Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 239)
WEDNESDAY 18 OCTOBER 2000
SIR DAVID
RAMSBOTHAM, MR
COLIN ALLEN
AND MR
GEOFFREY HUGHES
220. When did that happen?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) It happened on
21st January, on the last day of the inspection. So when we leave
nobody has any doubt as to what we have found and the main burden
of the sort of recommendations that we will be making. We then
go away and we complete the report and send it to the Home Secretary,
and in this case I sent it to the Home Secretary on 21st March.
So, again, it is in the hands of the Prison Service, it goes to
the area manager, it goes to the governor, and it goes to the
Board of Visitors. Then we wait until the Prison Service comment
on matters of detail.
221. This is the area in which I am interested.
Are they checking for accuracy? Are they able to contest matters
of fact or conclusions which you have reached?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) What I say to them in the preamble
is that unless they have any matters of detail and fact to check
with us we propose to publish on a certain date, and we are dealing
with fact as at the day we left the prison, not what happens later.
What happened on this occasion was that they started questioning
some of the comments that I made in my preface, in addition, and
that took a little time to resolve. I cannot move ahead until
the Prison Service have sent the report back to me. Then what
happens is that when they have finished this process the Director
General sends a note to the minister saying that he is content
and the minister then authorises publication.
222. Roughly how long does this process take?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) In ideal circumstances what
I am aiming to achieve is that the report is published in not
less than three months. I try to get it to the Prison Service
within five weeks, they have three weeks in which to comment and
then it takes two or three weeks to publish. So we are talking
about three months.
223. To get this clear, Sir David, at the end
of the day it is you and you alone who decides what is published.
There may well be meetings and conversations, but at the end of
the day it is your judgment that what is written in that report
should be published?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) Correct. The check and balance
that is in is if the Director General and I are in dispute—in
other words, I am not going to give way on something I have said
and he does not want to accept it—then the matter can be
referred to the Home Secretary for his adjudication. We have never
yet had to go to that step. What has appeared in the preface,
and the tenor of the preface remains as written, although not
every detail I wrote in my first draft was actually published,
but nothing in the tenor of what I was saying about Blantyre House
or my concern about the confusion which existed over its role
or my reporting of the favourable comments that had been made
by successive Director General's and me and ministers and others,
which was confirmation that the role on which we were reporting
was changed.
224. Thank you for that. What that adds up to
is that this was an unusually lengthy period for the Prison Service
to take over commenting on the report?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) It was an unusual time for
them to confirm to the minister that they were happy for it to
be published. I think you will have to ask them, if I may say
so, why that was so.
225. Thank you, Sir David, yes, of course. One
of the nubs of this whole issue is what seems to be the conflict
and tension between risk on the one hand and trust on the other.
That is, in my view, the nub of the thing. This has led to ambiguities
in some people's minds. Is it a straight down the line category
C prison with a bolt on extra, which in this case we call resettlement,
or is it a resettlement prison similar to a category C status
prison but operating entirely differently on the basis of that
trust? Are you aware of other prisons where it might be argued
that there is uncertainty about which way round that role is?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) I think the closest analogy
I can give you is Kirklevington Grange, which is based just outside
Stockton in the North East area and which is also a category C
prison in name, with a resettlement function. It goes through
the same process. In other words, prisoners are allocated to Kirklevington
Grange, they are assessed, their needs and risk are assessed and
then they are let out to jobs in the community to see if that
works, and then they are let out to jobs in firms, many of which
are then taken up when they are released. Like Blantyre there
is a fence around the place which the Governor regards as being
important, because it reminds prisoners that they are still prisoners.
The ethos is the same, but the attitude of authority at Kirklevington
is rather different. The Governor will tell you that she feels
very supported by the Area Manager in her work, which actually
helps the prison, because there is nothing more demanding, I believe,
of a governor than making the sort of risk assessment on these
sort of prisoners and releasing them into the community in this
way. Kirklevington Grange enjoys very much the same representation
in the North East as Blantyre House did until 5th May in this
part of the country, which has been earned and they work at it
very hard. Although it has to be said that Kirklevington Grange
does not take exactly the same type of prisoners, for example
they do not take lifers, so there is a difference. But that is
the nearest I can come to. The thing that has always struck me
about this is that it is most unfortunate that the Prison Service
does not have a proper resettlement programme.
