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Mr. Mullin: The Committee recommended only that the Government consider weekend prisons, because the idea has serious logistical problems.
Mr. Russell: The Chairman of the Committee is correct, and that is borne out in the report and the Government's response. No one is saying that weekend prisons are an easy solution, but the Government should undertake a pilot scheme based on the suggestions from the chief inspector of prisons. Some of those who receive short prison sentences lose their jobs as a result. Their families then require housing and other benefits and, on release, the former prisoners often have difficulty finding work, with the consequence that they and their dependants continue to draw benefits. The public purse loses all round, and society has an ex-prisoner who may be tempted back into criminal ways.
As an alternative to full-time prison, someone who it is felt should still receive a short custodial sentence could be ordered to serve it at weekends, when his or her loss of liberty would arguably be most keenly felt. In that way, the individual could keep working and paying his or her way in the community. A criminal who might otherwise be gaoled
for 28 days, could be sentenced to serve 14 weekends from Friday evening to Sunday teatime, undertaking rehabilitation, retraining, environmental projects or other constructive activities under the auspices of the Prison Service. Most people would regard the loss of 14 weekends as more of a punishment than serving 28 days consecutively.
Our overcrowded prisons are universities of crime. Prisoners are locked up for hours on end with opportunities for education, work, rehabilitation and recreation periods reduced because of past spending cuts. The consequence is that many prisoners return to society better trained as criminals than when they went to gaol. More leave prison addicted to drugs, and more leave with AIDS than arrived with it. Prison suicides have increased. There have been 74 self-inflicted deaths this year--more than in each of the past three years. Does the Minister think that prison is the right place for the estimated 28,000 prisoners who suffer from mental health or drugs problems?
The amount of what is called purposeful activity provided for prisoners has fallen to less than 24 hours a week on average. What plans does the Minister have to reverse the cuts? Does he agree that one of the best ways to reduce reoffending is to develop constructive regimes in prisons, with the focus on rehabilitation, retraining, education and work? Will he give an assurance that, after years of cuts by the previous Government, the probation service will be given the necessary resources for the critical role that it has to play?
Up to 90,000 offenders are released from custody into the community every year. Some 53 per cent. are reconvicted within two years, but the figure for young offenders is 75 per cent. and for juveniles, 89 per cent. The alternatives to prison sentences advanced by the Home Affairs Committee would result in fewer people going to gaol in the first place, and I am confident that they would lead to less reoffending.
The most effective long-term alternative to prison sentences is for the Government to adopt an holistic approach, especially to young people. Some 50 per cent. of known offenders are under 21, and 70 per cent. of adult offenders were convicted of a criminal offence before they were 21. The knowledge that most of those in prison committed their first offence before their 21st birthday makes it imperative that measures are taken to prevent youngsters from taking those first steps on the criminal ladder.
To target youth crime, however, we need to do more than deal with the situation when it arises, which is a classic example of looking at a situation in isolation. Slicing up life into compartments is a recipe for creating conditions in which criminal activity will result. An obvious example is housing. Bad housing is not an excuse for criminal activity--some of the worst criminals come from wealthy backgrounds--but poor housing can provide a breeding environment for criminal activity. More needs to be done to improve the nation's housing provision.
Does the Minister feel that his crusade to reduce the number of prisoners is helped when the Department for Education and Employment, and others, concentrate on demanding ever higher academic standards, without appreciating that many youngsters need greater
encouragement in non-academic areas? We need to give equal importance to the different contributions that all young people can make to their communities. For many young people, there is more to life than the classroom and swotting. The Government should tell all young people that they have a contribution to make to society, regardless of their academic abilities.
Mr. Corbett:
I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not saying that, because young people grow up in deprived areas with high and persistent levels of unemployment, their schools, teachers, school governors and parents should say that it is not worth bothering to encourage those children to do better than they think they can.
Mr. Russell:
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's intervention. I was trying to make the exactly opposite point. I want us all to tell all young people that they are of value to society and have a contribution to make. I am criticising the idea that the only people of value are those who gain high academic achievement. I do not believe that that is true, and I do not believe that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) thinks so, either.
A major way in which to reduce criminal activity by young people, and therefore to reduce the prison population, would be for relevant Departments to take measures to encourage youngsters to become more involved in their communities. That would give them pride in their neighbourhoods and a belief that they were valued.
For example, instead of underfunding local government, the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions could make specific grants to enable uniformed and other youth organisations to have free use of school buildings, rather than being driven out of them by high charges. The Ministry of Defence could offer better funding for cadet forces, so that they could expand and recruit more youngsters. The Department for Education and Employment could provide financial support for youth bands or arts projects. Encouragement for conservation and similar projects could involve more young people.
