Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 259)
TUESDAY 2 DECEMBER 2003
MR PHIL
WHEATLEY, MR
PETER WRENCH,
MS EITHNE
WALLIS AND
MR BRIAN
CATON
Q240 Chairman: You would not share
the fears of the people who have said to us that if you concentrate
too much on improving things in prison, in terms of rehabilitation,
drug treatment and so on, you will simply influence the sentencing
patterns? Some people have tried to warn us almost against trying
to improve those programmes for fear that sentencers will send
more people to prison?
Mr Wheatley: I think not. All
the things we do in prison are actually available in the community.
If one wanted to gain access to offending behaviour programmes
there are a lot of offending behaviour programmes run by the Probation
Service. The Probation Service will help get people into education
to do basic skills.
Q241 Chairman: The Offender Assessment
System (OASys), where has that got to in its implementation?
Mr Wheatley: I will say where
it has got to with prisons, and Eithne can say where we are with
probation. We have been producing an OASys form that can be used
in an IT way, so that it works very efficiently from our point
of view. It gathers lots of the data together so we do not have
to go into records to get data. That makes it an efficient and
effective system. We have implemented it in three of the Prison
Service areas. We have just short of a thousand (950) completed
OASys assessments; and another 866 at the last count, yesterday,
are halfway through being done. It is working very effectively.
I was at Lancaster Farms in one of the early rollout areas looking
at the work of the staff who are operating OASys. They are very
pleased with the IT kit they have got—it does the job well—and
very impressed with the assessment system. We are gradually beginning
to build a really good database on prisoner needs. The Probation
Service are doing it differently and are rather further on, on
a less IT-intensive method.
Ms Wallis: If I could, first of
all, explain that in building OASys together we were building
both a micro assessment tool—namely a tool to assess risk
with the individual offender—but we were also building a
macro-strategic planning tool. If I could separate those for a
moment. In terms of using it as an offender assessment tool, it
is in all 42 probation areas, and we have trained about 11,000
staff and everywhere it is now in use. By early next year, for
example, we will produce about a quarter of a million court reports
and I would expect OASys to be used as the offender assessment
tool in the bulk of those reports. Certainly by early next year
in each of the cases actually supervised by us then that should
be there in use. In terms of the technology, developing OASys
and making it possible for probation and prisons to have a joint
offender assessment database, then we expect that connectivity
to be in place in the spring. By something like May we would hope
that our two systems will be able to converse and talk together.
Q242 Chairman: Would all prisoners
in the Estate be covered by the OASys system?
Mr Wheatley: At the moment we
have no plans to cover all prisoners in the Estate. We are covering
those who are doing longer sentences—I think the cut-off
point is 12 months—but not for short sentence prisoners.
Peter sits on the board which runs OASys. By the end of this next
financial year we will have everybody done. All the new people
will be through the system.
Mr Wrench: At the end of the next
calendar year we will have completed the roll out and will have
OASys across the Prison Estate.
Q243 Chairman: As far as the shorter
term prisoners are concerned the position will continue to be
they will still be subject to frequent movement from prison to
prison? Any programme they are on will be disrupted, their records
will not travel with them; and when they arrive somewhere else
if there are any staff shortages any rehabilitation programmes
will be disrupted?
Mr Wheatley: That is not a fair
picture of the position at all for any prisoners.
Q244 Chairman: We have been told
by several witnesses that when prisoners are moved two things
frequently happen: first, is their records do not move with them.
The assessment that has already been done in one prison then has
to be re-done. Second, that programmes they are on may cease,
either because they are not offered in the prison they are going
to, or because the assessment has not travelled with them. Are
you saying that does not actually happen?
Mr Wheatley: No, not in the form
you are saying. If we are dealing with offending behaviour programmes
we have got hard data on offending behaviour programmes lost through
transfer.
Q245 Chairman: Offending Behaviour
Programmes are only one of the types of programme.
