Examination of Witness (Questions 600
- 613)
TUESDAY 10 MARCH 1998
SIR DAVID
RAMSBOTHAM, GCB, CBE
600. And it is rather important, is it not,
that it is not an additional prison sentence, because otherwise
we shall end up with increasing the prison population even more,
shall we not?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) No. Indeed, you could say,
as a way out, that when you have done so many years, "Right,
okay, rather than going on home leave, we will send you to weekend
prison." There are plenty of people now who are going on
working in the community during the week and coming back into
prison at weekends because of the restrictions made by the last
Home Secretary. That is not weekend prison. They are actually
in prison but they go and work out of prison during the day.
601. That is the same principle really, is it
not?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) Yes. Working at Latchmere House,
if you have ever been there, at the edge of Richmond Park, they
are the ones who are pioneering the working in the community.
As they say, in fact it is costing them a great deal of money.
Originally they used to let people go out for the weekend. Now
they have to have staff in because they are not allowed to let
them out at weekends, so they have pretty accurate estimates of
what staff costings may be to provide weekend imprisonment.
Mr Winnick
602. To get it quite clear, Sir David, apropos
of what you replied to the Chairman, in some cases it would be
a custodial sentence, in the proper way, at the weekend; but in
the main, as I understood it, in reply to questions from me, you
see it as being a sentence whereby they go in at the weekends?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) That is right.
603. And keep their jobs.
(Sir David Ramsbotham) Keep their job. Keep their
home. Keep their family going but disappear at weekends.
Mr Winnick: I take the point entirely.
Chairman: May we now turn to the relationship
between the Prison and Probation Services. Mr Cranston.
Mr Cranston
604. You touched on this when you told us about
the work you are doing with lifers on the Probation Service. What
is your impression of the way the two services work together and
how do you think they might work more effectively together?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) I think it is patchy. As you
know, there are two types of probation support given to prisons.
There is the probation staff who work in prisons, who are on contract
to the Prison Service. Now, they have been subjected to cuts by
the Prison Service, not by the Probation Service. Those have been
cuts merely because there is not enough money to pay for what
they do. I think that is thoroughly unfortunate. I see in prison
after prison shortages of probation staff, which means that they
cannot do the work with prisoners, particularly in the run-up
to release.
605. Is everyone who is going to be released,
do they meet a probation officer?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) They should do.
606. But they do not at present?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) No. I will come on to other
bits of this. They should do but all too frequently this does
not happen. If you have two probation officers trying to cover
a prison of 600 people, there is no way they can get round everybody
as they should. Now what happened about this was that last year
the Chief Inspector of Probation published a report of the working
of the contracts in prisons, as far as it affected the Probation
Service. It was a very good historical record of what had happened,
but I not think it was tough enough about what should happen.
I believe that there should be a formal contract signed by the
prison governor with the Prison Service saying, "That is
what you are to do for my prisoners." The other thing the
probation staff do is work with prison staff and the psychology
staff; they conduct offending behaviour programmes in prisons.
If you find in a prison that you have a probation officer in charge
of what they call throughcare—that is, all work that is
done—there is no doubt at all that throughcare is better
done in the prison, if it is led by probation officers, because
they are used to looking broadly at all the other agencies.
607. What sort of work is done with throughcare?
Is that the sort of programme you were talking about earlier?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) Exactly. It is everything which
is done in prison. Personally, what I would like to see: there
is a framework document, which is signed between the Prison and
Probation Services, which lays down what throughcare means. I
think the sentence plan, which is made at the start of a prisoner's
sentence in prison, should be binding on both the Prison and the
Probation Services for the period of the sentence. It should describe
the work that should be done in custody. Then the work that should
be done on the part in licence. That then prepares the Probation
Service for what is happening, particularly at the time of crossover
when a person is leaving. It is very important that the probation
officer, who is going to look after them in the community, be
involved with the prison in which the prisoner is serving; to
get to know him or her and start the process of integrating them.
