Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-239)
20 OCTOBER 2004
MR CHRISTOPHER
MORGAN MBE, MR
BOB DUNCAN,
MS RUTH
WYNER AND
MR BOBBY
CUMMINES
Q220 Jeff Ennis: Have you been successful
in integrating dialogue groups into prisoners' sentence plans
because that is a big problem with a number of education programmes
in prison?
Ms Wyner: We have not and we are
unsure about whether that would be helpful because we do see ourselves
as being almost like a first step before you go into anything,
to get people in the right frame of mind to be able to move into
education and that sort of thing. We are very young and it is
something that we can talk to the prison about but, at the moment,
our feeling is that we should be seen as very much a first step,
there are no strings attached, you come and we can then hopefully
move people on in a kind of very non-threatening way.
Chairman: Can I apologise to our distinguished
witnesses that I was not here to greet you. I do not normally
arrive late except when the Committee is being held in Helsinki!
I was incarcerated somewhere around about Lewisham on the train
and I could move neither way. So, apologies for that but we are
pleased to have such a distinguished group of people giving evidence
to us today because we are really getting into this inquiry and,
as members may have told you, we are fresh from both Oslo Prison
and also Helsinki Prison which are very big and busy prisons,
375 prisoners in each, but it was very important for us to look
and have experience of that.
Q221 Mr Gibb: It is very impressive that
it takes an adult non-reader about six months to learn to read
but, when you say a "non-reader", what do you mean by
that?
Mr Morgan: It varies very much
from people who have not read at all and people who are dyslexic
to people who have a grasp of some of the letters but who cannot
string the words together. I say that it takes on average six
months but some people become very enthusiastic and continue in
their own cells and so on and do it in two or three months, others
take quite a long time. I know one prisoner in Wandsworth who
has been at it for two years—he is a Pakistani and he cannot
read in either language. He is sticking to it though; he has reached
page 200-and-something but he has a bit of a way to go!
Q222 Mr Gibb: From your experience as
a trust engaged in this important work, do you have a feel for
the proportion of prisoners who cannot read?
Mr Morgan: The number of prisoners
who cannot read is frighteningly large. The OLSU figures are 48%
of all our prisoners are effectively non-readers. That is the
basis of my figure of 30,000.
Q223 Chairman: How accurate is that?
Mr Duncan: The Prison Department's
own report says that 50% of receptions cannot read and there are
100,000 receptions a year. Those are their own figures. Some prisons
are testing all prisoners on reception but the volume is such
that not all prisoners are tested fully. The Prison Department
would admit that it is 50% and 30% are school failures or school
excluders. There is a high proportion coming into prison because
of their disorganised backgrounds.
Q224 Chairman: There is no incentive
at all for a prisoner to not indicate the true position of their
literacy and numeracy?
Mr Morgan: Yes.
Q225 Chairman: Is there?
Mr Duncan: Yes. Some prisoners
are quite clever and they live by their wits—those who cannot
read live by their wits more often and they can get around the
system, but I do not see any point really.
Q226 Chairman: It is just that a voice
came to the Committee saying that prisoners suggested that they
could not read because it gave them some advantage.
Mr Morgan: I think the contrary
is true. A great many prisoners on induction know the form, they
know where the ticks should be and the crosses should be and they
will pretend they could read.
Q227 Chairman: Bobby Cummines knows the
form more than most people; is that right?
Mr Cummines: That is correct.
Christopher is 100% right there. We train students from colleges
to actually act as mentors and what we teach them about is the
prison culture. The first thing I say to our mentors is, "Make
sure you are working them and they are not working you" because
half of them have been through children's homes and they know
the tick box syndrome and they go through it. Also, there is an
embarrassment in going into education in prison, it is seen as
you have sold out. So, a lot of people who want to access education
will not because they see it as having gone over to the other
side and life can be made pretty difficult by other inmates. What
we also found was that, when people actually got into an educational
course, we were concerned whether the education that they received
to a degree level was actually going to get them into employment
because there are still a number of degrees being taken for jobs
in which they could never work. For instance, when they take criminology,
sociology and psychology, they cannot work with vulnerable people.
So, we saw that as a wasted three years where they could have
gone into higher education on courses which would gain them employment.