Mr Wheatley: Bear with me for
a minute. We have got hard data on that which shows that because
of premature movement of prisoners we lost last year 1% of Enhanced
Thinking Skills completions, 2% of Reasoning & Rehabilition
completions, I do not think we lost any Sex Offender Treatment
Programme (SOTP) completions. We are prioritising those offending
behaviour programmes to make sure we do not move them, and we
do that with some care. In our drug programmes we have got a slightly
higher rate lost through movement. If I remember the data correctly
that runs to about 10% of those who have gone on programmes who
have moved on transfer. Not all of those transfers will be because
we are moving people simply to cope with overcrowding. In some
cases we are moving people, involved in drug dealing, deliberately.
They are also in programmes because they have become involved
in drug dealing in prison. Some of those will be planned and careful
moves. We will try to ensure that we do not move prisoners out
of education classes leading to qualifications. Our success in
gaining qualifications suggests we have been rather successful
with that. We are not as successful in guaranteeing (and do not
claim to guarantee) that long sentence prisoners, who are often
engaged in very long coursework, Open University and things like
that, will not be moved during their sentence. Most of that is
actually portable. OU, for example, can be done as you move from
prison to prison. After all, the public at large would do that
around a job as a part-time piece of work. There will be some
courses which are lost because we have moved people. I do not
think there is that major disruption; nor is it particularly targeted
at short-termers, because we are having to move and we plan to
move prisoners as they come into local prisons and we plan to
move then into training prisons. We also plan to move people once
they have got into secure prisons into Category D prisons, into
open conditions, as soon as we can.
Q246 Chairman: Do you monitor all
these different types of courses to see whether they are delivered?
The picture you are painting is very different from the picture
that has been painted by the witnesses we have had so far?
Mr Wheatley: All our offending
behaviour programmes are monitored. Our drug treatment programmes
are monitored. We do not monitor every class. We do monitor the
rate at which we are getting completions, so we know how many
people are getting basic skills qualifications; and because those
are usually relatively short courses they are not normally disrupted
because they are planned to be short courses.
Mr Caton: The experience, as far
as the staff associations are concerned, particularly with regard
to OASys—and I cannot necessarily speak for NACRO but we
spend a considerable amount of time discussing these matters across
the two unions and, indeed, with the health and justice forum,
the gathering together of justice unions—is that, whilst
at the end of the day it may produce the desired effect, it has
certainly been brought in in a very, very bad way. If you are
going to do something which is going to be purposeful towards
what happens to a prisoner, and what kind of rehabilitative processes
are necessary for that individual, one would imagine you would
bring in a system which would immediately take over that piece
of work. Colleagues in the Probation Service through NACRO tell
me they are constantly behind on doing this work. Colleagues in
the Prison Service, as the Director General quite rightly pointed
out, are in a roll-out programme. We have many, many thousands
of prisoners who are going to go through the system during that
period of time whenever it joins together. Based on what I have
seen in other information technology methods applied to the Prison
Service I personally doubt very much if it will come in on time,
if all at. Therefore, during that period of time, we are not going
to have a system where the correct rehabilitative processes are
necessarily applied by staff to prisoners to prevent further offending.
That, to me, is poor planning. It is poor resourcing and against
a backdrop of a huge, massive rise in prison population, which
you will deal with later, Chairman, and more workload regarding
those prisoners who are released in various forms for the Probation
Service. If we are going to have a holistic approach let us have
the same system working across everywhere, so all people can put
it in, and it measures the chances and what we have to do with
prisoners to give them the opportunity to rehabilitate them.
Q247 Chairman: For those prisoners
who are not covered by OASys, and may not even be in the longer
term, Mr Wheatley has painted quite an optimistic picture with
regard to what happens when prisoners are transferred. I will
put to you what has been put to us that records are frequently
not transferred at the same time, courses are disrupted, prisoners
face a delay before they have a further assessment. That is what
has been put to us. What is your view? Does that happen?
Mr Caton: My view, and it is anecdotal,
is simply this: prison officers tell us, through the meetings
we have and through our annual conference, there is massive disruption
to the rehabilitative process of prisoners due to the need to
transfer them—transferring them normally to make way for
new prisoners coming into the system. There is little regard,
for the pressures on the Prison Service, which can be given as
to whether the move is going to benefit them in relation to the
rehabilitative process. One thing for sure, we would say it is
very challenging to a system where you are making cellular spaces
available by putting people in lower category prisons whom we
consider are probably too dangerous to be where they are. We do
not believe it is done in a proper way, Chairman. To sum that
up, staff tell us something different from what the Director General
has just said.
