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Overseas Development Co-operation
Mr. Hugh Bayley accordingly presented a Bill to amend the Overseas Development and Co-operation Act 1980: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 14 February, and to be printed [Bill 70].
Crime (Sentences) Bill
Question again proposed.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse):
I remind the House that with this we are discussing new clause 13--Court to be aware of provision in custody for certain dependent offenders--
Mr. Clive Soley (Hammersmith):
When this debate was adjourned on Monday, I was speaking about the need to consider the needs of people when we imprison them. I was critical of the Minister and of the Government for having no concept of the purpose of prison. I am pleased that the debate was adjourned, because today I was supported, in effect, by none other than the previous Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd), who said this morning on the Radio Four "Today" programme that we needed to think more carefully about what we were doing with prisons. He said that prison was an expensive way of making bad people worse.
I am frequently impressed--or, if you like, amazed--by the way in which the Government go in for all sorts of tough language about crime. They say that they are going to lock people up, and the Home Secretary's favourite phrase is, "If they don't want to do the time, they shouldn't do the crime." The Government seem to believe that, if they come out with such politically correct statements and throw a lot of public money at the problem by building more and more prisons, somehow or other crime will go away. It does not, and cannot, work like that.
We are wasting a vast sum of public money on building prisons that will not deter crime. When the Government discover that they will appease neither the tabloids nor members of the public who seem to think that more and more prisons are the answer, capital punishment will be reintroduced, as has happened in the United States. That also does not work.
To give the Home Secretary credit, he has made it clear that he does not support the reintroduction of capital punishment--not least because, if a person is wrongfully convicted, we cannot undo the damage once that person has been executed--but the Government are still not thinking about the purpose of prison. We lock people up without any concept of treatment.
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I was addressing new clause 13, which deals with drugs and alcohol. It was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), and states that we need to be able to show courts what prisons or other penal institutions can offer people who are sentenced, so that the court will know. I gave a number of examples, citing in particular an alcoholic with whom I had worked many years ago as a probation officer, and the difficulty even then of securing appropriate treatment programmes in prison. There were some, but not enough. As I said on Monday, there were many more facilities for such people outside prison.
Sadly, a large number of those facilities have now gone. As the Minister conceded on Monday, the Government must now recognise that, if we acknowledge that the majority of those committed to prison have a history of alcohol or drug abuse--that does not necessarily mean that they are addicted to drugs or alcohol; it merely means that alcohol or drug abuse plays a part in the commission of their offences--it is surely time that we thought about the problem in a rather more sophisticated way, and took the action towards which we were moving in the 1970s.
We should try to assess every prisoner on the basis of his needs, so that we can produce a treatment programme for prisoners that at least attempts to make some use of their time in prison. At present, we are still locking people up without any real concept of what we are doing, other than keeping them off the streets for a time.
We are tending to institutionalise people, so that the only thing they learn in prison is how to live in an institution. It should be no surprise to us that, when people are fully institutionalised, they cannot survive outside for long: they commit other offences, and return to prison--or, in many cases, to hospitals of one kind or another, including psychiatric hospitals. We know that from years of research in this and other countries.
Could the Minister not see his way to asking each prison to produce for the courts that refer to them the treatment facilities that they can offer prisoners, especially those with a history of drink or drug problems? I stress that I am not just talking about the full-blown alcoholic; I am talking about the sort of person who appears all too often in prisons and in court, who, in response to fairly peremptory questioning, will say that, before he committed the offence, he had a few pints with his mates. That is a common picture--the fairly low-level offender who offends quite frequently after going out drinking late at night and then wandering the streets. His offence may be car theft, criminal damage or burglary, but he will end up in prison.
We know that that is a problem, and we know that such people are more at risk when they have been drinking. That does not necessarily mean that they will not offend when they have not been drinking, but they are much more likely to do so when they have. If we could do something to help them to cope with the problem, we might make more progress.
The Government have, after all, conceded that anger management programmes and the like are useful in prison, although there is a limit to what such programmes can achieve. Surely, if we acknowledge the usefulness of those programmes, we should acknowledge the usefulness of treating alcohol and drug abuse, which has a much
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It is not just a matter of having a good drug unit in a prison--as we do--or, indeed, a good alcohol unit. Some prisons have outstanding records in such treatment programmes. My point is that there is a low level of alcohol and drug abuse that we are not addressing. It is, at best, addressed from time to time by small group therapy sessions in prisons, depending on the availability of skilled prison officers, probation officers or visiting psychiatrists who can lay on such programmes. We are not dealing with the problem in a serious way.
That is why, in Monday's debate, I was so critical of the Minister. I wanted him to say, "Yes, we will devise a programme in which every prisoner, when he or she enters prison, is assessed in a more sophisticated and thorough manner for such problems." The current programme is too superficial.
Each prison should examine its staff resources to determine what they can offer people with drug and alcohol problems. The same programme could not be offered in every prison, but I should hope that some prisons would develop skills in dealing with prisoners with certain types of problem.
We should be prepared to consider moving people around the prison system for that purpose, although I understand the difficulties involved in doing so--such as keeping prisoners near their homes to maintain home links. Nevertheless, we could develop a much more sophisticated policy in offering prisoners treatment, rather than continuing the absurd approach of simply locking up criminals, throwing away the key and hoping that that will solve the crime problem.
I remind the Minister that, although the Home Secretary thinks that he is riding a wave of public opinion in favour of tough sentencing, such waves do not last. In 1979, the Tory party came to power with a strong commitment to get tough on crime and to lock up people. The short, sharp shock was the idea of the day. Lord Whitelaw, who was the Home Secretary after the 1979 general election, came in talking about such a shock; however, within a year or two, the policy had been abandoned, because the Government discovered that it did not work.
After the failure of that policy, successive Conservative Home Secretaries were accused within the Conservative party of being too soft on crime. The right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Hurd), a previous Home Secretary--who has now taken up a position with the Prison Reform Trust; I welcome the appointment--was one of the Home Secretaries criticised for being too soft on crime.
The current Home Secretary says that he will get tough on crime, lock up criminals, throw away the key and build splendid new prisons, at a cost of millions of pounds. However, it is only a matter of time before he discovers that that is the most appalling waste of public money and that it will only delay the onset of further offending, by keeping people off the streets for a short time and then releasing them with as many problems as they had before, if not more.
'It shall be the duty of the Secretary of State to make available to any court passing a custodial sentence upon any offender whom the court believes to be dependent on drugs or alcohol an assessment of the provision available in any prison or other custodial institution to which the offender is liable to be committed of facilities for providing treatment appropriate to his condition.'.
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