Financial investment in our young people will pay dividends. Better citizens will result if we abandon the previous Government's view that there is no such thing as society. There would be less cost later to the public purse if fewer people drifted into crime and had to be sent to prison. The more we can do to stop people committing crime, the lower the prison population will be. The best alternative to prison sentences is to fund youth activities, which would be a much better use of public money than spending £23,000 a year for everyone in prison. Keeping just 44 people out of prison would save £1 million, and we can all think of how that money could be more productively invested in young people and local communities.
There is an opinion that young people involved in uniformed and other activities are far less likely to be involved in criminal activity than those who do not experience such productive and organised activities. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that that is true. If he does not have the evidence, may I suggest that we survey young people currently serving custodial sentences? I am confident that investing substantially in recognised youth movements and encouraging youngsters to participate
would result in fewer young people drifting into criminal or anti-social behaviour. Such expenditure would be cost-effective.
The best way in which to achieve joined-up government for young people would be the appointment of a Minister for youth. That person would need to be popular and charismatic in the eyes of young people. An obvious candidate would be the Minister of State himself.
Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington):
Following my experiences during the inquiry, I thank the probation service, the social services, the police, the fire service and a raft of voluntary organisations, and I congratulate them on working with such commitment and dedication on our behalf. They try to give more hope and meaning to the lives of vulnerable and disjointed young people. Their jobs are not easy, because many of the people with whom they deal come from the most horrendous backgrounds. About a third of those sent to young offenders' institutions have no contact with home. About 40 per cent. have bad or intermittent contact with home. Many have no regular place to lay their heads at night. We should not underestimate the problems that we ask the various agencies to cope with for us.
My approach to the report and to the Government's response is that the argument is not over whether prison is better than non-custodial community sentences. There is widespread recognition that only custodial sentences will suffice for some people before the courts, especially for those who use violence against vulnerable people such as women, children and the elderly. It is not well understood, however, that the main victims of violence are, surprisingly, young people themselves. They are seen to be the perpetrators of most violence, but it is not so. They are in fact the victims.
That said, I have reached the conclusion that too many of those responsible for handing out sentences in our various courts are unaware of the menu of options available for community and non-custodial sentences. No doubt they are influenced by silly headlines in newspapers that ought to be more responsible. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South (Mr. Mullin) has said, it is wrong for newspapers to say that "so-and-so walks free". A community sentence is not walking free.
Mr. Vinnie Jones, the footballer, perhaps best demonstrates that fact. Having been sentenced for a cruel and grievous assault on a neighbour, Mr. Jones found that some publicity attached to the first hours of his community service. Perhaps Mr. Jones is unused to having his photograph taken, but he failed to turn up on three occasions, and instructed his solicitor to return to court to try to have his community service order reduced. I am glad that the court took the opposite view: it lengthened his sentence, and fined him for not doing what he was bound to do.
Mr. Jones, and anyone else in such a situation, should not accept a community service order if they prefer the alternative of prison. It is their choice, and they are free to make it, even if the courts may regret that fact.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland, South has mentioned that Mr. Peter Coad, a senior probation officer who had a low opinion of the probation service's achievements, said that the best alternative to prison was not to commit a crime. I took his meaning to be that the best alternative was not to be found committing the crime as well as not committing it. That is, of course, true: it is a blinding glimpse of the obvious, but solutions are not as easy as that.
During the general election--I suspect many ofmy colleagues found the same thing--in every part of my constituency, groups of residents raised the issue of anti-social behaviour and crime. They did not see those problems in party political terms, and they expected whatever Government were elected--it happened to be my party's Government--to help them to reclaim the right to live in peace and security in and around their homes. That is a simple enough demand. However, more police officers, more people in prison and longer sentences will not deliver it. They may make a contribution, but they will not deliver it.
Two stories from my constituency will illustrate the point. On a main road, a dreadful three-storey block of flats containing 20 or so families, with walkways on the outside, was an absolute shambles. The council decided to spend money on doing up the block, and letters went out to say that this, that and the other would be done in six months' time, and that the council would try not to wake the baby or anyone working nights.
All went well. There was landscaping, and the whole thing looked great. Towards the end of the work, I wrote to each resident to say how nice the work looked and that if they were having a party, I would bring some beer. I was not looking for votes; the matter was too important for that. I wanted to encourage those people to be proud of what had happened in and around their homes. The whole area had been transformed. Eighteen months later, it was almost as bad as it was before the work started. The lesson that I drew from that--I agreed with Birmingham city council housing officers on this--is that unless residents feel that they own the process, there is no point in proceeding.
