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Mr. Matthew Banks: Which institution was this?

Mr. Carlile: Brinsford. I took a group of foreign lawyers and criminologists--some of whom came from tough sentencing regimes--there and they were shocked by what they saw. A number of lay magistrates to whom I have spoken and who have visited that institution were also shocked by what they saw. Physically, the site is fine. It is brand new, clean and tidy. But the regime there is not designed in any way to ensure that the young people who emerge are qualified to do much more than use more drugs, commit more burglaries and beat up more people in the streets.

Lady Olga Maitland: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that there is a very developed education programme in the Prison Service, and that many young prisoners are almost illiterate when they arrive in prison because they have spent their lives in crime or playing truant? The education programme gives them the opportunity to learn to read and write, and to start taking public examinations. Many of the prisoners go on to take degrees, and I have come across one person taking a PhD. There is a well-developed education programme, and I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will pay tribute to it.

Mr. Carlile: There are not many young offenders on short sentences who are taking PhDs, but I would certainly praise the literacy schemes which are in use in Brinsford and in other young offenders institutions. I visited Liverpool prison not long ago, and there have been dramatic improvements there, particularly in the way in which the literacy scheme has been promulgated. The take-up of the scheme has increased as a result. But I urge the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland)--whose strong views may sometimes cloud her judgment--to go and look at more of these institutions. I am sure that she has visited some of them, but she should go to more and make an objective judgment as to whether the people emerging from them are more or less likely to commit crime in the future. The statistics suggest that they are more likely to commit crime in the future.

Mr. Michael: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman find it ironic that support for the prison education service should come from Conservative Back-Bench Members, when the squeeze on the finances of prisons is leading to the education service being ripped out of many prisons? Would it not be a good idea for the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) to press the Home Secretary to end that disgraceful policy?

Mr. Carlile: The point is well made, and I urge the hon. Lady to press the Home Secretary to ensure that the education service in prisons is increased. There have been some succesful partnerships between local further education colleges and prisons, which have been an improvement on the old prison education system. That

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has been introduced by the Government, and of course I recognise that. But there is an awful lot more work to be done.

Prisons can be thought to be useful in cases where they are the exact opposite. The Coopers and Lybrand study-- to which the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth referred--seems to demonstrate that teaching people to read and giving them useful skills before they go to a young offenders institution will achieve much more than any prison regime could.

The probation service has been mentioned, and it is a truism that if all that a probation officer achieves in a year is to keep one young person out of prison for that year, he will have paid for his own salary and earned a profit for the country. The same, of course, goes for police constables on the beat. Value for money is not found in prisons--value for money is ensuring that people do not go to prison, and ensuring that ordinary law-abiding citizens are able to walk the streets in the knowledge that there is justice and security for the public.

Another aspect of the utility of prisons that I wish to mention relates to women. There has been a worrying increase in the number of women in prison--a rise of 40 per cent. in the past two years. During 1994, the number of women in prison reached its highest level ever. The concern is heightened by the fact that the rise in the number of women in prison is closely related to fine default and to drugs, and is also connected with poverty. Many of that group of women who are often the butt of criticism--women who have been left alone to bring up children--suffer poverty, which can bring them into crime. Evidence obtained by the probation service suggests that poverty is a very strong element in the admission of women to prison, even to the extent of involving women in drugs and prostitution.

National standards in writing pre-sentence reports has brought about a remarkable improvement in the reports. I have read many reports, and the change has been dramatic. The reports are more realistic than they used to be, and they give the courts a more realistic picture of the background of the person concerned and why he or she has become involved in crime.

I urge the Government to ensure, in reviewing the utility of prison--which of course has an important part to play in the sentencing system--that the issue of why more women are going inside is studied. Having visited men's and women's prisons--I hope I will not be thought to be making a sexist point, as that is not my intention-- I would say that, in my judgment, women's prisons on the whole are much more frightening places than men's prisons. The level of tension which one experiences in the atmosphere in a women's prison can be extreme. I doubt very much if women's prisons are achieving even what men's prisons are achieving.

The final point I would make on the issue is that many people who come before the courts are psychologically disturbed, some seriously. This is often due to a connection with drugs. Some of the present psychiatric services are excellent. Where there are drug withdrawal schemes, they are extremely successful, but they are by no means ubiquitous and the standards need to be addressed, with the aspiration of achieving the best everywhere.

I applaud those who decided to give us the opportunity to debate these important issues. As I said earlier, they make bad politics. They are too important

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for slogans and political headlines. I hope that by the end of the debate we will have shed more light than heat on our concerns.

12.10 pm

Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough and Horncastle): I want primarily to discuss the issue raised by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) of rehabilitation in prisons, but, first, I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister. He is aware that Lincolnshire Members of Parliament have been pounding on his door throughout the year, complaining about the financial settlement for their local police force. On behalf of Lincolnshire police and Lincolnshire Members of Parliament--I am the only one present today--I thank my right hon. Friend for treating us with enormous courtesy. He listened carefully to our concerns, especially on the sparsity factor, and he then met them. We could not have possibly asked for a better settlement. He has increased funding by 3.4 per cent.-- £1.9 billion--over the year. The people of Lincolnshire will be grateful to him for his decision.

As the Minister said, there will be 32 more police officers in Lincolnshire than there were in 1979. The chief constable estimates that the numbers will rise by a further seven by the end of the financial year. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and I thank him for what he has done.

Knowing that I hoped to speak in the debate, I telephoned the chief constable yesterday. I hope that the House will forgive me for making a local point. It is interesting to note what has been achieved by Operation Christmas Cracker in Lincolnshire. It has one of the smaller police forces, yet 77 premises were searched, 34 people arrested and 16 people charged, which shows that the operation has been a considerable success. Property recovered includes electrical equipment, jewellery, tools, car radios, alloy wheels, motor vehicles, antique paintings, sports clothing, cheque books, benefit books, computer equipment and vehicle documents.

The chief constable told me an interesting little fact. Thanks to the efforts of my right hon. Friend the Minister and our right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, recorded crime in Lincolnshire has dropped by 7 per cent. over the past year, with burglary and vehicle crimes dropping by 4 per cent. However, a report from Lincolnshire police on rural crime shows that despite the overall reduction of 6 per cent. this year to date-- 1 January to 30 September--there has been a 3 per cent. increase in rural areas. The report says that a number of issues are involved, and that a lack of resources outside urban areas, displacement of crime due to CCTV and the large geographical area of the county may be significant.

My right hon. Friend should take that message as a warning. He represents a large rural constituency, as I do. In these debates, where we concentrate on the major problem of urban crime, it is easy to forget the rural areas. We should highlight them. I will not weary the House with all that the Lincolnshire police have told me, but clearly a great deal of work needs to be done, such as setting up more neighbourhood and farm watch schemes. There are 54 farm watches in Lincolnshire, covering almost 1,000 farms, but as the police make clear, that is but a small number because the farming communities are, by nature, isolationist. They do not want to work together, but they must do so--and in co-operation with the local police--if we are to deal with rural crime.

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