Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
TUESDAY 4 NOVEMBER 2003
MS FRANCES
CROOK, MR
PAUL CAVADINO,
MS JACKIE
WORRALL, MS
JULIET LYON
AND MR
ENVER SOLOMON
Q1 Chairman: Good morning. Would
one of you like to introduce your team and then we will make a
start.
Mr Cavadino: I
am Paul Cavadino. I am the Chief Executive of Nacro, the crime
reduction charity. On my left is Juliet Lyon who is the Director
of the Prison Reform Trust. Next to her is her colleague Enver
Solomon from the Prison Reform Trust. Also with me are Frances
Crook, Director of the Howard League for Penal Reform and Jackie
Worrall of Nacro.
Q2 Chairman: As you know, this is
the first evidence session we are having in the new inquiry on
rehabilitation of prisoners. I will try to direct most of the
questions to individuals but it would be useful if we could start
by asking each of the three organisations to outline very briefly
what, in the view of your organisation, is the purpose of prison
and the role of rehabilitation within prison.
Mr Cavadino: In relation to serious,
violent and sexual offenders for whom the seriousness of the offence
and the seriousness of the impact on victims can justify a long
sentence, then a key purpose is containment to protect the public.
For most offenders courts deprive them of liberty as a punishment.
It has often been said that people should go to prison as a punishment
rather than for punishment and the deprivation of liberty for
a period of time is intended as punishment. Whether it is sensible
punishment for many of the people who go to prisons I think is
doubtful and some other form of punishment which did not have
so many negative side effects would be preferable. However, the
purpose of it in most cases is primarily to deprive people of
liberty as a punishment. Once people are in prison then, in my
view, the regime should be geared to rehabilitation; we should
do everything possible to make sure that those who are in prison
do not offend again. We should not send people to prison primarily
for rehabilitation. If we want to do that then it is normally
preferable to do that in the community. Where the court decides
that—because of the need for containment or because the
seriousness of the offence requires a certain level of punishment—they
have to send someone to prison, then once they are there we should
do everything possible to rehabilitate them.
Ms Lyon: I would underscore that
and start where Paul finished in that the Prison Reform Trust
sees prison as a punishment of absolutely last resort. We see
that the central paradox—something we are addressing today
in relation to rehabilitation—is that the danger of improving
rehabilitation in prison—education, training for work, mental
health, drug treatment—is that until, and unless, prison
is a place of absolute last resort we extend its boundaries. I
think there is some evidence to suggest that we have already done
that by improving the various aspects of prison regimes. Sadly,
on the one hand the prison regimes are not as improved as many
members of the judiciary might suppose. At the same time it has
led to a kind of making up for other failing public services.
The end result can be that people are sent to prison for a second
chance education; they are sent to prison for detox or drug treatment
or they are sent for mental health treatment or assessment. There
is a worry that we have what I call prison creep, if you like,
and I would hope that the focus of this inquiry could be based
on exactly what Paul from Nacro said, making this an excellent
place of last resort, but not extending its boundaries.
Ms Crook: I think you will get
some agreement between us. I am not going to tell you what I think
prison is for; I am going to tell you what I think prison should
be for. It should be for public safety, pure and simple. That
is the bottom line. I am also going to put a question into your
minds about rehabilitation. You have called this inquiry "Rehabilitation"
which I think in itself raises more questions than perhaps even
you will be able to answer. Rehabilitation is not about restoring
the damage that has been done by crime. That cannot be done through
prison. It is not about healing the community or the victim. It
is purely about, I think, healing the damage done by the imprisonment.
When we talk about rehabilitation and resettlement we talk about
undoing the damage that has been done by taking somebody out of
their community and locking them up, often for months and months
in pretty appalling conditions. It is really about undoing that
damage. I do not think that prison should ever be used to change
somebody's life or to restore the opportunities that they should
have had in education or health care or drug rehabilitation. The
fact is, of course, prison is used extensively for all sorts of
people whom the Howard League believes should not be there, so
we do have to make the best job of it and we do have to offer
drug rehabilitation programmes and look at rehabilitation in a
whole number of other ways, but prison should not be used for
restoring the damage done by crime. If you are talking about rehabilitation
I think sometimes you are talking about undoing the damage that
you have already done, not undoing the damage done by the crime.