226. We are going to come on to that, Sir David.
(Sir David Ramsbotham) I do not know if Mr Colin Allen
would like to add anything to that.
(Mr Allen) I would just like to say that what is being
aimed for at Blantyre House, I think, is a trifle more sophisticated
in a way than that at Kirklevington Grange, because, as Sir David
said, the idea of Blantyre is that these are going to be prisoners
who have done long sentences, and if they have done long sentences
it normally means that they are fairly heavily criminal, or have
been in their backgrounds, and the idea is to de-institutionalise
them. To de-institutionalise someone after a long period in prison
is a very sophisticated business, particularly with intelligent
prisoners. So there is quite a different task being aimed for,
although, as Sir David said, there are similarities between Kirklevington
and Blantyre.
227. Just one more point, Sir David. Can you
just remind me, did your inspection look at the arrangements for
monitoring those who were released to work outside the prison
or to go and study, that they were actually doing what they were
supposed to be doing at the time that they were supposed to be
doing it, and if you did, were you broadly satisfied that that
was working satisfactorily?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) I think probably the best answer
is to bring Mr Hughes in, who is the leader, because he can answer
that very specifically.
(Mr Hughes) One of the complaints in a previous review
of the regime at Blantyre House resulted in a new post being created,
a senior officer post with a specific role of looking at new possible
placements where prisoners might work and also to monitor them
at work by visiting the sites sometimes covertly just to check
that people were where they were supposed to be. That is a comparatively
new post and the senior officer has been in the post for about
six months, I think. I spoke to him at some length. He was working
outside the prison and was somewhat detached to the main staffing
from the prison, but that was his primary role. He was setting
up new systems and it was quite early days, and he also inherited
existing placements. So it was halfway through that. I would have
said that arrangements for checking on placements had improved
as a result of that post.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
Mr Howarth
228. Can we move onto the question of the resettlement
policy? It does seem, from what you have said, and also what we
discovered yesterday, that there is no resettlement policy in
the Prison Service and, therefore, each institution is effectively
on its own and has no criteria by which it can be judged. In your
own report you said that the confusion at Blantyre House was heightened
by articles in the in-house magazine, Prison Service News,
which says there are only two resettlement prisons in the country,
Latchmere House and Kirklevington Grange. Do you think this is
a deficiency, and what can be done about it if that is so?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) I think, if I
may say so, it is a very serious deficiency, and as I understand
it, the Director General, in amongst the many other improvements
that he is making in the Prison Service, is intending to tackle
this and produce a policy which I hope he will strengthen by making
somebody in the Prison Service particularly responsible for overseeing
the policy. It is one thing having a policy, it is another thing
to oversee it, and particularly to oversee it consistently, because
at the present moment oversight is left to the individual geographical
area managers. There again you can have confusion. There is the
Area Manager, North East, who is seeing the support of Kirklevington
Grange in the resettlement line in rather different ways than
the Area Manager of Kent, Sussex and Surrey sees the support of
the same thing going on in Blantyre House. That is as I understand
it and I am sure Martin Narey will be able to tell you about it.
229. How did it come into being in the first
place in 1987 when it was set up by Jim Semple, the first Governor?
There must be some kind of blueprint to establish the organisation
in the first place and, therefore, there must be some history
on which the service can go?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) As I was not there in 1987
and Mr Allen was I do not know whether he can enlighten you.
(Mr Allen) It is a reasonable assumption from your
question, but in my experience the Prison Service does not work
like that.
230. It just sets up something ad hoc?
(Mr Allen) I can defend the Prison Service a little
bit, because the Prison Service is generally reacting to whatever
it is that is the concern of ministers or the public at a particular
time. So it is always, kind of, on the run. I do not have a particular
understanding about how Blantyre was the gleam in someone's eye.
I know it was the gleam in Jim Semple's eye, who was the first
governor there and who actually did the work in setting up the
thing on a rational basis, which is, in my experience, still unique.
I do not know of another prison in the country where the rationale
for it was so clearly set out by Jim Semple and then worked to
and has been subsequently carried through by subsequent governors.
My guess is that at the time, in 1987, there were people on the
Prison Board or in senior positions who understood the kind of
changes that long-term prisoners needed to make inside themselves
if they were to have a chance of not re-offending, and that support
was given to Jim Semple by whoever those people were, because
they trusted him and they understood what his background was,
and they let him do it. So that is how it was created. It was
not created from some sort of policy Committee.
