| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
4.51 pm
Mr. Chris Mullin (Sunderland, South): The interest of the Select Committee on Home Affairs in alternatives to prison arose from the single stark fact that, when we commenced our inquiry, the prison population appeared to be escalating out of control. It had risen from 43,000 in March 1993 to 65,000 in March this year, and was at that time predicted to rise to more than 80,000 in the next seven years.
A point had been reached when much of the undoubted progress of the past 20 years--in terms of providing constructive regimes, ending three to a cell and detaining convicted prisoners in police stations--was in jeopardy. We were moving back towards regimes that simply warehoused prisoners, rather than making any serious attempt to rehabilitate them or persuade them to confront their offending behaviour. Those in charge of the Prison Service were telling anyone who cared to listen that, if the prison population continued to rise at that rate, serious problems lay ahead.
So great was the concern among serious people that there came a moment during a debate in the House of Lords when three former Conservative Home Secretaries--the noble Lords Carr, Baker and Hurd, none of whom can be dismissed as a namby-pamby do-gooder--combined to challenge the then accepted wisdom that prison works. We took our cue from them.
For the avoidance of doubt, I must make it clear from the outset that none of us on the Select Committee is under any illusion about the need for prisons. All of us have constituents whose lives have been made miserable by crime. Some of us, particularly those who represent the less leafy areas of the country, have entire neighbourhoods devastated by criminal activity. We recognise that there are people--persistent criminals and
those who engage in serious violence--for whom prison is the only appropriate solution. Nothing in our report is intended to suggest otherwise. I cannot stress that too strongly.
It would be foolish, however, not to recognise that the "prison works" philosophy has serious limitations. First, it is expensive. It costs an average of £24,000 a year to detain an adult prisoner, and double that to imprison a juvenile. It is arguable that the same amount of money invested differently could, in some cases, be spent a great deal more effectively to reduce reoffending among at least some of those now imprisoned.
Secondly, although prison self-evidently works as a form of containment, there is the difficulty that the overwhelming majority of prisoners will eventually be released back into the community, where a disappointingly high number of them simply pick up where they left off.
The point was eloquently made by the noble Lord Baker in the debate in the House of Lords to which I referred:
That was the background to our inquiry. Our purpose was to discover whether credible alternatives to imprisonment existed that were both sufficiently rigorous and at least as successful--and preferably more--in rehabilitating offenders.
Those from whom we took evidence included representatives of the Prison Service, the police and the probation service. We saw the Lord Chief Justice, the Magistrates Association, Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons and the inspectorate of probation as well as representatives of voluntary agencies that work with offenders, in and out of prison.
I was anxious that those who take the view that prison works should be given an opportunity to state their case. We therefore took written and oral evidence from Mr. Peter Coad and Mr. David Fraser, retired senior probation officers, and Professor Ken Pease, a criminologist. In addition, we visited a variety of probation and other projects around the country in search of examples of best practice that we could commend. We visited projects in Manchester, Greenock, Dumbarton, Bolton, Burnley, Tyneside, Teesside, Blackburn, London and the Thames valley.
With two exceptions, all those witnesses who expressed a view argued that the present prison population was too large and that ways should be found of reducing it. The exceptions were the Police Superintendents Association and Mr. Peter Coad and his colleagues. They argued that the fall in crime in recent years could be ascribed wholly or mainly to increased use of imprisonment.
Mr. Coad and his colleagues went further, and argued that the reoffending rates for most, if not all, of those on probation or serving a community service order were as bad as or worse than the rates for those who had served a prison sentence. They alleged that the probation service had for many years misled Parliament and the public about the effectiveness of their work, and advocated an increase in the prison population to whatever level was necessary to protect the public from criminality. Mr. Coad and Mr. Fraser told us that that would entail a prison population of 200,000, "to begin with".
Professor Pease, sensing perhaps that Mr. Coad had been a little too frank, hastily suggested a further increase of no more than 10,000--a figure which on present trends will soon be exceeded. At that point, I felt--I believe that I speak for the entire Committee--that their evidence fell apart. We unanimously rejected the suggestion that a prison population of 200,000--three times the existing record level--was either feasible or desirable.
Although prison has some impact, I do not accept that the recent fall in crime can be solely, or even mainly, attributed to the rise in the prison population. There are a variety of factors. One is a general improvement in the quality of policing, which is certainly the case in Sunderland. Another, and surely the most significant, is the fact that unemployment has fallen by 40 per cent. over the past five years.
With the possible exception of the previous Home Secretary, I do not know anyone who believes that there is no connection between unemployment and crime, although that is obviously not the only connection. Hon. Members who represent areas such as mine and those represented by many of my right hon. and hon. Friends would have had to drop off a Christmas tree from a great height not to notice a connection between unemployment and crime.
Having said that, there is a significant respect in which the Committee found itself in agreement with the analysis of Mr. Coad and his colleagues. There is no doubt--Her Majesty's inspector of probation acknowledged this--that the probation service went through a period some years ago when many probation officers came to regard the offender, not the taxpayer, as their client. I am glad that those days are behind us, but I cannot stress too strongly that, if a sceptical public are to be convinced that there are credible alternatives to imprisonment, they will also need to be persuaded that those who supervise offenders in the community have their interests--not those of the offender--in the forefront of their minds.
Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot):
I am grateful to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee for giving way on that matter. Mr. Peter Coad indeed made the case that, given the number of offences that had been committed, 200,000 people should be locked up. I had some sympathy with some of the points that he was making. However, in the Government's response to our report, which was published this week, the Home Secretary said:
Mr. Mullin:
Yes. The burden of our report, to which the hon. Gentleman subscribes--it was approved
The hon. Gentleman will have heard me say a moment ago that there was one significant respect in which the Committee found itself in agreement with Mr. Coad's analysis: it is the point that I made a moment ago about the past role of the probation service.
Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington):
When we were going around the country and talking to sentencers, it soon became obvious that very few of them had sufficient knowledge of the alternatives to prison--even of schemes in their areas that have turned people away from reoffending and shown them how their lives could be worth while. That shows that, where there is knowledge and belief, the schemes are extremely valuable. We are not talking about allowing people to walk away from the court because they are not sent to prison.
"It was a mistake of the previous government to believe that just one phrase--'prison works'--was necessary. The phrase has a spurious and superficial logic. It is superficial because if a criminal is in prison, clearly he cannot be committing crime outside. It is spurious because it does not take into account . . . the fact that 99.9 per cent. of all criminals will one day be released. Society will then find that prisons do not work."--[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 March 1998; Vol. 587, c. 1244.]
If we are to stand any chance of reforming those whom it is necessary to imprison, it is essential that we construct regimes where prisoners are obliged to confront their offending behaviour, and that we do not simply use our prisons as warehouses. That cannot be done if the efforts of the Prison Service to provide constructive regimes are simply overwhelmed by the need to cope with ever-increasing numbers.
"It is for the courts to decide the appropriate sentence in any individual case . . . The Prison Service then has a duty to keep in custody those sentenced to prison."
If the courts decide that a custodial sentence is required, and that 200,000 people fit that bill, will the Prison Service not have to provide those places?
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |