| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Allan: The hon. Gentleman makes a significant and important point. It is useful to hear that those running
another institution feel that the cuts that they have been expected to make are causing problems. Liberal Democrats believe that investment in confronting offending behaviour and dealing with some of the social and educational issues that have led people into crime is a very good investment for the taxpayer, and produces a far better return than making a short-term cut in an annual prison budget. If the money is used in the former way, we shall save significantly in the long term because people will not re-enter the criminal justice system.
The other side of the work coin must be education. It is well acknowledged that many of those who end up in the prison system have had bad educational experiences. Frequently, they are people who find work very difficult because they have not reached the first rung of the ladder--people with literacy problems, for example.
Seventy-one per cent. of the people who arrived at Feltham had been assessed for their educational needs, but, when asked about opportunities for education in the prison, a majority of them said that they were not good. Only a small number felt that the opportunities that they had had were sufficient for their needs, and 81 per cent. of those who responded said that they would like there to be far more educational classes.
There we have a group of youngsters who probably have deficient educational experiences, who have committed offences for which they are rightly being punished, but 81 per cent. of whom wish to enter some form of education and obviously desire to move forward. They wanted things such as NVQs in mechanics, engineering, catering and food hygiene, which would help them to find employment on leaving the institution. The desire is there, but there must be major concerns about whether those courses are being delivered in sufficient numbers.
I hope that the Minister will talk about the relationship between prisons and probation services. I know that that is a key policy area for the Government. In his 1996-97 report, the chief inspector of prisons reported on the probation services in worrying terms:
The cuts have been especially difficult for probation services at a time when many of them are reporting that they are fully stretched in trying to implement national standards. They are doing their best to meet national standards, but some of the other work in relation to their own targets sometimes falls off the priority list. Some of that interface between the Prison Service and the probation service, where the Prison Service has one set of targets and the probation service has another, can suffer as a result. I hope that the Government will consider that.
Local probation services have reported to me that they naturally find it very difficult to work with local offenders, who will be coming home, and who are held in distant prisons. They simply do not have the resources to send probation officers to the other end of the country to work with the prisoner before release, and they often fail to do so simply on resource grounds. I wonder whether more could be done within the management of the Prison Service to ensure that prisoners have more
contact with their home probation service before they are released, so that when they are released there is already a firm foundation for the probation work that will follow.
Finally, there has been a small reduction in the number of people held in prison as a result of the home detention curfew scheme. Will the Minister say something on how well she considers the Prison Service to be managing the release of people into home detention curfew? How will the scheme be assessed and reported on? It is a novel scheme and it would be useful to see how it has panned out, especially in respect of the crucial interface between Prison Service and probation service, where we are effectively transferring a responsibility; the probation services are obliged to pick up new responsibilities and set up new systems for managing the tagging schemes.
Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere):
This has been a useful debate on an important subject. I sometimes think that we do not debate prisons sufficiently in the House, and I welcome any opportunity to debate prisons and prison management.
I listened with great interest to the detailed speech by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), who made some important points. At the outset, he said that his party had a principled objection to privatised prisons. That is fair enough. However, the right hon. Gentleman was good enough to concede that many advances have been made in the Prison Service through the introduction of private prisons, and that many lessons can be learned from the way in which they have been managed.
When privatised prisons were introduced under the previous Government, we heard similar objections of principle from the then Opposition. There was a long campaign of attacks on private prisons and privately managed custody services. There was a time when every escape from privatised custody services and court transfers was reported with great glee from the then Opposition Benches, but we do not hear so much about that now. There seems to have been a conversion, which we welcome.
There are ever increasing examples of the extension of private management. In another part of the House we are debating a Bill that applies privatisation to immigration detention centres. Nevertheless, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed raised important issues of detail, which must be answered.
I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan), who rightly mentioned the case of Feltham. I visited Feltham fairly recently. The institution has a long and difficult history. We need to pay attention to the views of the chief inspector of prisons on Feltham and the rate of progress, or lack of progress, there.
One of the problems is the physical structure of Feltham and the way in which the units are divided up. Another problem is the mixing of prisoners across age groups and categories--15 and 16-year-olds sometimes mix with older youths, 17 and 18-year-olds, and remanded prisoners mix with sentenced prisoners. It is better to keep the categories separate and Feltham does try to do that, but when I visited the prison it was apparent that that was not always being achieved, because of the pressures under which the system operated. I make no criticism of the prison staff, as I know that there are many caring prison staff at Feltham and at other prisons.
The hon. Member for Hallam spoke about education and training opportunities for young people in prison. That is an important subject. The best management of education and training for young people that I have seen in my visits to prisons was at an institution that has, sadly, been closed by the Government. That was the military correctional facility at Colchester--the so-called boot camp.
The term "boot camp" may have put an unfortunate complexion on that institution. In my experience, it had the most caring staff of all and more was being achieved with the young people at that institution, which was set up by the previous Government, than at any other institution that I have seen. Its training produced extremely good results, measured by certificates and recognition of achievement, in fields such as those mentioned during the debate--motor mechanics, brick laying and painting. The young people who went there received good instruction from trained instructors, under the watchful eye of the non-commissioned officers of the military correctional facility.
There was a good record of achievement. We look forward to the results of the independent research that has been carried out by the Cambridge Institute of Criminology into the performance of the military correctional facility, particularly its record of reconvictions. If young people who have been in trouble and spent time in custody receive good training and education and later have a lower rate of reconviction, we will study the results from the military correctional facility with great interest. It is a shame that when those results become available and the good practice there comes to light, the facility will no longer be open. Its premature closure is a matter of regret to us.
Prison management is a large subject. The aspect that I shall briefly explore is the management of prisons so as to ensure that the prisoners who present the greatest security risks are held in the most secure conditions and the public are given the greatest possible protection from them, and that other prisoners who do not present such a great risk to the public are not wrongly held in secure conditions.
"Probation services have been cut, both in the number of seconded staff working in prisons, and staff to supervise prisoners on release."
I trust that the Minister will say whether she believes that the cuts in probation staff who are seconded to prisons and those working at the area of release are being reversed.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |