Examination of Witnesses (Questions 72
- 79)
TUESDAY 11 NOVEMBER 2003
MR BRYAN
BAKER, MS
JILL BERLIAND
AND MR
NEIL ORR
Q72 Chairman: Good morning, Mr Baker.
Thank you very much indeed for coming before us this morning.
Would you start by introducing your colleagues, and if you have
any opening remarks then please make them.
Mr Baker: Thank
you very much. I am Bryan Baker, Chairman of the Independent Monitoring
Boards National Advisory Council, a body which in effect is almost
defunct and will be replaced at the beginning of December by the
National Council which will be headed by Sir Peter Lloyd as one
of the provisions of the Lloyd Report. I have with me Jill Berliand,
who is a member of the National Advisory Council and represents
the Southeast of England and has served on the National Advisory
Council with me for the last three years. On my right is Neil
Orr, who is the Chairman of the Chelmsford Independent Monitoring
Board, whom we asked to come along so that he could speak about
the current situation in one particular prison to give you some
practical examples of what is happening. We as the National Advisory
Council are each members of boards ourselves, but as a national
body we look at the performance of boards and try to monitor their
progress. Perhaps we should make the point at the outset that
that is our task. Our task is to monitor what boards do and help
them to do their job more efficiently. We are not appraisers of
prisons, as one prison against another. We operate on an independent
basis within our own prison. As with overcrowding, we do gather
general trends nationally and seek to address some of those issues.
Q73 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. We will certainly want to draw on your expertise this
morning. I am sure it has been mentioned to you that the Committee
will pause at 11 o'clock for Remembrance Day . Given the overview
that you have and with the qualifications you have just given
us, do you as a body have a view of the purpose of prison and
the role of rehabilitation within prison, as opposed to, for example,
the other functions of prison to deter or punish, or to protect
the public?
Mr Baker: I think you start with
the definition that we are normally given—there are probably
three elements to imprisonment: the first is in fact to protect
the public. Second, coupled with that, I am sure, is an element
of punishment. Certainly as far as the general public are concerned,
there is an element of punishment in it. The third element should
be rehabilitation in the hope that you can use the time you have
someone in prison to work with them, to put them into a situation
where they do not re-offend. I think statistically it is probably
shown that the rate of success is not as high as people would
want it to be. I think something could be done about that by better
coordinated services from the time that a prisoner goes into prison.
Q74 Chairman: We will pursue that
last point in a moment. We have had evidence from some groups
saying in essence that prison does so much harm that to try to
rehabilitate a prisoner is merely trying to put right some of
the damage you are doing by sending them to prison in the first
place. Do you take that view, or do you have a more positive view
about what can be achieved at least in the best prisons from what
you have seen through rehabilitation?
Mr Baker: I am sure my colleagues
would have a view on this. My personal experience has been that
there is a fair amount that is achieved. I think we would argue
that there are a great many people going to prison with whom you
will achieve nothing because of the time you are holding them
in prison. In fact, their very presence in prison defeats part
of the object of the Prison Service because it stops them working
with those who are going to be in there longer, and with whom
they could have some success.
Mr Orr: There seem to be two things
one is doing in prisons, one is security, keeping the prisoners
secure from the public, and the public secure from the prisoners
and, within the prison, prisoners secure from the officers and
so on. The other is whether you are going to address this business
of rehabilitation, resettlement and retraining. Really retraining,
rehabilitation and resettlement in a lot of cases just do not
exist. There is no "re"—it is training, habilitation
and settlement, because an awful lot of these people have had
nothing to retrain into. What one has got to decide is whether
prison is there just to keep people away from the public, or whether
you are going to put them back better people, and that is a big
difficulty.
Q75 Chairman: I take the point that
you are not an appraisal organisation, but with your collective
experience are you able to highlight for us examples of really
good practice despite everything else—despite the overcrowding
and the pressure on resources and all the rest of it? As you discuss
what you see in the prisons around the country, are you able to
highlight for us examples of best practice and say, "This
really is pretty close to what we should be doing"?
