatley in the criminal justice system. If we assume a speaking to them recently. We have met with prison population of around 80,000 this equates him, and he’s very sensitive to the scale of this to some 16,000 to 24,000 people. So I think even problem, and very appreciative and supportive on a fairly modest estimate we are talking about a actually of the work of the No One Knows substantial number of people here. programme. We’ve also had a good deal of interest from Ministers, from Patricia Scotland, Obviously the large scale figures are important. from Phil Hope and from Gerry Sutcliffe. And But they also of course include so many individual there is the willingness that I referred to from cases and problems. And some of those have within the prison system itself. I certainly struck me very forcibly. I remember one example remember when I was Prisons Minister feeling of someone in court who was asked whether he very frustrated, in that I would meet many people was remorseful. Since he did not understand the during the course of my work who were doing word he could not answer, which did not stand splendid work day in and day out. But very little of him in good stead. It’s a small example but quite a this was recognised. The only thing that would vivid one. There are other examples of where happen was that massive publicity was given if people have been talked to and haven’t really something went wrong. I do feel that there is a understood why they were in prison. These things great deal here that we can do to accentuate the are very moving. positive and to build on some of the good practice that does exist within certain establishments and Looking at the situation is complex. There is no is very important. systematic routine assessment in the prison system of learning difficulties and learning Let me conclude by saying that I was interested disabilities at present, and no standard way of that Robin mentioned Charlie Falconer and the doing this that everybody agrees is a gold standard new Ministry of Justice. I’ve got here the new that they can have faith and confidence in. Ministry of Justice’s publication - I suppose it’s hot off the press since the Ministry itself has been in There are also of course the well known existence for less that a week – Justice: a New problems currently within the prison system. Approach. It does seem to me that there is Particularly the problem of ‘churn’ as it’s called, material there that certainly the NOK project will with people moving from one establishment to be pointing to in terms of its negotiations with another, often in a fairly short space of time. This ministers subsequently. Particularly: the systematic means that if there have been assessments and identification of which interventions work best; evaluations made, whether that can be translated improving offenders’ basic skills, the problem with into some systematic programme for someone is short sentences in terms of constructive regimes, much more doubtful – particularly If they are and providing more information to sentencers on moving from one establishment to another. I the effectiveness of interventions. All those things certainly came across this when Jenny Talbot and I are mentioned in this document, and they are all visited a Young Offenders Institution in the north very relevant to the work NOK is doing. of England, where there was great willingness to do this kind of work. At the same time the So in conclusion the project is about getting much combination of short sentences – not that I’m more, and more accurate, info about a very large arguing for long sentences - and the churn group of offenders. But on the basis of this

51 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 52

accurate info we also want to be in a position to people with a learning disability are often make credible and important recommendations neglected, and their rights abused. for the future. But what also struck me about this particular Lord Corbett thanked Joyce Quin for her research is that there is a major difficulty of address, and introduced the next speaker, David definitions, as the research acknowledges. On the Congdon from Mencap. one hand it doesn’t matter, because we know there is a broad group of people with a learning David Congdon began by saying what a pleasure it difficulty and a learning disability within our was to have the opportunity to speak to this prisons – up to 30% and it could be actually be group on such an important topic, standing in for more - and not getting a good deal. But we also Jo Williams. know, and the research shows, that 7% of people He continued: ‘Jo was particularly keen for in our prisons actually have an IQ of below 70, Mencap to be a partner in this particular research which would be a definition of a learning disability. because we knew, and know, that this area of But the question I would want to pose is how prisons and people with a learning disability has many people in our prison have an IQ – and I been a subject that’s been much neglected over don’t like the use of IQ as the way of identifying, the years. We know there has been work into but it’s very difficult when the research is so looking at people from disadvantaged back limited in terms of who’s in our prisons - say of grounds people of low educational achievement below 50. It would be even more wrong, if I etcetera, and there is a lot of research which could put it that way, for them to be in our shows that this is clearly an issue. But not much prisons. And I think the research shows that there on this particular subject, and we are therefore are some people in our prisons who frankly very pleased to be associated with this work with should have been diverted from our prison system PRT. and who shouldn’t be there at all.

I think I should also say, and this is partly to avoid The other reason, by way of context, is that our very difficult questions afterwards, that I am focus in Mencap in terms of the criminal justice personally not, and nor is Mencap, an expert on system over the years, has been on the issue of prisons and what goes on in prisons. What we try people with a learning disability as victims of to do is campaign on behalf of people with a crime. We produced, I think in about 1997-98 just learning disability, to ensure that their human before I arrived at Mencap, Barriers to Justice, and rights are not abused, that they get a fair deal, and subsequently Behind Closed Doors, which was about that they get the same chances and opportunities the appalling sexual abuse of people with a as everybody else. Too often they don’t get those learning disability. And the reality is that even opportunities. We’ve recently seen the scandal of today, despite important changes to the law, the abuse of people with a learning disability down people with a learning disability do not get justice in Cornwall, which was a shock to the Secretary from the criminal justice system. They very rarely of State for Health. get their day in court. There’s always some excuse, and some reason, why they can’t get their As an organisation, more recently Mencap day in court and that needs to be changed. published ‘Death by Indifference’ where we made the very serious charge that people with a learning But having said all that I think what is important, disability were dying in our hospitals because of and staggering, about this research is actually the institutional discrimination. The Secretary of State failure of the prison system, as Joyce said, to has responded by saying that there will be an properly identify who there is with learning independent enquiry – although it’s two months difficulty and disability within the prison system. on and we’re still waiting for the announcement. There’s no systematic attempt to identify them. We’re being reasonably patient. But I use those as And the research shows that only a third of an illustration that this is part of a spectrum: that prisons kept any formal statistics at all. So if you

