Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200
- 219)
TUESDAY 27 JANUARY 1997
MR PETER
COAD, MR
DAVID FRASER
AND PROFESSOR
KEN PEASE
OBE
200. What do you say to the argument, that comes
in part from the Prison Service, quite apart from any dangerous
liberals who may be on the outside, that if you increased dramatically
the prison population you would reduce the possibility of prisoners
being encouraged to use their time in prison constructively, because
the Prison Service simply could not cope?
(Mr Coad) The thing is that, while we have limited
resources, if there is a choice of what you are going to do with
people who are recidivists, almost whatever the conditions in
prison, tough, they have got to put up with that. Everybody that
goes to prison volunteers to go there, they are not compelled
to commit crime. If they decide to commit an imprisonable offence
and go to prison, I really do not care too much if they have a
colour television set and a quota of a couple of pints of beer
every day while they are in prison; my main concern is that they
are not out victimising the rest of society. I would like much
more education in prison, many more rehabilitation facilities,
we already have the Probation Service in there, I would be very
happy if that was expanded, but my priority attitude to the question
is, if things are not perfect in prison they should be improved,
but I would not stop sending people to prison because of it.
201. I think the argument is, and perhaps Mr
Fraser might want to address this, that if you took the prison
population up to something in the region of 200,000 you would
overwhelm the existing facilities, and that any suggestion of
rehabilitation would disappear. Is that a price worth paying?
(Mr Fraser) Yes, if I am cornered, yes, it is, because
the alternative is untold misery for millions of people on the
outside, and this is a problem which has really, in our view,
not been given a sufficient platform, and it provides the fuel
really for much of the arguments that we have pursued over the
last few years. The alternative, if we do not put persistent offenders
in prison, let us be clear that what we are talking about are
offenders who have been given countless chances to reform, we
are not talking about putting people away immediately but people
who have been round the alternative sentence tariff many times,
now there comes a point—
202. But I thought you were not talking about
that, I thought you were talking about perhaps giving one chance
and then—
(Mr Fraser) No, I am referring to the situation as
it is now. The problem that exists now is that persistent offenders
go round the alternative tariff many times, and that is the scenario
I was thinking of when I said that. And if it means that the only
way to stop these people, having given them several chances to
reform, is to lock them up then so be it, whatever the conditions.
But, having said that, I would share Mr Coad's view that we must
make conditions in prison as civilised and as safe as possible,
of course we must.
203. And so, when they did eventually come out,
and I think we accept that most of them would do, do you think
they would be more or less likely to reoffend, when they did?
(Mr Fraser) My answer to that would be, that would
be up to them. I think that, if I may refer to the anti-prison
lobby again, they have captured the minds of the general public
concerning this and other issues, so much so that when people
come out of prison it is spoken about as if it is an absolute
truth that the reason they are committing more crimes when they
come out of prison is because they have been in prison. There
is no support for this whatsoever. If a person commits more crime
when he is released from prison he does so because he decides
to do so. There is a huge amount at the moment, let me just take
the situation at the moment, if I may, although I know you are
speaking of a possible situation of putting 200,000 or 300,000
people in; at the moment, for example, there is a huge rehabilitative
effort that goes on in most English prisons, I am sure in all
English prisons, to give every chance to the recidivist, persistent
offender, a chance to go straight. He is provided with a number
of very interesting programmes which he can run, a sentence plan
is individually tailored for him, individually tailored, if he
is doing over a year's sentence. Generous financial grants are
given to him, if he needs it. He is given free taxi fares and
free train fares to the place he wishes to go. A great deal is
put in to making sure that that person has the best possible route
to go straight. If he continues to commit crime he does it because
he chooses to, it is not because he has been in prison.
204. I understand that point, but, of course,
all those things that you have just listed would have to go by
the board if you trebled the prison population, would they not,
realistically, and you accept that is likely, do you not?
(Mr Fraser) Yes, some of them would; some of the programmes
probably would have to be sacrificed, yes. But I guess that the
financial arrangements for getting them home and the liaison arrangements
with their families would continue, that would not be affected.
Mr Winnick
205. Persistent offenders, obviously one would
imagine the courts would send them to prison, as the position
is now, and there are others, a first offence, where a custodial
sentence is the obvious one, and one need not give illustrations,
but that is not really your point of view, is it? What you are
saying, if you had your way, if penal policy was framed according
to what you are advocating, is that, unless it is a drunk, or
what have you, there should be, more or less, an immediate prison
sentence, because otherwise it is all part of the anti-prison
propaganda?