What UNLOCK basically does is that we go in and we deglamourise
crime. Crime is very glamorised by the media and everything they
read. We ask everyone we talk to, "Have you read the book
about the Krays?" and, yes, they all have. This is happening
with the schoolchildren we work with who are on anti-social behaviour
orders. We talk from experience and we deglamourise crime. We
actually show them the benefits of education. So, if you like,
what UNLOCK does is prepare them and tell them that education
is a well worth path to follow but we also train our mentors in
the culture of prison because there is nothing more dangerous—and
any security officer in prison will tell you this—than someone
going into prison who does not understand that culture because
they are in fact a liability to the prison. We would like to train
the teachers who are dealing with our people exactly where our
people are coming from and the culture of disorganised lives that
they come from.
Mr Duncan: May I just add one
point on the Chairman's point. Amongst the juveniles, the very
young, you are right. Some of those can actually read a little
but are in denial. It is almost a status symbol not to be able
to read. I have seen a very clever member of staff who runs a
catering course with the people who cannot read to start with
who are also disruptive, the more disruptive juveniles that nobody
else wants, and he then says, "If you want to cook, you have
to write the menus down." They say, "I cannot read and
write" but he gets them to do it. So, there are a number
of means—Toe by Toe is one means, I am not saying
we are the only means—of tackling these things. There are
some juveniles who are in denial about their ability to read to
some degree.
Mr Morgan: I believe the reason
they are in denial is because they have given up. They do not
think they are ever going to be able to. They cannot cope with
classes and nobody is there to give them sufficient one-to-one
time to overcome their problem. Once they realise that this way
they are going to learn, to be quite honest, their behaviour completely
changes and they stop being disruptive, they seem to gain self-esteem
and they go about brandishing their books whereas formerly they
slunk about hiding them. It does bring around a sort of change
in personality, not of character but of personality which has
been useful.
Mr Cummines: I can actually verify
that. I was at Rochester Prison where they have an A wing which
deals with people with drugs problems who have committed violent
crime. They go through a 12-week programme and UNLOCK is part
of that 12-week programme in giving them support outside. When
you see these people actually get a certificate, it may be the
first certificate that they have ever had in their life and they
are so proud. It moved me greatly. I know what it feels like to
get a certificate and to be recognised. Once they had that certificate
of achievement, they went on to bigger things because they were
given permission to do it and they knew that they could do it
for themselves and they were encouraged. I am a little embarrassed
because our MP is here and Kent does it very well.
Q228 Chairman: It could not be a better
man!
Mr Cummines: You are 100% right.
He is proactive; he is not a weekend MP, he is 24/7. Once they
get their first certificate and they realise that they have been
recognised for achievement, they go on to achieve even better
and greater things. It is so important.
Chairman: Any time you want to move to
Huddersfield, you are welcome!
Q229 Mr Gibb: It sounds like there is
an array of abilities there but would you say that it is skewed
to the almost illiterate, the 48%?
Mr Morgan: Yes. It goes all the
way from the dyslexic . . . We now issue coloured cellophane sheets
because it seems, that with the really extreme dyslexic, prints
on a white page jumps about the whole time but, if you put it
on a yellow sheet or a blue sheet, usually yellow . . . That is
the extremity of that. The letters do not stay still long enough
to be read. That is the worst case and of course there are others
who have learnt a little but who do not use it because it is too
much of a fag to use it.
Q230 Mr Gibb: I do not know if you have
done any studies about how this compares to other countries; is
this something you might know about?
Mr Morgan: No, I do not know very
much about that but I was very interested in your speech on Monday,
Chairman, in which you said that you had encountered prisons in
Oslo where they said that 20% of the population could not read
properly. I was very surprised to hear that. I am told by the
same OLSU that 23% of our school leavers cannot read but it is
double that in prisons and higher than that still in YOIs. I have
been told by people in YOIs that it is 70%.
Mr Gibb: In Finland, we were told that
there was almost no illiteracy amongst the prisoners coming in.
Chairman: Apart from the foreign prisoners.
Q231 Mr Gibb: Yes. Finally, I have just
had a quick look at your Toe by Toe book and they will
jeer when I say this but it does seem to be very phonics based.