52 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 53

don’t know who’s got a learning difficulty or a I was struck by the conclusions and learning disability, how do you provide to meet recommendations in the report which talks about their needs? That clearly has to change. commitment from the top of the Prison Service, the Department of Health and the Department A lot of the people, as the research shows for Education and Skills to do something about clearly, have serious communication needs. Joyce this. I say to you, this has very, very strong mentioned the fact of people not understanding parallels with the criticisms that we’ve been why they were in prison. That’s a pretty making recently in Death by Indifference in terms incredible thing to find out. They’ve been of the need for leadership at the top of the through a legal process and they end up in Department of Health. If disadvantaged groups like prison, and because of either their intellectual people with a learning disability or difficulty are disability or their educational difficulties or a going to get a fair deal from the prison system it combination of both, and their communication needs more than platitudes. It needs a positive difficulties, they don’t understand why they’re commitment from the top of the service to there. It must be bad enough being in prison ensure that people get appropriate help and anyway. To not understand why you’re there support, and appropriate education, while they’re must be even worse. in prison. It isn’t a ‘one size fits all’. I know people talk of prisons being dustbins. I’m not an expert That makes it difficult, according to the research, on prisons. But clearly once you’ve got someone for them to benefit from some of the more in prison it is really rather crucial to rehabilitate positive things that go on in prison: the offending them and meet their needs. And if you don’t behaviour programmes for instance. There’s know who you are looking after in prison, how evidence in the research that shows they don’t can you meet those needs? I think that is a very benefit from them. Perhaps also shamefully, but I’d powerful message from this report, and I, and say sadly not surprisingly because other research Mencap, very much welcome it’. shows this, the research shows that they are also bullied, and bullied more than other people in our After thanking David Congdon, Lord Corbett prisons. We’ve done research into adults with a and Baroness Quin introduced the three learning disability, which showed that in the speakers from the Working from Justice group, previous year 90% claimed that they’d been starting with Danny. bullied. We’re about to publish research on children which shows similar figures. So I was very Danny began: ‘My name is Danny and I unsurprised, but pretty disappointed, to see the have spent 22 years 9 months in prison. I have evidence in this report that they are bullied more seen a few changes, but not for people with often than other prisoners. And that’s prison staff learning difficulties. I think what needs to be done themselves, saying that. is that prison staff need to be trained in looking after people with learning difficulties - whenever Also, given the changes in the legal framework they find out people have learning difficulties. Also around disability discrimination, (there was) very in prison you’ve got rules and regulations. People limited disability awareness training. According to with learning difficulties don’t get these rules and the research, only a fifth (of staff) had any regulations because they can’t read and they can’t disability awareness training. And what’s incredible write. They’re not given leaflets or anything. If you about that is that that means that prisons are want to learn about the rules and regulations you likely to be in breach of any of their have to go through the governor. It’s a big red responsibilities under the law of disability book like ‘This is your life’. But to get this book discrimination. And my understanding – I’m sure you have to go through the system and one out of I’ll be corrected on this - is that they’re regarded ten you’ll be lucky if you get it. As I’ve said I’ve as a public body in terms of disability and spent 22 years 9 months in prison, and I think discrimination legislation. So that is something that prison staff should be trained to look after people clearly needs looking at. with learning difficulties.’

53 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 54

Lord Corbett thanked Danny very much. out and that. Most of it was caused by the prison being overcrowded. Lord Rix added that this call for training extended well beyond prison officers – to health And something I learned today, from one of the care, to social care – and to practically everything lot that came with us, is the fact that they had one concerned particularly with people with learning officer to deal with all the people with literary disability – because of course they had a learning problems and that he had to deal with 500 people. difficulty from birth. Now it’s impossible for one officer to actually deal with 500 people. There is no way that somebody As regards the definitional confusion between on the outside could deal with 500 people. I agree learning disability and learning difficulty, in that they do need more training to deal with Australia and New Zealand and the international these problems, but it still isn’t going to sort the league, learning disability was referred to as problem if the prisons keep getting overcrowded. ‘intellectual disability’ which separated it from When I was in gaol most of the people on my learning difficulty. A person with an intellectual wing were in for things like driving, non payment disability, from birth or soon after birth, would of council tax, non payment of court fines, and automatically have a learning difficulty. ‘Learning petty things like that. One got sent down for shop difficulty’ could mean someone who could neither lifting, and the shop lifting he done was for under read not write, had dyslexia, maybe was short- two quid – even though he had a record of shop sighed and could not see the blackboard at school, lifting. But he was given six months and had to or had a hearing difficulty. Learning disability, or serve three months, even though the prison was intellectual disability, affected about 1,500,000 overcrowded, and that’s the problem with prison: people in this country. About 200 babies were the overcrowding.’ born a week with a learning disability. Lord Corbett thanked Andrew and welcomed So there was a difference between the two which the final speaker, Lee. ‘My name’s Lee. You’ve he wanted to clear up. Training for everybody heard a lot of bad stuff but there’s a lot of good connected with people with learning disability was stuff. If it weren’t for my probation officer I’d be absolutely essential, and frankly was at a minimum serving an eight year stretch in there – prison as for all sections of the population. they call it. But like Andrew and Danny said there’s still a lot of bad things. Because I’m dyslexic I don’t Lord Corbett then introduced Andrew, who understand things. I need people to explain things began ‘My name is Andrew and I’m from Bristol. to me, and early in stages, before court. When I One of the problems that I found out when I was got to the police station, if they’d explained things in prison was the overcrowding. There are too to me, I’d be able to do what they said. I was on many people in there. They couldn’t get bail and I wasn’t allowed to go to certain houses, everybody on their literary (sic) lessons and one and I went there. I didn’t understand it because of my orders when I went to prison was that I no-one told me what it was about. So I went would have literary classes in prison and I would there, got arrested, ended up in the magistrates go for a brain scan to find out what was causing because I’d breached my bail conditions. And my illnesses. That wasn’t done because it’s luckily the judge said they should have explained it overcrowded and the staff that were there could to me, but they didn’t. People say it’s prison not even get the time or the room to get it done. officers that need training. But it’s police, the And there was a problem when it came to courts, everyone. That’s all I’ve got to say.’ canteen day. At the time I couldn’t get my canteen and do my canteen list; the fact is there was nobody who had the time to help me with it. And also my VOs (visiting orders): I missed a lot of my visiting, to visit my family down at the prison, because I couldn’t get the help to fill it out. And also help with reading letters and writing letters

54 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 55

3rd July 2007: the Parole Board for England and Wales

Professor Sir Duncan Nichol, CBE, chairman Parole Board of England & Wales

Sir Duncan Nichol thanked the group for its The most important area for us, and it is an invitation. He apologised for the absence of his increasing area of work which will dominate what advertised co-speaker, Christine Glenn, Chief we do into the future, is the work with Executive of the Parole Board. She had been indeterminate sentenced offenders, including lifers. required to give evidence at the Constitutional Particularly significant, as we look forward over Affairs Committee, and very much regretted not the next few years, is the indeterminate sentence being able to attend. He would cover briefly what for Public Protection (IPP), especially the short- Christine would have covered. tariff public protection sentence, which the courts are passing in increasing numbers. I’ll pick that up He continued: ‘The agenda we thought we would in a little more detail later. It’s the single biggest cover was firstly, our remit (with apologies to issue facing us. We have the ultimate responsibility, those who know well who we are and what we without referral to the Ministry of Justice, to do); more interestingly, I hope, the current determine release in the area of the dangerous strategic issues that we are grappling with; the indeterminately sentenced offender. We deal with operational pressures we are under, which are those cases in oral hearings chaired by our judges. very significant at the moment; and the improvements that we are seeking to make. What we are – and this is important in relation to a point I want to come on to – is a non- First, the issue of what we do: we are there to departmental public body. We report to look at the determinate sentenced offenders, the Parliament through our annual report. Our chief 4-15 year offenders, and we do that through executive is a formal accounting officer. Our paper panels. That is a workload that should be corporate business plans are approved by diminishing as the 2003 Criminal Justice Act ministers. We are now sponsored by the Ministry provision for automatic release of those offenders of Justice. We have been moved across from the kicks in. But so far we haven’t seen too much of a Home Office to our new home. We have our own reduction in that workload. internal arrangements for governance: our own board; its sub committees, and most importantly a The other work we do, which has been review committee, which is chaired by the deputy increasing dramatically, is the recall work, the chairman to the board, high court judge Neil representations against recall, and the decisions Butterfield. The review committee is there to look that we are asked to take on whether the at all the offenders who have been reconvicted on recall was justified, and whether the offender release, and have committed particularly grave and should be released immediately or at some serious offences on release. We look at every one time in the future. of them, and see what lessons there are to be