231. Given the universal praise that has been
heaped upon this institution and successive management, why has
the Prison Service not picked this up and run with it and applied
the lessons of Blantyre, which everybody seems to accept? Mr Murtagh,
the Area Manager, told us yesterday that he wants to preserve
the ethos of the place. It is rather difficult to square that
with what is going on, but that is what he said. So how come this
fantastic organisation, which everyone accepts is absolutely wonderful,
has not been replicated and a policy within the Prison Service
established?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) I think that is a very good
question, and one which I have no doubt you will ask others later
in the day. Resettlement, as I said at the beginning, is a subject
which we take extremely seriously, and at this moment two things
are going on, as far as we are concerned. First of all, in conjunction
with the Inspectorate of Probation we have been conducting a thematic
review of preparations for release and resettlement since earlier
this year, and we are just about to complete the field work. The
significance of that has been increased by the recent announcement
by the Prime Minister that the Social Exclusion Unit are going
to look into the same thing. We are in close contact with the
Social Exclusion Unit, because I believe that our experience and
our research can fuel their work. It seems to me that if there
is an imperative coming down from number 10 Downing Street and
it is being reflected in what the minister has said in his letter
to the Committee about his commitment to resettlement and the
Director General's commitment to it, I hope that that will be
turned not just into a policy, but into something which is actually
overseen throughout the Service wherever it manifests itself.
Resettlement does not only take place in prisons like Blantyre
House and Kirklevington Grange, virtually every single prison
in the country is involved in the resettlement process in some
way or another and it is absolutely essential that the direction
applies to every single release and not just these.
232. From your perspective as Chief Inspector,
Sir David, what would you regard as being the essential elements
of a resettlement policy? What are the fundamental implications
of such a policy?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) To me the fundamental part
of it is that there should be somebody who is responsible and
accountable for the delivery of whatever that policy is, that
is responsible and accountable to the Director General, and so
to the Home Secretary, because unless you have somebody in that
position who is responsible for ensuring that the policy is delivered
consistently at every point of delivery, then you are going to
get ups and down and that would be thoroughly unfortunate.
233. Would a way out be to apply a new category?
Mr Semple suggested to us yesterday that the answer may be in
this confusion between category C and D and resettlement, and
there ought to be a sort of R category prison to which these new
principles might apply?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) I think probably the answer
to that is included in some of the confusion at the moment about
the categorisation any way, because the dividing line between
C and D or, indeed, between B and C is sometimes pretty vague.
They were drawn up originally, as you know, as a result of the
Mountbatten Inquiry in the 1960s and I think they need updating.
One of the reasons I say that is because if you look at the prisons
as a whole, the local prisons are the most over-crowded. Category
D open prisons from which release and resettlement takes place
are least crowded, which suggests there is something wrong in
the categorisation or the procedures for getting people to those
places in time to go through whatever programme they can do. So
what I hope is that in coming up with a policy covering resettlement
the Prison Service will complete the work on categorisation, which
I know has been in hand for some time, which will have an impact
on the over population.
Mr Stinchcombe
234. Sir David, I wonder if I can just ask you
a couple more questions about what the substance of the new resettlement
policy might embrace? Presumably the first objective would be
to design a policy to meet the resettlement needs of all the prisoners
in the prisoner estate?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) Absolutely.
235. It was said to us yesterday by some that
there were prisoners currently at Blantyre, or at Blantyre at
the time of the raid, who did not have resettlement needs because
they were businessmen or because they had jobs to go to, or because
they had families to go to and, therefore, that officials were
surprised to find them there at all. Would those kind of prisoners
have resettlement needs, and would you be surprised to see them
at Blantyre?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) I think that every prisoner
who has been in prison has a resettlement need to prepare them
for release, whoever they are. As far as whether businessmen or
others should go to somewhere like Blantyre, that is something
which I think the Prison Service should be asked. What I am concerned
with about Blantyre, when I look at it, is the allocation procedure
from the prisons who are serving Blantyre, who are after all the
prisons who should decide who it is for whom Blantyre is appropriate.