Similarly, I would like to see the personal officer in prison
who has been looking after the prisoner, get involved in the first
few months after release, because he is the one person on whom
the prisoner has been hanging and relying. If you are going to
help them into the community that should be allowed. That introduces
the second part of the Probation Service, which is the local Probation
Service in the part of the country into which the prisoner is
going to be released. This is a real problem because you will
find probation officers who will tell you that, for instance,
in Hereford and Worcester, the Probation Service have got prisoners
in over 60 prisons. It is an impossible burden on the Probation
Service to go to visit all these people and check that everything
is well. However, there is a classic example of that which is
working extremely well. This is up in West Yorkshire at a prison
called Wealstun, where the West Yorkshire Probation Service are
working very closely with prisoners, many of whom come from West
Yorkshire, and therefore are helping them out into the community.
This is what I see ought to be developed much more.
608. You are talking about tighter contracts?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) Yes.
609. You are talking about locating prisoners
in areas where they are going to be released?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) Yes.
610. Apart from the resources, what else might
be done?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) There is a lot of talk, at
the moment, on the Prison Probation Board of actually merging
the two services together into some form of correction service.
611. Do you support that?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) I do, yes. There is a precursor
to that, which has got to be that the Probation Service must be
made a national but not a regional service, otherwise it will
not work. It has to be as national as the Prison Service. Then
I would like to see another follow-on from that. The criminal
justice system is riddled with different boundaries. There are
local government boundaries, police boundaries, probation boundaries,
prison boundaries, area criminal justice co-ordinating council
boundaries, and so on. I know the Home Secretary is desperately
keen to make the criminal justice boundaries co-terminous. From
the prison point of view it does not matter. You can group prisons.
You can re-ro®le prisons. You can do anything you like. But
it is terribly important that the probation boundaries are co-terminous,
particularly for the people who are doing the work in prisons
to be linked to the people doing the work out of prison. At the
moment that is not happening.
612. Apart from the administrative changes and
the resource changes, what about the actual substance of the programmes?
Do you have any impression of them? Do you think they should be
different?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) No, I do not think they should
be different at all. One of the things that there ought to be,
particularly in offending behaviour treatment, is consistency.
There is absolutely no reason why the Prison and Probation Services
in prison and outside should not use the same programme at all.
No reason at all. For drug treatment there is absolutely no reason
why drug treatment in prison should not be exactly the same as
outside, so that when somebody comes out he continues with what
he is doing. You confuse him and put back the process if you change
it.
613. Can I take you back to something you were
talking about earlier, relating to the restriction on long temporary
release after mid 1995. What sort of effects has that had? Obviously
it has meant that more people are there in prison, but is there
anything else you would like to comment on?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) Particularly the allowing of
people to work outside has had a very large effect on the regimes
in young offender institutions. For example, a lot of them used
to go and work in the community, where it is much easier to do
something to educate them about the need to look after their victim
or think about them, if they are out in the community doing something.
Also, something which I am personally very keen on, is outward
bound challenging training, which used to happen in prisons. It
has had to stop because they are not allowed to go out for weekend
nights away or out in the mountains challenging themselves. This
is not necessarily a prison regime but it is character building.
It is trying to put right some the things that have not happened
to them before. It is interesting that the new trial regime at
Thorn Cross in Cheshire, the high intensity training scheme which
the last Government introduced, includes adventure training very
early on in the programme. This is because the self-esteem, the
self-respect which is built up from that, is a very important
weapon in encouraging them to go forward. I think, particularly
for people on long sentences, we are finding a problem that they
cannot go out and do work and they cannot go out on release. I
found a chap the other day who was about to go out after being
in 57 prisons in the last seventeen years. He had been moved round
the merry-go-round and he was going straight from the segregation
unit into the community. I think that is totally wrong. It is
totally wrong for the prisoner. It is totally wrong for society.
We have to get a system which does insist that there is a period
of trial; getting them into the community under control before
they go out. If they fail, it may well be that you have to think
of extending the sentence, but not doing it is wrong.
Mr Cranston: Thank you very much.
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