55 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 56

learned from those ‘mistakes’. We also have two Now for some of the strategic issues: the first one external pairs of eyes looking at that work with I’d like to touch upon is the legal challenges that us, so it’s not solely an internal process: Peter we face to the Board’s independence, as Neyroud, from the Police Improvement Agency, essentially a judicial body. Recent decisions, some and Steven Shaw, the Prison Service Ombudsman. stemming from the European courts, but endorsed at the Court of Appeal and the House Very briefly, the workload: the workload on oral of Lords, have clearly stated that we are a court- hearings over the last five years has gone up by like body, we are a tribunal. To all intents and 400%. It’s now at a level of 2,500 cases a year. purposes we are a court when we fulfil our The determinate sentence paper hearings have functions, in all hearings relating to the lifer and been relatively stable at 7-8,000. the IPP sentenced offenders. As such, we are facing legal challenge on the basis that until The recalls have submerged us. They were badly recently our sponsor was the Home Office. It is estimated for us in our plans. They have gone up, very difficult to argue the credibility of a position in the last few years, from 4,000 to 7,000 to 9,000 where the Home Secretary, who is party to our and we had 14,000 recalls last year. We hope that proceedings is the same person who appoints the the new Bill will make a difference to our chair and members of the Parole Board, and who workload here, because if executive release of the invites us to follow his directions and rules. non dangerous recalled offender is passed, then that will not be work that comes to us. At the So we were fighting for a new sponsor, namely moment, everything comes to us. But if we can what is now the Ministry of Justice. We got our be relieved of some of that work, we can wish to go to the Ministry of Justice, but we didn’t concentrate on the difficult work, of the resolve the problem of the perceived lack of dangerous indeterminate sentenced offender, independence. We are within the Ministry of which will play more to the strengths of the Justice but the minister is still party to our board. proceedings, exercises direct executive influence over us and appoints our members. We are at a Our membership is currently 156. It has grown particularly important watershed. What is the considerably over recent years, as has the appropriate landing place for us within the workload, which, as you can see, has gone up Ministry of Justice? dramatically. We’re looking at 24,000 cases at the moment. We have 44 judges: three high court I’m not sure this is the briefing ministers will get judges, and circuit judges. As from last year, they from civil servants, but we are going to argue that have to have either a murder or a rape ticket to we will achieve, and, as importantly, will be join us. We also have 20 or so psychiatrists and perceived to have achieved, a greater degree of psychologists, and 90 independent members. We separation from the executive and therefore a anticipate, as the workload increases, not least greater degree of judicial independence, if our from the IPP sentence over the next two or three oversight within the Ministry of Justice is in the years, that we will need to double our judge time. hands of the court system. This would be a major We will need to increase our judicial level from 44 departure for the Parole Board: a Parole Board to 78 and our expert advice from psychiatrists and which was part of the court system, with a judicial psychologists by a significant margin as well. President in place (rather than someone like myself) and closely aligned with the Lord Chief So that’s who we are, what we try to do, and how Justice. We would strongly prefer to go there, we are geared to do it. The changing face of the rather than what might appear a more automatic Parole Board is, in a nutshell, away from paper home for us, namely the new tribunal service that panels and the determinate sentenced offender to has been established. the lifer and in particular, as we go forward, the IPP sentenced offender. It seems to us that we should be part of the court system for one particular reason. That is that our

56 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 57

prime judicial function determines the liberty of because in other circumstances there would be individuals at a level of significance and importance automatic release at the half way point. He or she which separates us out from other parties within would then take off, say, four months for remand, the tribunal service. I’m well aware that the say, two months for a guilty plea, and you would Mental Health Review Tribunal is there, and of finish up with a six month ‘tariff’, with the course has a very important function in relation to potential to stay in for the rest of your life if the detained mental health patients. But we think that Parole Board thought you were still dangerous. the level of our involvement with issues of the This is difficult. liberty of the individual point us towards the courts rather than the tribunal service. And at a The difficulty particularly is: how would we know, more pragmatic level, as we move forward with in six months, whether anything had changed? our requirement for judicial time, on the back of a Clearly the judge thought the sentence should be profile which will be increasingly and indeterminate. We would read his remarks. We predominantly the release of the indeterminate would look to see whether any rehabilitative work prisoner, our requirement for guaranteed judge had been undertaken by way of a course or other time will be paramount. If we cannot lay our intervention. It is unlikely that much would have hands on guaranteed judge time we are not going been achieved in such a short time. So we would to be able to do the work. We are struggling to see the offender shortly after the sentence, with do it now, but as we look forward it is going to an no better information than had been available to impossible task without that guarantee. the judge.

If we are within the court system and aligned with We are looking for some practical help: either a the Lord Chief Justice; if we can work through the change in the policy, which would restore some Courts Service in cooperation with the circuits, increased discretion to the judiciary to interpret then hopefully we can increase our share of the sentence, or some urgent and financed steps judicial resources. The current allocation, once to steer these offenders quickly from their holding we’ve taken away the training time, is little more prison to programmes, and to training prisons. than ten days a year from our non-retired judges. We know that NOMS are looking at this. We are going to struggle unless we can get to a situation where we have a core of near full- time If I can turn now quickly to our track record on seconded circuit judges. Two from each circuit release and recall: for determinate sentence would get us off to a good start. So a core of near prisoners (4-15 years) we had settled at a release full-time – say 75% - judges, seconded to the rate of around 50%. In the aftermath of the Parole Board for a couple of years, supported by a Hanson and White inquiry and the Rice inquiry, cluster of other judges, and the retired judges our release rate for determinate sentenced who serve us well, and have more flexibility. prisoners has fallen to 35%. You will ask: what is all that about? I cannot give you a scientific answer, Now let me go back to the IPP sentence, which is other than to say that clearly our members are such a concern in terms of its repercussions for being more risk averse. We are at number three in us. We are facing a situation where it is estimated the list of reasons why the prison population has that the prison population of IPP offenders will gone up because we are now releasing at the 35% rise to 12,500 by 2012. By then the Prison Service rate. For lifers there has been a similar effect, could have a population of lifers and IPPs of although the numbers are less dramatic. From a 25,000. At the moment 50% of IPP offenders are release rate which had settled at around 20%, that sentenced to less than 30 months as their tariff rate has now dipped to about 14%. and 20% are sentenced to less than 18 months. I gather that the record recently was 28 days, for It will be very important for us to lay our hands an IPP offender. It works like this: the qualifying on good information to tell us whether those offence might not be that ‘serious’. Take the reduced release rates have had any impact on example of affray, with a conventional sentence of recall and re-offending. I cannot give you that two years. The judge would halve that sentence information, because we are at the beginning of

57 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 58

that particular analysis. But we want to know, as members, and putting them in charge of what we keenly as everybody else I am sure, whether there call intensive case management of the complex is any link. I can give you the ‘as was’ typical recall and dangerous offender cases, so that they have rates for determinate sentence prisoners. If I may stewardship of the time table and can defer cases I shall give them in terms of recall for further pre-hearing if they are not ready to be heard. It offences. Clearly offenders are recalled for a should not be such hard work. number of reasons, breach of licence, other untoward behaviour and further offending. The The dossiers should be there. And looking further offence rate from our determinate forward, we have to be able to lay our hands on sentence releases has steadied at around 6%. judge time, assuming the dossiers are there, so Perhaps the figure that causes particular public that we can hear cases to time. Thank you very interest is the reconviction rate for the lifer, much.’ broken down for grave and serious re-offending. The reconviction rate has been rising in recent years. What has been reasonably stable within the overall reconviction rate for lifers is the grave and serious reconviction rate of 1.5-2.5%. We are not complacent about that, but it is important to get matters into perspective.