Have I understood that correctly?
Mr Morgan: I would not call it
phonic or look and say. It uses every technique. It was invented
by a primary school teacher who found that 20% of her classes
could not hack it at all. So, she started inventing little games
and exercises for them to do it. She was enormously successful
at achieving a very high rate of literacy and, when she retired,
her headmaster said to her, "Could you make sure that your
technique survives your retirement." She had all these exercises
on bulldog clips and her son put them on the computer and that
is the book. I would not say it was phonetic or any other system.
Q232 Mr Gibb: Phonic.
Mr Morgan: It is pragmatic. It
is what works.
Q233 Mr Gibb: And is that Keda Cowling?
Mr Morgan: Yes.
Q234 Valerie Davey: Very specifically,
of the 48% who are non-readers, do you have any idea as to what
percentage of those are dyslexic?
Mr Morgan: I cannot answer that.
I am not an authority on anything at all!
Valerie Davey: You have a lot of good
experience which counts for a great deal!
Q235 Chairman: I am very surprised that
you are not a Member of Parliament!
Mr Morgan: I am not quick enough
thinking!
Mr Duncan: I have seen a figure—I
do not know how true it is—that 33% of people in prison
are dyslexic but I do not know how they assess that.
Q236 Valerie Davey: That is what we are
trying to find out.
Mr Duncan: With this method, you
do not have to recognise the tag "dyslexic". We are
dealing with people who cannot read, whatever form does not matter,
whether it is foreign national or whether it is dyslexia, we do
not need to recognise those titles because the method will deal
with it.
Mr Morgan: A by-product is teaching
foreigners in prison to cope with English. Take a prison like
The Vern where over 50% are foreign nationals. It is enormously
successful and popular in The Vern.
Mr Cummines: I think it also boils
down to the enthusiasm to learn. You cannot teach a prisoner unless
they want to be taught and it is, if you like, that first bit
of getting them interested and showing that it is not a sissy
thing to do and, once that enthusiasm is caught, then you can
teach them but they have to come to the table. We have tried to
explain to the people that the culture of education is a thing
they did when they were at school and they bunked off school because
they did not like it. I have brought for the Committee—I
would just like you to take the names off it—the actual
comments from pupils who have been excluded as to what they say
about learning, why they turned to crime and what they could do
to get away from it. I will leave that for you.
Q237 Chairman: That would be most useful.
I think it was Dialogue that got the prison officers signed up
to this. To all of you, at what stage and how important is it
that you get the staff, the prison officers, engaged in supporting
what you do?
Ms Wyner: It is very, very important
but we find that it is very difficult. For instance, in Norwich
where we have done some research, we have been there for a year
and we have not yet been able to get officers regularly in the
group. We had one come in briefly. There are various different
views on the wing where we worked. For instance, I heard a prison
officer say, "I don't know why you want to go in there, that
group is rubbish." Then, if you challenge him on it, he will
say, "I'm only joking." I think there is a tendency
for officers to be very defensive about new interventions that
come in because they are working in a very difficult environment
and they have to really have very strong defences in order to
be able to cope with the prison itself but, on the other side
of the coin, in Whitemoor, we have had officers come in and, when
they have come in, they have made comments such as, "It was
really helpful to see these men as real people. I view you differently
now. Now when I see you on the wing, I will see you as a different
person" and it works the other way round as well because
the men say, "It is such a relief to see you as a real person"
because there is a tremendous `us and them' situation in prisons.
Q238 Chairman: Are prison officers themselves
sufficiently well educated and trained for the job?
Ms Wyner: Do you really want my
opinion?
Q239 Chairman: That is what you are here
for.
Ms Wyner: I think they are not
sufficiently well educated and trained but I think also, very,
very importantly, they are not sufficiently supported and supervised.
If you go out into the voluntary sector, people who are doing
stressful jobs will have support and supervision regularly, sometimes
external supervision from a trained group analyst in groups. This
is something that is just not there. It is a very macho culture,
you sink or swim. We have had comments at Whitemoor where people,
if they are interested in the group or come into the group, are
called "care bears". There is a huge cultural thing
to overcome. I think there is some change in some of the newer
officers coming in but it is a battle.
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