(Mr Fraser) No; no, we are not saying that. If I have
understood your point correctly, we are not saying that. Our position
is, and has always been, that it is right to give an offender
a first and second and maybe a third chance, that this is the
way a civilised country deals with the people who offend against
it, it does not respond in a harsh way at the beginning, but it
is perfectly right to pursue what is a fair-minded and a reasonable
way forward, and if someone offends and breaks the law but we
give them, perhaps, if the circumstances are appropriate, a first,
second, even a third, or even a fourth chance, that has been our
position. But we are saying that, having been given, and the evidence
makes this abundantly clear this is what is happening, numerous
chances to reform, every possible help to go straight, if they
continue to commit offending, which they do, which the people
on probation do, which the people on community services do, the
evidence is very clear on that, there comes a point when, to protect
the public, you must do something else, and the only thing left
is to lock them up, because we cannot justify causing misery to
more people.
206. But Mr Coad's paper, Alternatives to Prison,
said in early days probation was mainly for drunks or minor offenders.
Clearly, the impression there is that is precisely what the Probation
Service should continue to be, as it was in 1907?
(Mr Coad) I would not go back quite that way because
I also, further on in the paper, recognise that the convention
of very minor offenders was changed over the years, and from about
the 1940s, 1950s, more serious offenders were placed on probation.
I do not want to go back right as far as that, that was at the
beginning of the Probation Service, that was how it officially
started in 1907.
207. So you were in agreement that it should
be extended to others than drunks and minor offenders?
(Mr Coad) I would agree with what David Fraser has
said, that I think that, almost any offence, as long as it was
not an extremely serious one, like rape, murder, and whatever,
people should be given two, three, four, I always feel that I
am arguing against myself when I say four, but it is not an exact
science. As we do not feel that we belong to the traditionally-called
"hanging and flogging" brigade, that is not our position
at all; we want compassion to be shown even to persistent offenders,
even the ones that we want to send to prison. We do not want just
to simply dump them there like a dustbin but we want at least
to give society a chance to have a breathing space from their
persistent offending.
Mr Howarth
208. Going back to what David Fraser was saying
about rehabilitation and the fact that each individual prisoner
has a properly laid-out programme of rehabilitation, and going
back to what Professor Pease was saying in his submission to us
about the importance of rehabilitation and how that was perhaps
downgraded in the 1980s, if that is part of the answer, why is
it that it is not reflected in the reconviction rates of people
coming out of prison?
(Mr Fraser) I would go back to what I said to Mr Winnick,
that we must ask the individual offender, "Why is it, having
been in this prison and experienced so many different classes,
why is it, having had a plan that has been made for you, where
we have liaised very carefully with the outside probation officer,
to whom you have made various promises, why is it that you have
broken them all?", let us ask him. That is my answer to that.
Mr Howarth: Can I then go on to say, this is
perhaps a bit of a wider question, Chairman, if the numbers who,
in your view, ought to be in prison today are 300,000, against
50,000, in round figures—
Chairman
209. I think, 200,000 was what Mr Fraser said,
is it?
(Mr Fraser) Possibly.
Chairman: As a starting-point.
Mr Howarth
210. A five- or six-fold increase on the present
prison population. To what do you ascribe this increase in criminal
activity? Perhaps I might ask Ken Pease, as he is the Professor
of Criminology. To what do you ascribe this really dramatic increase
in criminal activity over a period of 40 years?
(Professor Pease) One fact about the last 40 years
has been that at each stage the system has become less severe,
and as the proportion of people detected, the proportion of those
detected who have been charged, the proportion of those charged
convicted, and so on, so all the indices have operated to reduce
the impact of the system. So if you wanted to say that the crime
increase of the last 40 years has been in the face of increasing
benevolence and activity in the criminal justice system that would
be difficult to sustain because of this reduction in the impact
and the penetration of the system into the thing. Can I also say,
the things that are taken for granted are things that do contribute
to crime, sorry I should say these things. First of all, the things
that drive the rate of crime are various, clearly, it has been
shown in this country that the GDP per head co-varies with property
crime, and, inversely, violent crime operates the other way round;
so the economy is clearly an engine of crime. Over and above that,
of course, is a margin of crime which is dealable with through
the criminal justice process, so I think that is important. The
way in which the system is operated has become less severe over
the last 50 years, during the period when crime has risen, and
also there have been various things enshrined in the way the criminal
justice system operates which are clearly crime-generating. I
do not agree totally with the gents about the effects of prison.
One thing that we do know is that prison crowding and prison size,
which is the overlooked one, relate to the increased probability
of reconviction relative to expectation. Now prison size is one
that Governments over the last 50 years have totally ignored.
We still, until recently, are building prisons the size of Bulgarian
prisons, where we know that the ones that have no such effect
are in northern Europe and The Netherlands, and so on. So, in
other words, there is a bit of physician heal thyself here, that
the way things have operated over the last 50 years have conspired
to make things as they are now.