The only other area I would perhaps pick out, amongst the current operational difficulties we are encountering in simply keeping up with the workload, is the key bottleneck of deferrals at hearings, running at 27%. The predominant reasons why we defer a hearing are threefold: that we are waiting for the prison or probation report, a witness can’t attend, or we are waiting for the consultant’s report.

Another 17% of pre-hearing deferrals are caused by the fact that we can’t run the panel, because we can’t get a judge. That never used to happen to us. Last year and the year before we could keep up with the pace, with the judicial resource that we had. However, increasingly the judge is just not available to us on the day.

This is a dire situation for us. We depend on the dossier. It is our life blood. Without the information, complete and timely, we cannot do our job. If the dossier does not arrive on time then we are always fighting the clock. And the dossier arrives on time (the time we are looking for is 90 working days before the hearing date) in only 30% of cases. And that is not good enough from our point of view. So we are fighting a battle here and we are having to put extraordinary measures in hand to patrol a system that is not delivering for us. We are now taking out scarce

58 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 59

16 October 2007: Jack Straw MP, Secretary of State for Justice

The Right Hon Jack Straw MP, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice

After thanking the group for its invitation, Jack the skills. The gradual raising of the participation Straw said that he would speak very briefly, rate for the 16-18 year olds is important. We’ve probably telling most of those present what they got a new bill coming in next year to make it knew already about the numbers of the prison effectively compulsory for every young person population and crime overall, then he would sit between 16 and 18 to undertake education or down and take questions and comments. training. It’s extremely important to raise the participation rate above that age, as well. He continued: “‘The overall background is that since 1997 we have been trying to follow a There is no question that overall levels of crime balanced policy on crime, disorder and the penal have some relationship to overall levels of system. Famously, this has involved being tough on inequality. Inequalities as measured by the Gini crime and tough on the causes of crime. A great coefficient shot up in the nineteen eighties and deal of work has gone into the latter, in terms of early nineties. They’ve levelled out, and gone trying to deal with the causes of crime by indirect down a tiny bit - it’s very hard to get them down but very powerful interventions, which include, significantly - even while absolute living standards critically, reducing the numbers of young people at the bottom have been increasing. But because without work, and without a hope of work. living standards at the very top have also been Instruments like the New Deal have been of increasing, it becomes for other reasons quite a profound importance, and certainly have led in my difficult issue to deal with. It’s not one we can own area, to the numbers of people under 25 who ignore, however. have been unemployed for 6 months or more dropping to almost zero. Then in terms of direct interventions, the youth justice reforms have made a very significant We have also seen big reductions for over 25s, difference. This was against the background of the although I may say there remains a very difficult 1996 Audit Commission report, which showed issue of the number of people over 25 who are that there was a shambolic system, with people outside the labour market. I’m not talking about going round and round it, caught up in processes women, let me say, but about the men who are and not in outcomes. Youth offending teams outside the labour market, who are on incapacity (YOTs), which are multi-disciplinary, have made a benefit or who, for other reasons, have withdrawn huge difference. YOTs, like other institutions, vary from it. from area to area, but where they’re working they actually work, and in my area they’ve made a huge That intervention is very important. Interventions difference. There is no question that the in terms of education are obviously of equal combined effect of these interventions has been importance, because people are much, much more powerful in terms of anti-social behaviour, which likely not to be able to get a job unless they have I’ve been personally very keen on. This is building

59 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 60

on the ’Broken Windows’ literature – which is Asian area, and the police chief was saying, and this where you intervene very early to deal with what was statistically shown as well, that whereas appears to be low level disorder. You move burglary rates in the division, covering three people away from crime, and from the collapse of boroughs not just one, used to be running at 20 or communities. 30 a night, now they were running at two or three a night. As he put it, these were ‘lower levels of The British Crime Survey (and now I do make a burglary than before Adam met Eve’. Well whether partisan point) which was established by the that’s true or not, it’s certainly true that burglary Conservatives, because they were concerned has ceased to be a really high anxiety. Of course about the unreliability of recorded crime figures there are problems, but it has made a difference. and the definitional problems, shows a 45% drop in crime since 1995, and a 35% drop in crime Now where does penal policy come into this? since 1997. There were similar drops in terms of What we have sought to do – and you folk will violence as well. have some opinions about this I’m quite clear – is first of all to beef up the way community sentences Overall, those drops are also matched by drops in operate. They were pretty ramshackle. We all have recorded crime, once you take account of the some partisan differences with our predecessors. I very significant definitional changes which I don’t criticise my immediate predecessor as home introduced in 1998 to clean up the statistics. For secretary for everything he did and I didn’t go example before that, if somebody broke into a around dismantling everything he did. But one of secure car park, and then broke into 20 vehicles, the things I actually thought was mad – and I’m it counted as one crime. It now counts as 20 perfectly happy to use that word – was to abolish crimes. After I’d moved on from being Home training for probation officers. I couldn’t have made Secretary there were also changes in national it up: it’s absolutely true. Alun Michael is here and reporting standards introduced by ACPO, which he helped me hugely with all of this. My also bumped up the reporting of crime. Once you predecessor abolished training for probation strip those out, you’ve got a very significant officers on the grounds that they could sit by Nellie reduction in crime. Paul Wiles, who is the and learn on the job. That obviously wasn’t Director of Statistics in the Home Office, made a sensible, so we restored what is actually a better recent presentation to criminal justice ministers, training system for probation officers. and went on record, as it were as an independent statistician, to say that this really was a very, very Also what was patently obvious was that the significant social change which we’d achieved. probation service varied wildly in its effectiveness. There were 54 probation services, so they didn’t Here’s a vignette from my own constituency. I do a even fit in with police divisions. So what we then series of residents’ meetings, with the chief sought to do was to get all criminal justice executive of the council, the leader of the council operations to fit within either police boundaries or and the police chief. And when I started these – multiples of police boundaries so that they work and we’re now on our 44th, we go round and together, and to establish a national probation round the town, in about 10 different locations – service to overarch this. Then, much more there was real anger about crime and disorder. recently, successors established the National The police chief brings his own local constables for Offender Management Service. This has led to a the areas, the sergeants and the inspectors who very significant change in the culture of the are responsible for those areas, and the local probation service – for the better in my view; authority and the police are very knitted up in greater consistency of standards; real focus on the terms of activity to deal with crime and disorder. prevention of offending as well as re-offending; and At the last but one meeting there was spontaneous greater effectiveness. applause for the police! I can tell you exactly where it was, it was before witnesses, I’ve read Frustratingly, it hasn’t necessarily led – although I about it in the newspaper, and it’s absolutely true. understand that sentencers are at the mercy of the It was a previously very difficult mixed white and climate to which politicians greatly contribute – to