Q3 Chairman: It is quite striking
perhaps that none of you, in your initial replies, mentioned either
concepts like deterrents against crime nor any sense of prison
playing a role in maintaining public confidence in the Criminal
Justice System that actions seem to be taken against those who
commit crime. Would you believe those are entirely fallacious
concepts and the prison has no role to play either in deterrents
or in maintaining public confidence in the Criminal Justice System?
Can I just say, as a general rule throughout this morning's session,
if you agree with what somebody else has said just stay quiet
and then we can move on.
Ms Lyon: I was just going to say
very quickly that I think the re-conviction rates probably answer
both of those queries at once in that we can see quite clearly
from the re-conviction rates that prison is not working terribly
well. It is not surprising that the public are not hugely confident
if we are looking at six out of 10 people being re-convicted within
two years of release, but very particularly looking at young offenders
where 74% of the under-21s are re-convicted within two years.
Looking at burglaries, we are looking at a 75% re-conviction rate.
We are looking at a prison system that, for whatever reason, is
not working either in relation to public confidence or in relation
to deterrence.
Mr Cavadino: May I comment on
the deterrent point? Obviously one element of deterrence is the
deterrence of potential offenders, what is often called general
deterrence as opposed to the deterrence of the individuals in
prison from doing it again. My view, to put it simply, is that
the role of general deterrence is over-rated. There are two reasons
for that. Firstly, many offenders offend in situations where they
do not think rationally and calculate ahead; they are often people
who have chaotic lifestyles who commit their offences without
a great deal of planning and calculation, and rational considerations
of deterrence do not enter very highly. There are other offenders
who do calculate and plan what they are doing carefully. They
plan not to get caught; they tend to believe that they can avoid
conviction. It is interesting that some of the research which
has been done recently in the United States which has compared
trends in crime in different states compared with trends of imprisonment
in different states has found no connection between the extent
to which a state has increased the use of prison and a reduction
in crime, but it has found a strong correlation between the extent
to which states have increased detection rates and a reduction
in crime. This suggests that insofar as general deterrence is
an important part of the factor, it is related more to the certainty
of conviction than to the severity of the sentence.
Q4 Chairman: Juliet Lyon, you talked
about the developments of rehabilitation in the last 10 or twelve
years and prison creep. Can you just highlight for us what you
would see have been the main developments of rehabilitation policy
and say a little bit more about where your concerns are?
Ms Lyon: I think the obvious improvements
are looking at the partnerships that have been struck leading
to the take over of responsibility: the Department of Health taking
over prison health care and the Department for Education and Skills
taking over prison education are landmarks in relation to prisons
which previously—and still are to a certain extent—have
been inward looking and not attached to any other services. If
I could just give you a very brief anecdote, Martin Narey spoke
to a group of magistrates in regard to Feltham Prison and told
them of the improvements that have been made there. There certainly
have been improvements which basically have been about managing
to get a good governor to stay put long enough to effect change,
ringfencing the institution so that young men are sent to Castington
rather than kept at Feltham from the south London courts. The
net result is that Feltham itself is a better place. Martin Narey
talks to the magistrates about improvements that have been made
and they say, "Thank you. We feel very much better now about
sentencing a young man to Feltham." That seems to me to illustrate
the dilemma faced by anyone—and that was when he was Director
General of the Service—who wishes to improve a public service.
If you improve it how do you avoid promoting it? I think, for
the morale of the service logically the person in charge of the
service will tell people about the number of basic skills hours
that have been achieved in education which are tremendous. They
do not, in fact, mop up the increased numbers—which I know
we are going to get on to when we get to overcrowding—and
the impact of that. What we are seeing are improvements that are
constantly eroded by ever increasing numbers. I think it is problematic,
and there is a central problem of how to keep the morale and the
integrity of the service without promoting imprisonment.