I invite hon. Members to come with me about four miles further south in my constituency, to the former Castle Bromwich airfield, where 12,000 Spitfires, made over the road in what is now the Jaguar car factory, were personally flown by the chief test pilot. The site became the Castle Vale housing estate, which comprises 34 tower blocks and dozens of blocks of maisonettes. Anyone wanting to see a hell-hole should have seen Castle Vale 12 or 15 years ago. It embodied what I felt merited the description "civic pigsty".
Anyone coming across Castle Vale for the first time found it hard to believe what he was seeing--at least, I did. One wondered who cared for such places. Certainly, no one on the city council cared. I know all about cuts in housing budgets and so on, but I am not interested in that--there is some money. The whole place shouted total and absolute neglect. There was then an offer to set up one of only six housing action trusts in the country.
HATs were set up by the previous Government, who, by the way, had the wit and wisdom to change the rules to enable tenants, at the end of the exercise, to hold a ballot on whether they wanted to have the city council back as their landlord or, as I hope will happen in the Castle Vale area, to set up their own tenant management organisation.
When it came to the ballot, 93 per cent. of the tenants who participated voted for the HAT, which meant that about £300 million of public and private money would be put into the area. That was four years ago. I picked up a point made by the hon. Member for Colchester (Mr. Russell) in this connection. We are now four years into the process. The eight great centre tower blocks, which is where the main Spitfire runway was, have gone. Not quite 12 months ago, the first buildings of the new Castle Vale became visible because they were on the central site. In a matter of weeks, the whole atmosphere of the estate changed, and I shall illustrate that with two examples.
First, I am very proud of the four primary schools on the estate, which is why I said what I did to the hon. Member for Colchester. Those schools achieve miracles. They regularly turn out children to go to the secondary school on the estate at the age of 11 with average reading ages of 14 and 15. It is difficult to get through the front door of one school because of all the national awards that it has won, not in soft subjects, but for mathematics marathons and achievements in science. The remarkable head teacher and her staff say that of course such things can be done, but that one has to work two or three times harder in such areas than in areas with less deprivation.
Secondly, the HAT was never wholly, solely or mainly about bricks and mortar, important though they are. It was about giving people back hope, training and jobs; it was about one-to-one counselling for single parents--mainly mothers--and the work of outstanding organisations such as Home Start, which will quietly hold out a hand to parents in despair. Parents might be in despair because of deprivation or unemployment, but also because they feel that they cannot cope and cannot bring up their children in the way they want. Home Start literally holds out a hand. When another hand is put in it, it gently grasps that hand. The success of that organisation can be measured by the fact that many of its regular volunteers once came through the door, holding out a hand.
What has happened on the estate in the past 12 or 18 months that makes me so proud? I am told--I am sure that it is true--that, if an autopsy were carried out on me, the words "Castle Vale" would be found engraved on my heart. Crime has been reduced by about a third, but I do not say that with surprise. I would expect that to be the case. It is almost as if people have grown a foot in height after getting jobs.
A magnificent range of about two dozen to 30 firms, large and small--including the Jaguar plant, Cincinnati, the machine tool manufacturer, and GKN Hardy Spicer, which makes front-wheel drives--on the rim of this isolated island estate are offering young people opportunities through the new deal. I am not criticising the Opposition when I say that--it might also be their experience--but, in this part of Birmingham, the new deal has not only held out a lifeline to young people who were detached and who were denied hope, but it has delivered.
I commend the Government on agreeing with the Committee about the importance of alternatives to custodial sentences. It might seem that I am going to say the opposite, but I ask to House to bear with me. The Kingstanding part of my constituency is virtually one large housing estate. There is nothing new in what I am about to say. On that estate, there is someone who is a one-man, anti-social crime wave. Let us call him John, although the warders now know him by his real name. Between the ages of 14 and 18, he was charged 34 times and was given the equivalent of three and three quarter years in young offenders' institutions. He was also handed heaven knows how many community service orders of one sort or another. As I understand it, he is in prison--and so he should be, given the opportunities that were offered to him but not taken.
I suppose that the easy thing to say is that John had his chance and did not take it, but I have to tell Mr. Coad and others who share his views that life is not like that. When I feel close to despair about such things, it is because of what the great city of Birmingham has achieved this year alone. It has been host to the G8 summit, the Eurovision song contest and 34,000 members of Lions International. It is a city where things are happening. I am getting parochial, but I get cross and frustrated when people like John cannot see that this involves them and that there is something in it for them.
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