60 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 61

such an increase in confidence in community that of course one of the differences in America is sentences that the custody rate has fallen: far from that they have ‘gas and guns’ to control prisoners. it. When I got in, the number of prisoners was We don’t have either gas or guns. They also are going up rather faster than we had cells. It shot up ready, I’m afraid, to leave vulnerable prisoners to for about 18 months and then it levelled out for the mercy of other prisoners. They have quite a about 3 years. It has gone up consistently, however, low suicide rate; they just have a very high murder since about early 2002. rate in prisons. On the walls in Texas gaols they have the legend ‘No Warning Shots’. We are not The nature of the prison population has also going to go down that route. changed. There has been an increase in the custody rate, and an increase in the length of sentence – Just to give you the figures: our custody rate, at both the nominal sentence, and the sentence 148 per 100,000, is at the top of the range of served. That has meant that the prison population European countries – not out of the range, but at has now increased by around 20,000 in the last 10 the top. The custody rate in America is 738 per yrs. Last Friday there were 81,345 people in 100,000. That’s close to one in a hundred people custody and we’re having to use about 300 police being in prison. But the custody rate for the cells. It’s around an all time high. relevant groups – first of all, mainly men (half the population), and then mainly black men, other We’ve got plans to increase prison numbers by a ethnic minorities and poor whites - means that in further 9,500. The principal driver of this has been some parts of America between one in three and the violent and sexual offenders, and other long one in two of the young male population are either term offenders, who are staying in prison for in prison or on parole. longer. There is quite a large number of people sent into prison for short sentences, too. That Crime has come down coincidentally with this doesn’t add dramatically to the numbers, but it is increase in population. But it hasn’t come down very, very labour intensive managing short sentence anything like as much as the prison population has prisoners, both in and out of prison, and in terms risen, and it has not for example led to anywhere of what they do when they’re there. near approaching our level of murder rate. There are 2.2 million people in prison in America. There are various estimates of where the prison They’ve got 5% of the world’s population. They’ve population may head. The latest medium term got 23% - getting on for a quarter- of the world’s projections are that, assuming low levels of prison population. Anyway, we’re not going there. demand, we will see a rise from where we are now Just so you know. to 82,000 next year, and to 87,000 by 2012; on the medium assumptions, from 82,500 next year to What we have got to have - and I accept my 92,000 in 2012; and on the high assumptions, from responsibilities here, and I’ve been trying to meet 83,000 next year to 96,000 by 2012. them, and I need your help too - is a more balanced debate between prison, community The difficult balance for all criminal justice ministers sentences, and straightforward punishment like is obviously to ensure that there are sufficient fines. We’ve increased the collection rate of fines, prison places to meet the current demand, and but it’s still quite hard to get magistrates courts – likely demand, for the most obvious reasons. No- and I understand this, it’s not a complaint it’s an one is going to allow a situation to take place observation, because they’ve had to work in the where prisoners are warehoused, in the obscene climate – to use fines much more. All of us want to way they are in the United States for example. You see violent, dangerous, or persistent offenders may have seen pictures of what has been going on locked up, and for a long period. They put the in California, where they have taken over a public at risk. We also want to see prisoners’ gymnasium. They have got a hundred or so behaviour being changed, as far as is possible. With prisoners packed on end to end bunks right across some that’s possible and with some it isn’t possible, this gymnasium because they had simply run out of but we have to try. We have to continue this effort space. Someone from the Prison Service said to me to identify what works and what doesn’t work.

61 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 62

We have also to draw on the United States’ experience. Even if you go down the route of locking people up for longer and longer, you do not eliminate risk in your society I’m afraid. I dare say there’s no-one here who has not personally, or whose family has not, been a victim of crime at some stage. It’s horrible if you are. You’ve got to deal with that: you’ve got to provide confidence to the public. But I’m afraid that risk exists, and you won’t eliminate it by just turning the lock in the door one way, rather than the other way as well. So that’s the dilemma. I’m going to stop there: I’d like to hear what colleagues have got to say and I’ll try to respond. ‘

62 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 63

13 November 2007: dangerous offenders: what can be achieved?

Andrew Bridges CBE, HM Chief Inspector of Probation

Andrew Bridges expressed the sense of honour It’s obvious when you say it, but it needs to be he felt at this invitation. emphasised, that of course, anyone who is not locked up is at liberty to commit a dangerous He continued: “I’ve now started my 35th offence. So our reports on how an offender was year in and around the Probation Service in both managed in the community can help to make a England and Wales, including over 5 years working future tragedy less likely, but they can never stop in various prisons, and it’s still a shock to me to one from ever happening again. find myself in venues such as this. We are very aware that it’s quite easy to be wise As an independent chief inspector I now regularly after the event, and to exercise 20/20 hindsight; produce findings, recommendations and advice. so if we are to be critical of others, we should be You, the Parliamentarian, have to decide whether clear about what it was reasonable to expect of you think I’m talking sense, and what you think them. So our question in these cases is: What should be done as a consequence of what I have could anyone have reasonably done to make this to say on this evening’s topic: “What can be terrible new crime less likely to happen? achieved with dangerous offenders?” In my capacity as an independent Crown appointment, I’m neither a spokesperson for the Well, do I need to spell out what the problem is? Government, nor for or against any opposition The newspapers, radio & TV now regularly do party either, and also certainly not for the stories about former offenders committing some Probation Service or other public bodies. Rather truly very nasty offences, sometimes following than attacking or defending any position, I aim to early release from prison. In their customary try to offer you fair comment, and talk sense, objective, balanced, and fair-minded way, based on our collective knowledge, understanding journalists want to know: “Who’s to blame?” and: and experience. “Can we see their head on a pike please?” My role is to do that on behalf of the taxpaying Since ‘heads on pikes’ are much more likely to be public, and it is in that capacity that in the next those of politicians rather than public servants it is few minutes I’ll try to offer my advice to you not surprising that politicians should take a keen about what it is reasonable to expect people to interest in this subject. achieve when working with dangerous offenders. This will include addressing the question: “What Our Inspectorate, a body that independently are these dangerous people doing out at liberty in inspects Probation and Youth Offending work in the community in any case?” England & Wales, has reported on some of these cases, and we have often been highly critical of the My theme revolves around a phrase that we have actions, or lack of action, by some of the staff used in each of the case reviews we have written. managing these cases. But you’ll notice that one thing we do not say is: “This report will ensure We’ve said: “When an offender is being managed that this tragedy will never happen again.” in the community it is simply not possible to

