House of Commons Hansard Debates for 20 Jan 1997 (pt 22)

7.15 pm

Complaints have been expressed over the years about attitudes to prisoners. I know that some feel that prison staff have come in for much unjust criticism. We also hear from prisoners and ex-prisoners that they felt the regime to be too harsh. We should consider that and look into the day-to-day conduct of prison life.

We have talked about public safety. It is important to remember that we are not saying that someone who is a danger to public safety should be freed, but a bail application should be granted for those who are safe to be let out. I find it fantastic that we even have to argue the case, because we have all heard of rapists and others who were a danger to society being let out on bail and allowed to roam about, yet a woman who has not paid a fine is considered too great a danger to society to be allowed out.

With so few women in Scotland having served a gaol sentence, it should not be difficult to research these questions and decide on the best approach. What offences should land people in gaol? In what circumstances should bail be granted? Are we certain that there is fair treatment between the sexes for offenders? The narrow research base should make it simple to carry out that work and ensure that the system is truly just to women offenders in Scotland.

Mrs. Adams: I support new clause 9 and hope that the Government will seriously consider what my hon. Friends have said. It is clear that not nearly as many women commit crimes as their male counterparts. Someone once said to me that if there were no men, the world would be a crime-free place full of fat, happy women. That might well be true. Women are certainly not as oriented towards committing crime, but statistics in England show that they appear to be treated more harshly than men for the same crimes. I hope that the Minister will seriously consider treating women differently in the prison and criminal justice systems.

The Minister may argue that treating women differently would be discrimination in their favour. I make no apology for asking him to do that, because women behave differently from men. When they break the law, it tends to be trivial, or at least non-violent, offences. They tend not to commit violent offences, and when they do, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Ms Squire) said, it is often in circumstances in which there has been a great deal of domestic violence, resulting in the woman eventually breaking and retaliating for the first time, frequently after many years of abuse.

Women in prison tend to be there on minor charges, often, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) and others have pointed out, for defaulting on fines on trivial issues such as television licences.

In such cases, not only the women concerned but their families are often affected. It is inhumane to punish women to such an extent, but it is also uneconomical. Women are being imprisoned, usually for some weeks,

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for minor crimes such as defaulting on a £100 fine for failing to pay for a television licence. We may have to keep such women in prison for two or three months, and, moreover, we may have to support their families. Children often have to be taken into care, and the need for support frequently does not end when a woman is released and the family are back together.

Ms Rachel Squire: I support what my hon. Friend says. Some years ago, I had to deal with a family in which the mother of three children had been given a prison sentence. Tremendous efforts were made to ensure that the children could continue to live in the community, with full support from the social services, while awaiting their mother's eventual release. Fortunately, one of the children was 16 years old at the time. As my hon. Friend has said, support was also needed after the mother's release. This important matter needs to be taken fully into account.

Mrs. Adams: I agree.

Families often enter a vicious circle that they cannot break. The children as well as the mother are in the system and cannot escape from it, and that frequently leads to their committing offences in future. Such a system is not economical. It does not do society any good, and it certainly does not do the women involved any good.

Women prisoners often come from difficult backgrounds, and what they have done may relate to their particular circumstances. Many more women with psychological problems are in prison than we would expect, and many are dependent on drugs--not only illegal but prescribed drugs to which they have become addicted. We are not helping such women; we are simply locking them up.

We know that women do not do well in prison. They often do less well than men. I wonder whether that is because the woman in a family is often the responsible person--the person who looks after the household accounts, and runs the domestic side. In locking up such women, we are not only shutting them away from their families but taking all their responsibilities from them. Women often find it difficult to cope with that.

The Minister must look carefully at new clause 9. He must obtain social background reports on women who enter the prison system, and note the number of women prisoners who have been imprisoned for trivial, minor offences such as fine default. I know that, in some instances, he has tried to address the issue, but I do not think that we are currently going far enough.

We should treat women prisoners differently from their male counterparts. They are usually in prison for very different reasons, and the circumstances that landed them there are usually very different. We should not be locking up non-violent women who have committed minor offences, sometimes creating the spiral that leads whole families into not just the social work system but the criminal justice system.

Mr. McAllion: No doubt the Minister will argue--as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) suggested--that one of the objections to the new clause is that it relates only to women prisoners. No doubt he will say that suicides occur in men's prisons as well, and of course he is right, but I agree with my hon. Friend that women are far more likely than men to turn violence against themselves.

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Before I became a Member of Parliament, I spent a number of years as a teacher in a list D school in Dundee, which looked after young male offenders. In fact, the boys were aged up to 16, so perhaps they were not as young as all that. I can recall no occasion on which any of the young inmates turned violence against himself rather than the other boys--or, indeed, the staff, including me on a number of occasions. On one famous occasion, a bowl of hot soup was thrown over me.

Towards the end of my time at that school, I was transferred for some of the week to work in a list D school for girls. It was obvious to me immediately that the girls at that school--Balgay in Dundee--were prone to trying to cut their wrists and push their wrists through windows in an attempt to communicate their problems to those around them. Anyone who works with young offenders, or in the Prison Service itself, could describe such behaviour to the Minister, and I am sure that for a long time he has been advised that women prisoners are much more likely to damage themselves and commit suicide. I hope that he will take that into consideration in his reply.

Back in February 1996--at least according to a Government White Paper--random mandatory testing for drugs was introduced in Cornton Vale. That was another of the great ideas that the Secretary of State for Scotland has from time to time to show that he is a tough guy when it comes to law and order. I am sure that he sees himself as a Jimmy Cagney figure, sorting out the bad guys throughout Scotland; but most people in Scotland see him as a Baldrick figure from "Blackadder Goes Forth". Not only is he small, and not only does he look like Baldrick, but he clearly has "cunning plans" which never come off.

This plan certainly did not come off. Nearly a year later, the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service tried to explain the spate of suicides that had taken place at Cornton Vale in the following terms: the cause, he said, was the higher rate of drug-taking by women prisoners, and the breakdown of their life style. There we have it--yet another Government initiative that has not worked. Once again, the Government are trying to respond to a crisis that was created because they had not the foresight to deal with the circumstances that were to lead to that crisis in the longer term.

When the Secretary of State for Scotland made a statement to the House on 16 January saying what he intended to do about the crisis at Cornton Vale, he made it in the form of a written answer--as is fairly usual among Scottish Office Ministers nowadays--rather than laying himself open to questions from Scottish Opposition Members. He opened that statement by saying:

"The care of prisoners and the prevention of suicide in prisoners are operational matters for the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service".

There we have it again--the right hon. Gentleman trying to distance himself from any responsibility for what may be going on in Scottish prisons, and saying, "It is nothing to do with me, guv; it is down to the chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service. If there is anything wrong, it is his fault, not mine." That is a despicable attitude for Ministers of the Crown to take, particularly given that the chief executive, unlike hon. Members, cannot answer back to the Minister concerned and hold him to account.

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Most of us would have no problem with the actual measures set out in the written answer. The right hon. Gentleman refers to

"new arrangements for the induction of remand prisoners."

That is a good idea. More time out of the cell for prisoners in Cornton Vale is another good idea. He also refers to