Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260-269)
20 OCTOBER 2004
MR CHRISTOPHER
MORGAN MBE, MR
BOB DUNCAN,
MS RUTH
WYNER AND
MR BOBBY
CUMMINES
Q260 Jonathan Shaw: You are being researched
at the moment, are you not? So you would say that.
Ms Wyner: We have actually commissioned
that research. We have got some funding to commission the research.
We are planning to extend it into a project in Wandsworth Prison.
The overall difficulty is that there is no time for thinking about
these problems, because everyone is rushing round, just trying
to keep the lid on prisons. There is no overarching policy really.
With NOMS there is the potential for that. As to the Inspector
of Prisons, having read David Ramsbotham's book about the way
he was inspecting prisons and making recommendations, people were
completely ignoring it. I think that it has to come from a political
level. There has to be a real intention to do something thoughtful
that works, and also to bring in the POA and so on, so that there
is real commitment.
Q261 Jonathan Shaw: We are going to hear
later from some of the trade unions and organisations which represent
the staff. Looking at their submission to us, it is quite encouraging
in terms of the direction of travel, from where we were a few
years ago to where we are today—where governors would be
able to vire money off from the education budget to do whatever
they wanted to. If they did not have an inclination, if they did
not have the enthusiasm that Christopher Morgan was talking about,
then it went somewhere else. So are we going in the right direction?
You are describing some big steps that have to be taken, and I
think that most of the members of the Committee would agree with
you, but are we going in the right direction?
Mr Cummines: I think that the
problem with the Government as it is, and the Prison Service as
it is, is that they do not publish what they do well: they let
newspapers publish what they do badly. This undermines those people
in prison who are active and doing good stuff from doing it, because
they get no recognition for it. But, yes, you are going down the
right track, because at least now you are listening to the voice
of an ex-offender. It has never been done before in committees.
It was always done by the theorists and academics. What we are
saying is that, yes, you are listening and the Home Secretary
is looking at what is going on, but what we need now is, "This
is what it will be". I think that it needs to be a bit firmer
now, into action; but you need to be properly funded. Everyone
I talk to, every charity I talk to, every course that is running—all
they are saying is "Lack of funding". It is not that
they cannot do the job: it is lack of funding. With Professor
David Wilson from the Prison Education Forum, you have some great
stuff going on in education in prison—but, again, lack of
funding.
Ms Wyner: The lack of funding
extends to prisons as well. We go in and they say, "Yes,
we'd very much like to have you, but I have got to cut half a
million pounds of my budget this year". What we are hearing
from the Government is, "Yes, we are doing resettlement",
this, that and the other; but if the funding is being taken away,
it can be seen as window-dressing. I think that we are going in
the right direction with NOMS. There is a specific amount of money
for voluntary sector interventions and so forth, but it has to
be at the right level. There has to be real commitment. Also,
if we continue expanding the prison population, it makes life
a lot more difficult.
Q262 Chairman: Christopher, did you want
to come in on that?
Mr Morgan: From my point of view,
I personally do not think that funding has got too much to do
with it. Our activities do not cost the taxpayer anything. We
give them free, and we get such money as we need—which is
not terrific—very freely from the private sector. What I
think needs to be done is that a complete change of philosophy
needs to be brought into the prisons which puts the matter of
education, and trying to prepare the prisoners for the outside,
on a vastly higher scale than it is at the moment. Let me tell
you a little story. When we go to a prison, we always have a lot
of guys there who want to teach. They are seized by the idea and
they want to teach. They see this as something that will make
their doing time meaningful; it gives their own self-esteem a
great boost and, instead of being bullies and throwing their weight
about, they put their energies into this activity. All we ask
of the prison is that they should not lose financially. "Financially"
is too big a word for what a prisoner gets in money for making
the widgets they make. It is just chickenfeed; it is a few quid
a week. But a lot of prisons will not do it. The prison makes
money from widget-making. They use this very cheap labour; they
produce teabags in boxes; they cut up the rubber bits of cat's-eyes
in the road, and that sort of thing, incredibly cheaply, and that
is all part of their budget as far as I can see. Therefore, they
are not very willing to make it up. If a guy says, "I want
to stop doing that and become a mentor", they will not make
it up. So a lot of these guys are doing it, notwithstanding the
fact that they lose money. And, in particular, women: I know a
lot of women who have children at home; they want to be mentors
but they cannot afford to be, because they lose a few quid, they
cannot buy their telephone cards and cannot talk to their children.
It is just a small example of the way the attitude is wrong. If
we want prison to work, we have to get that attitude changed.
It is not to do with ticking boxes and what they call "hard
outcomes". It is more to do with soft outcomes: of changes
of attitude and of behaviour, which are the side products of trying
to give people back their self-esteem.
Mr Cummines: Christopher is 100%
right on the changing of attitude. You are penalised when you
go to prison if you go into education, and you are encouraged
to go into the workshops. I think that you need a complete reversal
there, where you are enhanced for your attempts to rehabilitate
yourself, rather than sitting at a conveyor belt.