Q248 Chairman: Can we conclude that
outside of the specific programmes monitored, like the offending
behaviour programmes and drug treatment programmes, there is not
actually a hard body of evidence yet which will resolve the question
about whether significant numbers of offenders have courses, qualifications
and so on disrupted by moves?
Mr Wheatley: The movements take
place from local prisons. Local prisons act, during periods of
pressure, much more as transit camps. Local prisons are not the
majority of the Prison Estate. I am sure that in local prisons
many prisoners experience the moves as disruptive, at short notice
and move long distances to places they would rather not have gone
to. I am sure that is accurate. That probably explains some of
the anecdotal evidence the Committee has heard. Within the Training
Estate we are not moving people in the same way at the same short
notice. Most of our efforts, which are lined up towards rehabilitation,
are mainly in the training prisons rather than the local prisons,
although there is some work in local prisons.
Q249 Mrs Dean: Mr Caton, you mentioned
prisoners being moved to where perhaps they should not be moved.
Does that apply to open prisons? I recently had it drawn to my
attention that a prison just over the border from my constituency,
Sudbury, has had an awful lot of prisoners who have absconded
and quite a lot of those have not been picked up? Would you put
that down to the system that is in operation at the moment?
Mr Caton: I think I can answer
it best in this way: it is prison officers, on behalf of the Governor
and the Prison Service, and it is the Governor's final say on
these matters. The categorisation system in the Prison Service
has been in place for a considerable amount of time. It necessarily
comes under pressure, and so do the people, our members, when
they are under pressure to move people and to assess them. I am
convinced by what I have heard, from our members who do that,
from prison officers who are involved in the allocation and categorisation
of prisoners that they are now sending people whom they would
have put into more secure conditions into less secure. I think
that has a knock-on effect on the Open Estate where people are
moved to the Open Estate who probably, if they were not under
the pressure of the rising prison population, would not be there.
It does not surprise me that the problems we have at Sudbury do
exist.
Mr Wheatley: As we run up to near
full capacity we are making full use of the open prisons. It is
probably fair to say that as there are an increasing number of
prisoners who are on home detention curfew, out early on a tag,
that the supply of prisoners for open prisons is not as great
as it once was and we are using open prisons (and we are prioritising
it so we reduce the risk as much as possible) for people who perhaps
10 years ago we would not have used them for. The consequence
of not doing that would be they would be in police cells and we
would have run out of accommodation. We are making sure we keep
people in Prison Service accommodation, and judge the risk the
best we can. The abscond rate has increased slightly. It has not
increased very much. The real difference is that we have now got
the prisons full. If we were running Ford Prison, for instance,
at about half full (as we did for most of my career, although
it is now full) it has the same rate of absconds as it always
had. It has had more absconds because it has a lot more prisoners
at risk. There has been an increase in the number of absconds,
although the rate of absconds has only changed very slightly.
Open prisons obviously cannot prevent prisoners escaping; they
are, by definition, open without significant barriers between
the prisoners and freedom. They are mainly very short sentence
prisoners; those are the people we are putting in them.
Q250 Mrs Dean: Do you agree it is
of concern when those prisoners are not actually picked up?
Mr Wheatley: We regard it as a
concern whenever we have got prisoners who have absconded and
escaped and are not back in custody. I like them back in custody.
Q251 Chairman: We have looked at
the possible disruption to courses, whatever, when there are transfers
within the Prison System and there are some issues to be resolved
there. The type of disruption that takes place in the rehabilitation
process is when a prisoner is released from prison and they are
looking to continue drug treatment or education outside. Looking
at those programmes rather than the broader resettlement issues
for the moment, I have two questions: do we know what proportion
of prisoners do not get a satisfactory transfer from the work
they have been doing in prison for education or drug treatment
to satisfactory provision outside? How many people slip through
the net because services are not available when they are needed
immediately on release?