63 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 64

eliminate risk altogether. But the public is entitled And this inconvenient untidiness in the way we try to expect that the authorities will do their job to put people into categories is reiterated when properly; that is to say, to take all reasonable we look at who commits serious further offences action to keep to a minimum each offender’s risk or SFOs of harm to others.” Depending on what you count as an SFO, and To make that point in a slightly different way: how you count them (which keeps changing), although we are often strongly critical of where there are about 100 of the most serious SFOs – people have failed to do something it was murders and rapes etc - committed every year by reasonably possible for them to do, we won’t people under supervision in the community. Since criticise them for failing to achieve the impossible. there are nearly 200,000 offenders under But what do I mean by all that? To examine this supervision at any one time, depending again on topic in more detail, the first question I cover is: how you count them, this represents one case in “Who do we mean by ‘dangerous offenders’?” about two thousand - a tiny percentage of the There is a legal definition of what is a ‘dangerous total, but of course an appalling tragedy to the offender’ under the 2003 CJ Act, which is victim in each and every single case. important to a Court when passing a sentence. But I won’t be using that as the reference-point Nationally there’s now a line drawn near one end for explaining what, away from a Court setting of that spectrum I’ve been describing, so that and in day to day messy reality, it is possible for about 7% of all sentenced offenders are classified Probation and Youth Offending practitioners and as high or very high risk of harm to others. This their partners to achieve. 7% of offenders are nearly three times more likely to commit an SFO (as you might expect), so In recent years I have been hearing an implicit but accordingly they commit about 20% of all serious clear broad political consensus around the idea further offences. that we should take a twin-track approach to sentencing. And that is: “We’ll keep the dangerous But of course that still leaves the other 80% of all offenders locked up, to protect the public, but not SFOs, & logically these are being committed by clog up our prisons with the other offenders, the offenders who have been classified as medium or ones who don’t need to be there.” low risk of harm to others. I’ll emphasise here that in most cases these assessments are accurate This sounds reasonable doesn’t it? If we just – but the fact is that dangerous offences can be locked up the dangerous ones until they’re safe committed at any time by any one of a wide range we wouldn’t have this problem in the first place. of people. So although more dangerous offences All we need the authorities to do is, by careful are going to be committed by this 7% of people assessment, to spot all the dangerous offenders, who have done this kind of thing before, many the ones in the red hats so to speak, and put dangerous offences are going to be committed by them over there – and keep them locked up. those whose record doesn’t predict it. Then we can have the others, in green hats so to speak, over there – and we can treat them more There’s a similarity between this work and what creatively. insurance companies do. You can make predictions about percentages of groups of people from within But as soon as I say that, you know that it isn’t a particular risk group – but it’s next to impossible like that, is it? In reality, each and every offender to make a prediction about individuals. is individual and different. There is a whole spectrum of dangerousness, of shades of brown if I’ll spare you the rest of my analogy comparing you like, between the extreme red at this end and risk assessments of offenders with insurance, but the extreme green at that end. In reality, there is, I’ll complete my answer at this point to that fair first, an almost infinite variety of degrees and starting question: mixes of risk of harm to others presented by different offenders. Secondly, the potential for “Couldn’t we just keep locked up the most many of these to do harm to others goes up and dangerous offenders? Wouldn’t that keep the down at different times. public safe?”

64 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 65

Well, returning to those 100 or so very serious As with the other cases I just mentioned, we were further offences committed each year by people highly critical of the management of one particular under current supervision in the community, we case there, which we think should have been know that only about 20 out of these 100 were much better managed. committed by the offenders assessed as being in the group of High or Very High Risk of Harm to Yet we also said then that we were not going to others. criticise people for “failing to achieve the impossible”. Having criticised that one particular So if, for the sake of argument, we could lock up case, we found that in the other cases in that for ever all the High or Very High Risk of Harm inquiry staff had achieved the possible, managing offenders, we would: the cases to a satisfactory standard – they had a) have to keep locked up each year some achieved the possible. 15,000 more people than we do now, and b) by this means prevent about 20 out of the So why did we need to labour the point that we 100 most serious SFOs per year, still were not criticising people for failing to achieve leaving the other 80 or so really terrible the impossible? Let’s look at that innocuous SFOs unprevented. phrase I used a moment or two ago, about an This draconian locking-up option is in theory an offender being “under supervision”. available option, but it is very costly, and of very limited benefit. At one time ‘probation’ used to be a period of time during which the offender was to ‘prove’ him But, whether we were to adopt it or not, we or herself, while out in the community, instead of would still have to consider what we can expect undergoing a sentence. But over the last thirty or to be achieved with the dangerous offenders – more years, the language people used gradually indeed with any offenders – who are not locked evolved from the offender being “on probation” up, for whatever reason, but who are under to being “under supervision” – because there supervision in the community. What is achievable were other Orders & Licences as well as with them? Probation Orders.

As an Inspectorate we write about 100 reports of As part of this subtle change, which began in the various kinds each year (and largely unnoticed), 1980s or even earlier - before probation formally but for reasons we can all understand it is our became a sentence in its own right, people started occasional reports on individual cases, cases saying “I am supervising him, I am monitoring where an offender under supervision has him”. It was as if the responsibility had somehow committed an extremely distressing crime, that moved, from the offender’s responsibility to our reports attract public attention. behave properly, to the officer’s responsibility for the offender’s behaviour. We do not hold back from criticising severely in the cases where we consider that officials have In the probation and youth offending world we not done their job properly; such as in the cases have got used to the idea of people emphasising of: the contribution being made to protecting the • Peter Williams, the Nottingham City Youth public by means of “close supervision and Offending Team case in the murder of the monitoring”. It is starting to sound as if jeweller Marion Bates; supervision in the community is like prison in the • Damien Hanson and Elliot White, who community. murdered the banker John Monckton • Anthony Rice, the lifer who murdered But supervision in the community can’t possibly be Naomi Bryant. prison in the community – you are either locked up or you’re not. So, has the language we’ve been These all made headlines and raised using led people to expect too much? Rightly, understandable public concern. There was also many of us talk of public protection, but does it public concern following the Panorama give the impression that it is more than it is? Or programme on the hostels in Bristol a year ago. indeed more than it possibly can be?

65 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 66

I thought that the people who made the Panorama • Have the relevant authorities done their programme last year made a fair point when they job properly? said that general talk of “close supervision and • With each individual case, have the right monitoring of offenders” can give a misleading things been done in the right way with the impression to the general public of what is being right person at the right time? done on their behalf. Having said that, the • Has the right individualised service been programme makers went on to capitalise on that provided? misguided expectation by implying that it was • And, in particular, in terms of public scandalous that offenders were not being followed protection, has all reasonable action been around in person 24 hours a day. This is hardly a taken to keep to a minimum each reasonable expectation, as soon as you think offender’s risk of harm to others? about it. Thus, in an individual case review, we can tell you Clearly it is not helpful for anyone to make it sound whether the work was done well enough or not, as if community supervision is like ‘prison in the and in an inspection we can tell you how often the community’, which it plainly is not. We shouldn’t work was done well enough. imply that it is more than it is. Instead, it may be helpful to confirm that when an offender receives a In summary, I’ve been saying that it is wrong to community sentence, or is released from a custodial expect public servants to achieve the impossible, sentence, the offender is ‘Not Locked up, but is but it is right to expect them to do the possible; Subject to Rules’ ( which was the title of the report do their job properly; do their job well enough. we wrote on the Panorama inquiry) That’s why the advice I offer you now, in the strongest possible terms, is as follows. For those People who are not locked up obviously have the occasions when you hear that an offender has means and ability to commit offences in the committed a terrible crime, while ‘not locked up, community. The officers who supervise offenders but subject to rules’, and perhaps – dare I say - are by no means necessarily failing to do their jobs you start to feel a lazy soundbite ‘coming on’, it is properly if such offenders take the opportunities entirely wrong to start your thoughts or your available to them to reoffend. But officers would be pronouncements with the assumption that there failing to do their jobs properly if they didn’t enforce has been a failure by an official – any more than the set rules as they should do, or if they didn’t take you would immediately say the referee was to all reasonable action to keep to a minimum the blame when a player commits some appalling foul offender’s risk of harm to others. on a pitch.