Q5 Chairman: Could I move on to Frances
Crook of the Howard League. Your opening remarks do sound a bit
like a council of despair; there is not really a lot that you
can usefully do with somebody once you send them to prison and
you probably should not have sent them there in the first place.
Is the reality not that there will be a significant number of
people who have to be committed to prison, and we do not need
to focus policy on the best efforts that can be made in the context
of prison to give those people the best chance of not being offenders
when they return to the community?
Ms Crook: I absolutely agree with
that and I think it is essential that when people are sent to
prison they are given a good and useful life; they are able to
lead a good and useful life, and they are given activities which
are purposeful and their life is enhanced so that it gives the
best chance when they come out that they will be a useful citizen
and will not create more crimes nor more victims. It is absolutely
essential that their time in prison should be usefully served.
However, I do not think you should send people to prison—as,
I think Juliet implied some people do—in order to get an
education and work experience. Nor, I think, can you send someone
to prison in order to appease victims in some way or heal the
crime; I think that is impossible and that is not what prison
should be for. If you had 20,000 people in prison—even 30,000—you
could do something very useful with the people who have committed
serious and violent crimes. They could be rehabilitated effectively
and the chances of them committing a further crime would be reduced.
However, with a population of 74,000 and nearly 200,000 people
going through the system at any one time you have to question
why those people are being sent there and what is happening to
them while they are there. If we were talking about hospitals
with a 60% to 75% failure rate, we would not be doing it; people
would be up in arms and I think the general public is beginning
to realise that prisons are a very bad and expensive failure in
the way they are operating at the moment.
Q6 Chairman: That is an interesting
point. Do you think that is what the general public actually feel?
I have to say that as a constituency MP I think, if anything,
I am in the position of restraining the general public's view
that we have not locked up anywhere near enough people. Do you
really think the general public are forming that view of prison
at the moment?
Ms Crook: I have to admit here
that in a personal capacity I was an elected politician as a local
councillor for eight years so I do know about constituency surgeries.
I think people are frustrated; I think they are angry; I think
they see crime and they want something done. However, I do not
think they are satisfied with the Criminal Justice System. I do
not think anyone would come away from your surgeries and say that
they are pleased with the way things are working and they feel
safer because people are going to prison. I think what we get
is a sense of frustration and anger.
Mr Cavadino: Could I make two
points, first on public opinion. If you ask people generalised
questions such as are we too harsh or too lenient towards offenders
they will tend—we have found—to say that we are too
lenient. If you ask people detailed questions about what currently
happens—as some very thorough research has done—it
indicates that people underestimate the degree of severity of
sentencing at present; they think, in other words, that the courts
are more lenient than they are in fact. Secondly, when you ask
them about individual cases with some detail, then their view
about what should happen is much closer to what courts do; they
are much more sympathetic to a sentence with a constructive element
that will do something to reduce the likelihood of re-offending
rather than looking at it only in terms of how severe the punishment
is. They are ready and do want to look at whether it will do any
good in preventing re-offending. The second point is in relation
to the broad question that you asked Frances Crook about the extent
to which prison can reduce re-offending by rehabilitation. There
is no doubt that with the right regime it can. We know from strong
world-wide research evidence that there are some ways of dealing
with offenders which reduce the likelihood of re-offending much
more than others. We know that the most effective ways include
highly focused work on offending behaviour and attitudes; work
to help offenders to restrain impulsive and aggressive behaviour;
work to enable offenders to have more empathy with the impact
of what they have done on victims; and work that can help offenders
to tackle effectively drug and alcohol problems. We also know
from research that if somebody leaving prison gets into and keeps
a job then the likelihood of re-conviction is between a third
and a half less than it otherwise would be if they remained unemployed.