Mr Wheatley: Insofar as I know,
and Eithne obviously has some knowledge from the probation side,
the main worry to us was releasing prisoners who had done drug
rehabilitation work who, as they were going to go out into freedom
again, would obviously find it easier to get hold of drugs because
they would be available for them. We are fairly confident we will
do best with somebody who has had a real drug problem which they
have addressed in prison, they have dried out and are detoxed,
if we can get them very quickly into treatment. That was proving
difficult. It has improved as a result of the Criminal Justice
Interventions Programme (CJIP) initiative which is producing,
in at least 25 of the highest crime areas; a system which means
we can get them straight into treatment and I think that is very
valuable. Drug treatment is the one thing you lose very quickly
indeed.
Q252 Chairman: What proportion of
prisoners who have successfully gone through a drug treatment
in prison are now being offered at the point of release, directed
to and supported to go to drug treatment in the community? What
proportion of prisoners who are released, having been through
a drug treatment programme, do not re-enter the drug treatment
system outside?
Mr Wrench: I do not have that
data.
Q253 Chairman: We are putting hundreds
of millions into improving the drug treatment services in the
community but we do not actually know what proportion of the people
you work very hard with in prisons to get off drugs actually sustain
their drug treatment in the community?
Mr Wheatley: We do not. Further
development of the CJIP initiative was only announced two weeks
ago, so it is very new. We are not in a position to assess the
result of it. It has been initially targeted on the 25 highest
crime areas on the grounds that that is where there are the highest
concentrations of drug-misusing offenders.
Q254 Chairman: That is the new initiative.
There already is substantial expenditure on drug treatment in
the community. I am surprised you do not know how many people
we have released from prison, on whom we have spent a lot of money
getting off drugs in prison, who actually get support in the community
at the moment outside of the target areas?
Mr Wheatley: The immediate support
I was speaking about would have been very much the exception.
To get somebody straight into treatment you are looking to have
people almost met [at the gate] because of the risk that they
go into drugs because they are in their face immediately. That
sort of follow-through I do not think we were able to do before
at all. It is that sort of follow-through that may pay off handsomely,
hence the investment in the CJIP initiative.
Q255 Chairman: In terms of continuity
with drug treatment, the OASys system you have now got tells you,
does it, at the point of release whether somebody has been through
drug treatment in prison?
Mr Wheatley: It will when it is
electronically connected, hence the need for the electronic connection.
Ms Wallis: We are not getting
OASys through from prisons back into the community.
Q256 Chairman: A substantial proportion
of the people on short-term sentences will have got a drug problem.
They seem to fall largely outside this system, both in terms of
whether they get drug rehabilitation in prison or whether they
are a priority on release. Is that right?
Mr Wheatley: We will detox them.
We will offer them counselling and the advice Counselling, Assessment,
Referral, Advice and throughcare (CARAT) service, which they have
access to. Many of the people we are detoxing are short-termers.
The CARAT teams will—
Q257 Chairman: When they leave they
fall outside the Probation Service?
Mr Wheatley: They fall outside
the Probation Service. They do not fall outside the drug treatment
system.
Q258 Chairman: Whose job is it to
hold their hand when they have been in for six months, they have
been detoxed and they have come out? Who then picks them up in
the community and makes sure they get drug treatment?
Mr Wrench: This is where the CJIP
really ought to make a big difference if you have got the people
based in the communities they are going back to who are looking
to receive them.
Q259 Chairman: That applies to people
irrespective of the length of their sentence?
Mr Wrench: Yes, that is right.
Ms Wallis: Could I just try and
clarify the situation. I do not want you left with the impression
that offenders come out on licence and simply disappear. Offenders
on licence are picked up. The evidence is that, in terms of making
immediate contact with them in holding to the standard of levels
of contact, doing the assessment work and certainly strictly enforcing
the terms and conditions, that work is done very systematically
by probation. The evidence there is increasingly strong. What
is more problematic for us is actually having available within
that case management framework the actual offending behaviour
programmes, access to the various treatments and assistance that
they actually need. That is why, for example, we have been building
together the national rehabilitation strategy and starting to
try and enter into much stronger partnerships with accommodation
providers, with education providers, looking harder at employment,
and working with the drug treatment providers and so forth. I
think we need to make the distinction between these offenders
supervised and managed on the basis of current interventions as
opposed to whether we have all the rehabilitative interventions
available that we actually need. It is the second we still need
to develop and are working hard together to try to plug those
gaps.
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