So let me confirm here one more time that But it is entirely reasonable for you to ask: Have probation supervision cannot achieve the impossible, the officials been doing their job properly? Was and it is not a substitute for locking-up. It is for when there anything that they could reasonably have you want to try and achieve something with an done that would have made this less likely to have offender other than by locking them up. If, in a happened? particular case, a proper decision has been made that the offender is, at this point, not, or no longer, to be And if you want advice about what it was locked up, then you should expect the authorities to reasonable to expect in a particular case, then do all they can with each case to punish, help, change please ask this Inspectorate. We provide and control that individual – as is appropriate to that independent authoritative assessment and advice individual case. on matters such as this, and we do it cheaply and swiftly too. We advise you what was achievable And that’s what the Inspectorate assesses on your in a particular case, or set of cases, and whether behalf. Whether we are carrying out an inspection in that was achieved. a probation area or in a youth offending team, or whether we’re reviewing an individual case where a I look forward to hearing more from you’. terrible further crime has been committed, in essence we’re assessing the same thing:

66 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 67

4 December 2007: young people who offend

Sukhvinder Kaur Stubbs, chief executive, Barrow Cadbury Trust Lucie Russell, director, SmartJustice Darren and Kerry: young people who have served prison sentences

Lord Corbett introduced the panel of speakers. He The Prime Minister gave a commitment in the was delighted to welcome them all, particularly Labour Party manifesto of 2001 to tackle re- Sukhvinder Stubbs, chief executive of the Barrow offending of young people, but not much has Cadbury Trust which generously funded the happened since then. The Carter report is due to secretariat for this all-party group. come out tomorrow, and the recommendations He invited Lucie Russell, Director of SmartJustice, form the Corston review will be coming out on to begin. Lucie outlined the order of speakers: she Thursday. We are hoping that positive things will would set the scene, Kerry would speak about her be said about those groups. own experiences of being an offender and how she A third of the whole prison population is under 25. had got through that, Sukhvinder would speak We know less about the 20-25 year old age group next, then Darren, an ex-offender, now a because they are in adult prisons. But I want to professional actor, would conclude. Lucie explained give you some statistics about 18-20 year olds. that Smart justice, based at PRT, campaigned for and There are nine and a half thousand 18-20 year olds promoted community solutions to crime. in prison and in the last 10 years the number entering prison has increased by 14 %. The Lucie Russell continued: “What we are imprisonment of young women has more than doing specifically tonight is looking at young people in doubled in that time. transition to adulthood. We are talking about older teenagers, people from 18 to 20 years old, those Why has this happened? Mainly because who are held in young offender institutions before sentencing has got harsher, as has the political and they have to go to adult prisons. This group are the media climate, in terms of the way we deal with most prolific and persistent of all the offenders in the young offenders. The chief inspector of prisons in prison system. They have a wide variety of very her last annual report said:’ Young adults remain a complex needs, which are not being focused on, group whose needs have not been systematically whether in prison or out of prison. The problem addressed, despite their evident needs and a high with ignoring or not dealing with these people is that re-offending rate’. we are creating the old lags of the future. If we don’t 75% of all the 18-20 year-olds who end up in deal with people at this age, or before, they will end prison are reconvicted within two years of release up going round and round the prison system and - and that’s just the ones who are caught. So prison committing more crime. So it is not just about being is really a university of crime for many of these concerned about them. It’s a public safety issue. young people. It costs just under £51,000 a year to

67 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 68

lock up any one of these young offenders. So you 15 I went to a youth offender unit. It was alright could say it’s an expensive way of making them there: it didn’t have strict searches or anything like worse. It doesn’t work, and that’s why we’re all so that. concerned about it, and why the public need to be concerned as well. Then when I was 16 to 17 I started going to prison. The first prison I went to was Eastwood Park. It was Who are these people? Well, three quarters of them horrible. They wanted to strip search me. I refused. were excluded from school, and over a third of them They said: If you don’t take your clothes off, we will have basic skills deficits – issues with reading, writing have to get people in here to take your clothes off. and numeracy. 63% of them were unemployed at the So I refused more: it was taking my dignity away, time of arrest. Many have learning disabilities, and everything I had. So they took my clothes off about three quarters of them have mental health or anyway, while males were standing there. And it felt drug and alcohol problems. Many of them have what like I didn’t have a choice. So they took my clothes we call dual diagnosis: that’s to say alcohol and anyway, I had a shower, and I was thrown into a mental health problems or drugs and mental health cell. I was very violent by this time, after what they problems. Ethnic minorities are highly did to me. No-one listened. I felt: ‘If you’re not overrepresented in this 18-20 year old group. going to listen to me I’m going to cause more So what we’re doing here is manufacturing this trouble’. social failure. This is an issue that starts very early So eventually I went to Holloway prison, where they on. Not dealing with it is both very expensive and shove you in a room with about 8 girls. It was very ineffective. We believe that if there were fewer horrible, you share the same loo, which was young people in prison then we could do more with disgusting, it smelled. Then eventually I was released the ones who really need to be there. from there, and then I went back to prison again, Would the public buy this? Numerous polls have for nine months – I had to do four months – for found that the public are not as punitive as the assaulting a copper. He was giving me mouth so I media make them out to be. We did a poll last year gave him mouth and then I got violent with him. with Victim Support which showed that 80% of I’ve been out of trouble for two years now, and I’m victims of crime wanted better supervision of young at work. I came off probation for something I did people by their parents, and 83% wanted more two years ago – lying in court – and that’s all I can constructive activities for young people. The say, really. I’m just getting on with my life now. I’m a support is out there for change. I do lots of media better person than I used to be. I’m not violent. work: there is a general consensus that prison People just look at me and they think: ‘Look at her, doesn’t work. What we want are long term scum-bag, no-one’s going to listen to her. You don’t strategies and the political will to implement them’. work. You’re not getting a job because you’re a Lord Corbett thanked Lucie Russell and thief. Would you just hurry up and die?’ introduced the next speaker, Kerry, an ex-offender. Most people don’t want to listen to you because Kerry began: “Basically I started getting into you’re a criminal. You don’t get a second chance. But trouble when I was ten. I felt that I was an outsider it’s different if you do talk to people with respect. in my own home, with my Mum and Dad. So at the I’ve proved myself. That’s all I can say basically’. age of 12 I decided to run away, and take drugs, Lord Corbett thanked Kerry very much for her smash people’s windows, get into fights with school, contribution and introduced Sukhvinder Stubbs. and be violent to people. Sukhvinder Stubbs began: ‘Sadly, Kerry’s At the age of 13 or 14 I was taken to a special experience is not uncommon. Despite the school. That’s a place where young people go for overwhelming evidence that suggests that the safety issues. So I went there and I thought: I like current system is inefficient and ineffective – this - getting meals, getting clothes, and people evidence accepted by the most hard-nosed of talking to me. And then eventually I came out of business people – it is still not seen to be there and I started hanging around with big gangs, inappropriate or deemed unacceptable within getting into trouble with them, getting done by the government. A couple of weeks ago I was with a police. The police never had any respect for me, so I number of leading business people, including Sir didn’t have any respect for them. Once when I was Michael Rake, chairman of BT, and we visited