Mr Baker: Yes, I think there are
examples of this. One of the sadnesses as far as we are concerned
as an organisation is that there are, by and large, individual
initiatives from prison to prison. At our annual conference we
try to hold workshops to highlight these good practices in the
hope that boards will go back to their prison and say, "Why
aren't we doing this here?". Examples of good practice that
we have identified latterly and been very impressed by are in
such places as Liverpool, where now they have their scheme "Inside
Out". From the moment the prisoner arrives there, there is—and
I hesitate to use the word "committee" because I think
it is wrong in that context—a group which comprises prison
staff and all the social security departments from the local authority
who tackle the prisoner's situation from the moment he arrives
there. They try to protect his house or his flat to make sure
that does not disappear because he cannot pay the rent, so that
the first of his worries disappears—"I am not going
to lose my home because I am here. Somebody is going to do something
about protecting that". They look at other problems, looking
after the family, children, and they work towards getting him
to job interviews and trying to find something for him to do when
he comes out. That is the sort of all-round package we think ought
to be more universally applied. Leeds also operate a system where
they bring in local employers. The prison and local employers
try to set up job training, sometimes outside the prison, and
then job interviews and jobs to go into. I think one of the biggest
problems we face in terms of dealing with prisoners is that if
you ask them to serve their sentence, then you just open the gate
on the last day, kick them out onto the street and say "You're
on your own", that is one of the surest ways of seeing that
you get them back fairly swiftly.
Q76 Chairman: One of the things worrying
the Committee is something you touched on at the very beginning.
Why is it there is so much variation between between individual
prisons which are, after all, all part of one Prison Service?
We are already hearing from a lot of the evidence that there are
individual initiatives, pockets of best practice. Why do you think
that it is so variable?
Mr Baker: I think there are a
number of elements that contribute to that, starting with the
governor; because the number one governor is the lord in his own
domain. The number of very good governors is limited. One of the
problems that I think a lot of prisons face is they start to make
progress because they have a good governor, and because he is
a good governor he is moved on to tackle problems elsewhere. You
have that as the first element of the problem. I think the second
element of the problem that we see is the attitude of prison staff
themselves, where some are progressive, others are far from being
progressive. It is the attitude they take to how busy they are
and what they are prepared to put in. There are in prisons an
enormous number of very, very good prison officers who work way
beyond their brief to help prisoners. The attitude of staff is
an important element in it. I think the final element is whether
housing departments, social securities and all of the other bodies
are prepared to come into prison and work with the prison. As
I have said, the Liverpool system tackles it from day one, if
you gave us a wish it would be that there was a system that said,
"The moment you take a person, male or female, into prison
then you start to work with them from that day towards their release".
Q77 Chairman: On that point, the
Prison Service have told us that there is an increasing emphasis
on joined-up work of just that sort. Is your impression that there
is more and more of that joined-up work, or is it pretty much
a patchwork, that it is good in places and bad in others?
Mr Baker: I think there is some
evidence that it is increasing, but I think our view would be
that it is not increasing rapidly enough.
Ms Berliand: I think there is
one element I would add to what Bryan has said. I think the reason
why it is not necessarily working in all prisons is because prisons
have different roles to fulfil. Where you are looking at, for
example, a local prison which is receiving people from courts
every day and releasing them back to the courts every day (not
the same prisoner, obviously) you have got 50, 60 or maybe 100
movements a day, it is almost impossible for anybody to work with
those prisoners; whereas if you have got a Category C trainer,
where you have got a static population, there is some brilliant
work being done. In my own core local the work that is being done,
for example, on first night in custody, first night in prison,
you would be amazed at how good it is. What actually happens is
people are coming back into the prison late at night; those staff
are no longer on duty or no longer available and it cannot work,
so we are told. The work that staff put into the policy document
of what should be happening is excellent; but what the prison
is actually doing is serving the courts and has not got resources
really to do anything else. If we could move our prisoners quickly
and on a consistent path to other prisons that are providing the
courses they need then I think you would see centres of excellence
all over the country.
Q78 David Winnick: We are all agreed
about the overcrowding in prisons. Can I, first of all, ask you
whether you have seen a report in The Times last week which
said that the Chief Inspector of Prisons has in fact said she
is rather worried that her work would be minimised, that spot
checks which she undertakes (rather than stating to prisons beforehand
that she intends to visit) could be reduced?
Mr Baker: No, I did not see it.
Q79 David Winnick: Does it surprise
you at all, that she has expressed concern?
Mr Orr: It surprised me, I confess,
that she should be concerned. With the Chief Inspector I would
say one of the great virtues of it were these surprise visits
from time to time, especially in a prison such as ours at Chelmsford
which is right down the bottom of the pile. Sir David Ramsbottom,
at the end of his time, said that one of his great happinesses
was that he saw this getting better and better and better in Chelmsford.
He would pop in just like that, so you never, never knew and it
kept you on your toes. I would support her in that she should
be able to go where she likes, when she likes.
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