211. So what you are saying is that new prisons
should be smaller units?
(Professor Pease) Such new prisons as exist should
be small units and certainly should not be crowded, because there
is a difference between small and large prisons, there is a difference
between crowded and uncrowded units, in the probability of reconviction
after release.
Chairman
212. But that is not practical, is it, given
that the other logical outcome of what you are arguing, I think
Mr Coad is agreeing with me, is that there is going to be quite
a large increase, possibly three or four times the existing prison
population, if you do not have big prisons; how can you do without
them?
(Professor Pease) The Committee has been driven by
the 200,000, 300,000 estimates of the future prison population.
213. But they come from you, from your side
of the table anyway?
(Professor Pease) They came from my side of the table.
I do agree with the thrust of it, but I think there are more sophisticated
ways of looking at it than that. For example, we are talking either
about collective incapacitation or selective incapacitation, and
there is a variety of things, some police forces up and down the
country are now operating them, so as to target prolific offenders
specifically. And it seems to me that the increased sentence for
identified prolific offenders in that sort of way is justifiable,
and I personally think you can get away with it with an awful
lot less increase in the prison population in the longer term.
214. What figure would you envisage?
(Professor Pease) If you gave prison to the people
who were most prolific, I think you could probably operate a 20,
30 per cent reduction in crime with the present prison population,
and a further 10 per cent with an increase of 10,000 or 20,000
thereafter.
215. I am just trying to get at a ballpark figure
for what I think Mr Fraser said, 200,000, a figure of 300,000
was touched on tentatively, in your evidence, but I appreciate
you are not really wanting to be bound by that, but what figure
would you say, Professor Pease?
(Professor Pease) I understand how you are going about
this, and please allow me a caveat before giving the direct
answer. The direct answer is plus 10,000 from what we have got
now, but the crime reduction effects of that will be optimised
only by making prolific offenders those who suffer the rigours
of the system more than they now do, both in terms of the targeting,
both in terms of the recognition by the Crown Prosecution Service
of prolific offending as a characteristic of continuation in that.
And so there is a variety of, if you like, levers in the system
throughout that you could operate to generate a crime-reductive
effect with, say, plus 10,000 from the present system.
216. That is quite a large difference between
you, if you will forgive me saying so?
(Professor Pease) The thing I agree with my colleagues
about, and it is the central thrust of their argument, is that
the atmosphere, the ambience, of our culture operates to fail
to give prison its fair due, that is absolutely true, and it occurs
in subtle ways, it occurs in criminological literature, it occurs
in the way in which decisions are made, and the rhetoric. For
example, the funding by the Home Office of NACRO to provide criticism
which will put the Home Office under pressure to make changes
which NACRO want. It is that kind of one-sidedness that I think
is really important to this.
217. We have identified a bit of a difference
between the two witnesses. Now the 10,000 that you envisage, increase,
is actually likely to be reached, at present rates of progress,
within the next year or two, is it not, assuming no changes in
policy, because we are nearly at this golden number?
(Professor Pease) We are, but, the tariff ratios,
it operates against the imprisonment of the people who are the
most prolific. Let me also say that if sentence was served as
pronounced now then there would be a prison population of 100,000,
because if you look at the sentencing practice over the last year
and you see what that actually means, of course, prison population
does not manifest itself until some years after the sentencing
practice which gave rise to it, because of the lengthy sentences,
and so on. But we are not only there, the courts are now well
past that point.
218. Is it possible, actually, that the situation
that you are criticising in your evidence is something that applied
four or five years ago and that the sort of changes that you favour
have begun to be applied in the last three or four years, with
a resulting fairly large increase in the prison population? Is
that fair?
(Professor Pease) Mr Coad probably is the best person
to answer that.
(Mr Coad) I want to actually clarify—
219. Mr Coad, just clarify that question and
then you can clarify anything else you wish after that. Is it
possible that we are really talking about the situation addressed
in your evidence and the very strong criticisms you make of an
anti-prison culture is a historical situation, and that three
or four years ago the tide began to turn in the direction in which
you want it to turn, with the resulting increase in prison population?
(Professor Pease) I believe so, but inefficiently
and partially.
(Mr Coad) The thing about the 300,000, projected by
a criminologist, is that if throughout the sixties, seventies,
eighties and nineties they had maintained the 1950s attitude to
sentencing, it would have reached 300,000. But had they continued
a more sensible sentencing pattern it probably would not have
needed to have reached 300,000. I would just like to reassure
Ken that we believe in smaller units and better prison units.
What we are saying is that if they do not exist that is no reason
to stop sending persistent criminals to prison. That is as simple
as that.
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