We know, depending on which research study you look at, that if
somebody leaves prison and gets into stable accommodation their
likelihood of re-offending is cut by somewhere between a fifth
and a half what it would otherwise be. We know from one recent
study that offenders with basic skills deficits who get education
to remedy those deficits are about a third as likely to re-offend
as comparable offenders who do not get that kind of educational
help. We know, depending again on which research study you look
at, that offenders who are released with support from a family
have a likelihood of re-offending which is between a sixth and
a half what it would be if they left prison as comparable offenders
but without family support. There is overwhelming evidence that
what we do in prison to rehabilitate prisoners can make a difference.
Ms Lyon: Can I ask leave to put
in the MORI opinion polls and the Rethinking Crime and Punishment
opinion polls which will respond to your questions about public
confidence.
Q7 David Winnick: The prison population
now stands, as I understand it from the latest figures, at 73,987.
Is that the position?
Mr Solomon: As at last Friday
it was 74,147.
Q8 David Winnick: This is the highest
ever in the United Kingdom, is it?
Mr Solomon: It is, yes.
Q9 David Winnick: So far as overcrowding
is concerned, taking the statistics given by the Prison Reform
Trust, 85 of the 138 prisons in England and Wales are overcrowded.
Mr Solomon: From the latest figures,
as at the end of October, it was indeed 83 out of the 138.
Q10 David Winnick: Leicester Prison,
again going by your paper, was overcrowded by 94%. There were
four hundred in Leicester Prison, a prison intended for 206 prisoners.
Mr Solomon: That was correct as
at the end of September.
Q11 David Winnick: I do not suppose
it has varied a great deal.
Mr Solomon: No.
Q12 David Winnick: Preston Prison
is overcrowded by 87% you told us. Shrewsbury is overcrowded by
some 85% as well.
Mr Solomon: Yes. They have gone
up marginally.
Q13 David Winnick: That is a pretty
alarming picture. If I may ask Ms Crook, you said from your long
experience—as we know and we respect, as we do all the witnesses,
all the work which is done and which is not very popular with
the general population—that those who go to prison should,
in effect, be only those who have been convicted of serious and
violent crimes. What I would like to ask you in particular is
that those who persistently offend, those who commit burglaries
without any violence at all but refuse to take any warnings from
the court, those who are the subject of anti-social behaviour
orders and treat those orders with total contempt, are you really
saying that unless it is very, very exceptional, the person has
been convicted in court of the sort of offences which you mention—which
obviously we all believe, you included—should be imprisoned,
but these other people should not be?
Ms Crook: I think you are looking
at the symptom rather than the cause. If we look at the offence
rather than the person, if someone is committing a series of non-domestic
burglaries, for example, to feed a serious drug habit, locking
them up every now and again in prison is going to do absolutely
no good at all and is probably going to make things worse so you
will guarantee they will go on doing it when they are released
after six months, a year or two years. What you do is that you
do not interrupt the cycle of offending, you guarantee it will
continue because it does not solve the problem. People do get
off drugs while they are in prison, but they go back on to them
when they come out. What you have to do is interrupt that pattern
of behaviour somehow and it will depend on the person and what
their circumstances are; there is no one simple answer. I think
the trouble with prison is that it is always put forward as the
answer to everything, but actually I think the problem is much
more complicated than that and you have to deal with whatever
the problem is and solve the problem. It is like taking your car
into the garage and saying that it is going wrong and asking them
to change all the wheels. You can do that every time but it still
carries on going wrong. I do think that prisons should be reserved
for serious and violent offenders.
Q14 David Winnick: Only? Can you
be more precise? You have talked about those who feed their drug
habits and you have given that explanation, but what about those
who are not feeding their drug habits but who simply pursue a
course of anti-social behaviour—some of them throughout
their adult lives—who are not likely in any way to be rehabilitated
and refuse that. You smile, but that is exactly the position.
Ms Crook: I know.
Q15 David Winnick: I am sorry to
pin you down, but are you really telling this Committee that only
those who are found guilty of serious and violent crimes should
be in prison?