68 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 69

projects in prisons and talked to some young people. we are working with bodies like IPPR to identify The business men and women were shocked by the political strategies that can try to get the message costs of keeping young people in prisons, but also across that the current approach is punitive and shocked by how far prisons have moved away from impractical, as our overcrowded prisons show. The any notion of rehabilitation. ‘lock–‘em-up’ approach is simply not viable. So with the support of PRT and Smart Justice and many It is these stories of inefficiency and ineffectiveness others working in the field, we are also trying to within the system that the Barrow Cadbury Trust work on and influence public attitudes. raised in the report we published a couple of years ago now. The report, called Lost in Transition, But we also want to work on political attitudes as featured 18 months of deliberation by 13 well. Government must not drag its heels in this independent commissioners, covering leading area. There is an opportunity now to forge a more academics in the field, civil servants, policy officials progressive approach overall in terms of the justice and those with first hand experience of the system. system, and also an opportunity to explore It was highly acclaimed, with strong support from incremental change. We have heard that the Baroness Scotland, who was the Home Office Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill and other Minister at the time. The recommendations reports, are being debated. The sorts of issues highlighted how the criminal justice system should that might be challenged include the 16-hour rule, be reformed to reduce re-offending amongst young delays between getting the discharge grant and people. It recognised the transition between receiving benefit and disclosure of convictions to adolescence and adulthood and said that this needed potential employers. I am happy to say more about to be supported by a seamless justice system, rather points during questions. than the current two-tier system that effectively We are calling for a progressive approach that th abandons people on their 18 birthday leaving the supports vulnerable young people in custody, that most vulnerable young people unsupported and facilitates the perilous journey from chaotic young liable to re-offend. lives to responsible adulthood, and that enables Despite the efforts of Patricia Scotland and her team young people to desist from crime’. a couple of years ago, very little seems to have Lord Corbett thanked Sukhvinder Stubbs very changed since then. We are aware of good practice in much for an admirably timed contribution. He then some prisons, and in parts of the system, but it is introduced the final speaker, Darren, a former fragmented and discontinuous, which means that offender and now a professional actor. young people are left with a lottery. The support that Darren began: “I served three years in they get is very much determined by whichever prison for possession of class A drugs with intent to institution they are sent to, and whatever benefits supply –heroin and crack cocaine. I started selling they might be fortunate enough to receive as a result. drugs from the age of 14 and I sold drugs for at least So the Barrow Cadbury Trust is embarking on an six years before being caught by the police and sent ambitious project to establish ‘Transition to Adulthood’ to prison. I’ll talk first about why I got involved and pilot teams across the country. We are looking started to sell drugs. I grew up in Hackney and there initially at three areas, possibility expanding to five wasn’t really much going on. I went to school in areas, and trying to work with officials in those Westminster and the contrast was quite stark. I was areas, to knit together the youth offending teams going to Westminster and seeing a whole different and the probation teams, the crime and disorder life and coming back to Hackney, which was quite partnerships, the criminal justice boards and other run down and under privileged. After-school local service providers to provide a wraparound activities were non existent. I was a teenager, and I service for these youngsters, rather than leaving was brought up with just my Mum and my sister. them at the mercy of the very different and It was difficult growing up. It was hard for Mum: disparate systems. she had to work to support the two of us. My We are looking to ensure that these pilots are Dad wasn’t around. I wanted to help in some way, embedded within government thinking, rather than and obviously I chose the wrong way to go about remaining some sort of add-on or nice piece of doing that. My role models at the time were work that gets tagged on at the end. Alongside that, people older than me, who were selling drugs on

69 INSIDES KP.qxp 15/04/2008 09:01 Page 70

the estate and doing crime. I didn’t have a father see the glamour and the success. They don’t see figure, or anyone else around me, to tell me right how he got there. They don’t see the hard work. from wrong, and what I could aspire to be. I didn’t There’s nobody around to tell them that he trains have any inspiration around me. I went with my seven days a week, he does hour after hour of surroundings, and what was available to me at the training to become who he is. They just want it time, and that was the people who were older than ‘like that’. And the only way they think they can get me, telling me ‘You can come and do this, come there is by selling drugs and doing crime to get this and sell drugs’. money quick. But that’s not the case. As a young kid, your eyes are open to the glitter I think there are role models around, and I believe and the glamour of life, and I’m seeing white now I can be one of them. I’ve got the experience. trainers and fancy cars, jewellery and all that, and I’ve been through a lot, I’ve been through prison, I stupidly I wanted to be involved in it. I think that know about the prison system. I’m out now, I’m a goes for a lot of kids these days who are getting professional actor, and I’m artistic director of a involved in that sort of thing because they don’t theatre company. I do workshops with young kids know any better. Getting involved in drugs led to at risk of offending. And still it’s almost impossible much more serious things, too. Drugs are serious, for me to get funding to do it. and a very big problem in this country. But I That is part of the problem as well. There are a lot became involved in gangs, in guns and knives. I’ve of people who can communicate with young probably lost eight friends to guns. people intellectually, but in reality they can’t do it. I I’m not sure if any of you are familiar with this, but can do it. Because if I was faced with a young kid there is a territory war going on between Hackney now with a gun in his hand, looking to blow and Tottenham, east and north London. I was right somebody’s head off, I would know what to say to in the centre of that. I was involved for about six him, to put that gun down. Because I’ve been years, from when it started, and I still know people there: I know what it leads to. I know how he who are involved in it now and it’s a very difficult probably got there. So I understand him thing to get out of. These people were like my It’s not just me. There are a lot of people out family. They offered me security, and I got respect there, a lot of ex-offenders who are in that from that, from where I grew up. People were position to be able to rehabilitate these young kids afraid of me, because I had this whole gang of – or even to prevent it from starting in the first people around me. They are not really your friends place, because we understand them. I know for a but they give you that security, that strength to fact that I do. It’s about understanding the intimidate people. individual. You can’t just say ‘we need new So I got involved in gun crime. That’s a big criminal educational programmes’. You need to understand network that expands. Maybe some of you know the problem first, and the problem is the people. I about it. It gets really out of control, and there are know it’s easy to say that. There are a lot of some really serious people involved in it. There are offenders, a lot of people in prison, a lot of people other people involved in these activities who don’t committing crimes. It’s probably impossible to find wish to be involved, and want a way out, but they the resources to target individuals and really get to can’t find one. I was lucky that I found a way out. It the root of the problem. But I think that’s what wasn’t because of prison. Something happened in needs to be done. prison that ultimately changed me but I think it started inside me, myself. To be honest with you, things can change. Prison I haven’t got long and there are a lot of things I can work, because when people go to prison, want to touch on. I think one of the most rehabilitation starts then, straight away. You get important points is that there’s a lack of role caught and you think: ‘Oh my God I want to models for kids these days. There are role models, change’. You don’t know what’s ahead of you. You but they are not realistic. There’s this ‘quick fix’ have that vulnerability about you. But ironically attitude in this country, which is a delusion. The when you get inside the prison the rehabilitation young kids grow up looking at Thierry Henry, a stops: because it offers absolutely nothing.’ famous football player for Arsenal, and they only

70 ALL-PARTY PARLIAMENTARY GROUP ON ALL-PARTY PARLIAMENTARY GROUP ON PENAL AFFAIRS PENAL AFFAIRS CRISES IN CRIMINAL JUSTICE