Q263 Chairman: Should there not be proper
work in prisons that is properly paid?
Mr Cummines: Yes.
Q264 Chairman: So that people can send
money home to their family.
Mr Cummines: We brought up an
idea, when Sir Stephen Tumim was alive, bless him: that we would
like prisons to be colleges, where people could go out and be
on tag for their last year; they could do their theory while they
were in prison. It was heavy plant machinery fitting—because
in five years' time we would be importing from Poland, because
we do not have any. What we wanted to do was train them while
they were in prison, long-term prisoners, and then they would
go into society, in college, like an open prison. A third of their
wages would be held in trust, if they behaved themselves; a third
would be sent to their families, so that they could get back their
dignity and get off the benefit system; and a third would be for
their keep. But I think it was European legislation that prisoners
were not allowed to pay for their own keep. That was the view
of legislation, but there is also common sense. If a man has got
his dignity back, that he can provide for his family and he is
working towards a profession—and we could do it with Sir
Robert McAlpine or someone, saying "We will train people
for employment"—then we could gear them up so that
they are not going out dependent on benefit and taking their family
off benefit. Then it is a real thing and, you are 100% right,
we should be training people for work and allowing prisoners to
earn proper wages. We employed three female prisoners from a prison
in Kent. I fund-raised and got them a proper job. It was called
"the Vision Team". They were doing really well. We trained
them in conference centre building; we trained them in media studies;
we trained them in reception work, and all the computer work.
For that prison, we got £108,000—£8,000, I think
it was—and the girls could have earned £15,000 a year
each. It was knocked on the head, because the governor said, "I'm
not having them earn as much as my staff". That was a fact,
and it was appalling—and we had to give the money back to
the European Social Fund.
Mr Morgan: There is a lot of talk
about making prison too soft, and perhaps giving too much education
to prisoners would be put by some newspapers into that sort of
category. But I think that you can only say that if you are somebody
who has never been in prison, because anybody who has actually
spent any time in prison—certainly as a prisoner—will
know that it is not like that.
Q265 Jonathan Shaw: We have been to Parkhurst.
Mr Cummines: So have I!
Ms Wyner: It is also quite different
when you do not go out at the end of the day.
Q266 Chairman: We have a press that is
always very interested in prisons, until it comes to any serious
interest at all. This is the first inquiry under my chairmanship
where we have had sessions on prisons. No press come. Are there
any members of the press here today? One today. We have had sessions
with no press present.
Mr Cummines: They are glamorising
crime—
Q267 Chairman: On any other subject the
place is full and we have got television and radio. This is the
level of interest in prison education.
Ms Wyner: There is a problem in
the messages that government gives out about crime and punishment.
There is this vote-gathering type of message, and I do not know
whether it comes from focus groups or what. I think that there
is another message that could come out: that if we rehabilitate
our prisoners properly, we cut crime. That is the way to cut crime.
I do not hear that message from government, and I think that is
a real problem.
Mr Cummines: What we have to look
at is, when we rehabilitate prisoners, what we are doing is reducing
the victims of crime. That is what it is all about here. For every
prisoner who goes out, that is 33 crimes he is not going to commit—because
that is the average. They get nicked for one, but they have done
32 that they have not been nicked for. I think that, seriously,
if we want to send a message out—if you are a Daily Mail
writer, you can write this and quote me on it!—it is that
prison is not a holiday camp like Butlins. I do not know too many
people who will hang themselves in Butlins, but quite a few are
committing suicide in prison. So let us get that—that prison
is not a nice place; it is a place where people are punished.
Q268 Chairman: I think that the gentleman
is a serious journalist!
Ms Wyner: It is also a place where
people are damaged, traumatised, and come out desperate and unable
to cope even with basic things. When I came out of prison I could
not focus distance. Goodness knows what else had happened to my
brain, but I could not focus distance.
Mr Cummines: We also have to say
that there are successes coming out of prison. Myself—I
have been on select committees and have been made a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Arts, and all those sort of things I have
achieved. If I had said to the governor of Parkhurst that I would
be sitting here giving evidence to you today, he would have taken
me over to see Dr Cooper and I would have been on the "wally
juice"—severely "nutted off"! There are prisoners
that can achieve great things. We have to celebrate that and hold
that up—about the achievements that can be achieved if people
are given the foundations to build upon; and I think we need to
do that.
Q269 Chairman: Bobby, Ruth, Christopher—Bob
has had to go—it has been an excellent session and we have
gained from it. Will you stay in contact with the Committee? We
are getting halfway through this inquiry and we want to be in
touch with you. If you think of things that we should have asked
you and did not, tell us. I have no doubt, having experienced
the last hour and 15 minutes, you will!
Mr Cummines: Perhaps I can leave
you with this. This is what the kids are saying themselves. If
you could keep the age group, and just take the names off—it
is from the children's own voice.
Chairman: We can do that. Thank you.
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