Ms Crook: Yes. I think that prison
also has a symbolic place. If you look back over a hundred years
ago incest and sex crimes against children were not crimes. Over
a hundred years ago incest was not a crime. I think the symbolic
nature of prison for race crimes and sex crimes and holding it
up even for lower levels is very important, and to show that a
crime is an offence in that way is very important. For serious
violent and sex crimes and for its symbolic value as a separate
thing I would say yes. But for people whose behaviour is anti-social,
just because you do not like them you should not be able to lock
them up.
Q16 David Winnick: I do not quite
understand that. If people are harassed day in and day out by
anti-social behaviour and Parliament has passed—rightly
or wrongly, and in my view certainly rightly—the necessary
legislation and those who are convicted of anti-social behaviour
orders treat those orders with contempt and people suffer as a
result—and none of us would like to be victims of that—are
you then suggesting that such people should not be in prison?
Ms Crook: It depends what you
want to achieve from this. If you want to punish them because
they have been badly behaved but not to interrupt that pattern
of behaviour, then of course you should use prison. However, you
must recognise that it is simply revenge and is not going to be
effective; it will not stop that pattern of behaviour recurring
when people come out. It has a 60% to 75% failure rate, particular
with young people. With very young people prison has an almost
90% failure rate. If you simply want revenge then that is fine.
David Winnick: Some would call it justice.
Q17 Miss Widdecombe: Some would call
it public safety.
Ms Crook: Only for a short time.
If somebody is only sent to prison for a few months there is no
public safety issue there. In fact, when people are released back
onto the streets they are probably going to be more dangerous
and more angry and commit more crimes. You are not making things
better and I think you have to find more intelligent and more
rational ways of responding to people whose behaviour is very
troublesome. I recognise that, but what I want to do is to find
a better way of dealing with them, which is effective. At the
moment the inappropriate and emotional use of prison is ineffective;
it is not stopping the behaviour.
Q18 David Winnick: The Chief Inspector
of Prisons states, and I quote, "at every level of the prison
system overcrowding is having an effect on the ability of prisons
to deliver rehabilitative programmes". There was at least
one report in yesterday's papers—in The Times—that
the Government is intending to put restrictions on the Chief Inspector
of Prisons, that the sorts of visits she makes—and rightly
so—like her predecessors without giving notice is coming
under some criticism from the Home Office and probably at the
most senior level. Is there any truth in these reports?
Ms Lyon: There is certainly a
review proceeding at the moment. We know that but we do not know
the full outcome of the review. We know the question has been
raised in the House—and certainly recently in the House
of Lords—and we do have concerns about any proposed amalgamation
of the inspectorate. It seems most extraordinary timing with prison
numbers reaching their absolute highest ever level even to consider
in any way curbing or reducing the powers of the independent chief
inspector. What we find, certainly from our office when we have
international visits from the Foreign Office and British Counsel
is that they are continually impressed and see it as a model for
development in their own countries, that level of independence
and that rigour of inspection. It is something that we feel very
strongly about and are trying to keep an eye on as best we can.
Q19 David Winnick: Would it be right
to say that successive governments—that includes this Government—seem
to have difficulties with chief inspectors of prisons? Perhaps
that is a leading question. Would it not be right to come to the
conclusion as well that they are having difficulties in the past
and currently because the chief inspectors of prisons are doing
their job to which they have been appointed?
Ms Lyon: I think that is very
fair. There is an expression "shoot the messenger" but
rather than shooting the messenger I think we need to listen carefully
to the message that this Chief Inspector—and previous inspectors—have
put very, very clearly. It is the level of detail, the particularisation
of the problem that they are out to do, whether it is tasting
the food, listening to offenders, in some cases thematic reviews
when they listen to families. There is certainly scope for thematic
reviews which involve amalgamated work by inspectorates. A very
good example of that, pertinent to this inquiry, is Through
the Prison Gate, a thematic review from probation and prisons
of re-settlement opportunities for prisoners. Any dilution of
the powers of the chief inspector we would resist most strongly.
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