Blantyre receives them, Blantyre should not be responsible for
selecting them. I think that looking at it it is interesting to
me that the procedures currently in existence in the Kent, Surrey
and Sussex areas did not seem to me to be sufficient to meet the
needs of the prisoners in that area and, particularly, selecting
those to go to Blantyre. I think it is something that needs to
be looked at overall, rather than the point of view of Blantyre.
236. Tell me what the particular problems of
the current selection process are, other than there being insufficient
resettlement prisons in any event, which requires a completely
different selection process. What are the particular risks of
the current selection process and the way it is established?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) To my mind the resettlement
process starts the moment a person enters prison. Any sentence
plan is actually a sentence plan for what is to happen throughout
the term of the sentence, and it may well include the time when
a prisoner is released and serves the rest of the sentence on
licence or under supervision in the community. Better sentence
planning procedures are being introduced all the time, and I think
the process as a whole has still got some way to go. I think that
you can see that in the fact that it is not necessarily perfectly
applied in every case. The word the Prison Service uses for what
it does with prisoners is "through-care". Personally,
I would like to see that changed to being called "resettlement"
because that gives a purpose to everything that is done, and in
that I know the Probation Service share that view. I think you
will find the process, at the moment, is not sufficiently sharply
focussed on the resettlement procedures themselves and, therefore,
what preparation for release needs to be done. Blantyre House
is serving a particular purpose for some particular prisoners,
but there are others with different needs and one has got to include
them as well in any policy you make.
Mr Linton
237. Sir David, we are coming to the specific
problems of Blantyre House in a second, but could I ask you a
more general point which arises from your report? You make the
point that resettling a criminal back into the community always
involves an element of risk and one can either do it after they
have been released, through home detention, curfew or temporary
release or whatever, or you can do it before they are released
through a resettlement prison. It seems to me that that creates
a problem in that the Prison Service does not really have a culture
of risk management and it is very difficult for them to adapt
to this kind of halfway stage. Just taking the Prison Service
standpoint for a second, they must have a real quandary, in a
sense, over the level of security to apply to prisons like this,
because if the security is too lax it may enable an ethos of trust
to arise, as it has done at Blantyre House, but it may also lead
to drugs or to violence in the prison. Whereas if security is
too strict it will equally lead to prisoners being bored and frustrated
and, in fact, more likely to re-offend or, indeed, to escape.
So what would you say the Prison Service should attempt to do
with resettlement prisons?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) I wonder if I could just widen
that because I could not agree more with your analysis, which
I think, if I may say so, is a very perceptive one, and you have
put your finger on the absolute key point, which is the assessment
of risk.
238. From your report, I should say.
(Sir David Ramsbotham) I think that the person who
has got to take the greatest risk is the governor of the place
concerned. If you have got a brave governor, like Eoin McLennan-Murray
at Blantyre House, who is prepared to take these risks and he
got the response from the prisoners -which is the most important
thing because they understood and they appreciated the trust that
was being placed in them and the opportunities they were given—the
chances are that you are probably going to succeed. It is a very
difficult balance. Personally, I would always like, certainly
with long-term prisoners, for this risk to be taken while they
were still in prison because if the system breaks down while they
are there they can always be returned to the system. Of course,
if it happens outside, the same is not so possible. The important
thing is, if governors are going to be expected to take that risk—and
there is a no more testing risk to take—then it is desperately
important that the governors themselves are supported in taking
that risk. Everyone is a member of a chain of command which goes
from top to bottom, and a chain is used as a very appropriate
description because everyone has got to pull in one direction
or another. Governors can only take this risk in confidence if
they feel that they are supported. I think, going on down this
mutual trust, once the governor is confident he is supported (therefore,
he is taking his risk and the prisoners and the staff understand
the processes by which the risk assessment is made, and it is
explained and there are checks and balances in the system so that
if there is a failure or a person goes back) then you have a system,
but without that I do not believe that you have, and that is where
you get problems.
239. Do you imply that this was the case at
Blantyre House?
(Sir David Ramsbotham) Mention was made yesterday
to you about the feeling that the governor had that he was not
necessarily supported by his Area Manager in the resettlement
role. That is very uncomfortable for a governor because his immediate
source of help, guidance and advice is his line manager, who is
his Area Manager. If he is involved in the risk assessment business
and being successful at it he has got to feel that he is supported
in taking those risks, otherwise he may be tempted not to, in
which case the system will not work.
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