Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320
- 339)
TUESDAY 16 MARCH 2004
MR MICHAEL
SPURR, MR
PETER WRENCH
AND MR
SIMON BODDIS
Q320 Chairman: —But they are
not central to the rehabilitation of prisoners?
Mr Wrench: No, the statement of
purpose that came out of the industries review was clear—that
the primary objective is to occupy prisoners purposefully and
in doing that to maximise the beneficial effects for resettlement.
Of course we have to take account of the economics of it but making
the biggest profit is certainly not the aim we came out of the
review with.
Q321 Chairman: But if it were thought
to be the case that prisoners would benefit from having a work
regime that was in some regards rather like the work regime that
we want them to have outside, which is they get up, go to work,
possibly pay tax and National Insurance, support their families
through remittances and so on, you are going to need to require
the creation of commercial work on a commercially viable basis
to enable that to happen. You are not going to be able to do that
through a taxpayer subsidy. It does rather sound as if that is
going to be a very important part of the rehabilitative regime
in your overall view.
Mr Wrench: I would not rule it
out but there are other models for bridging the gap between the
prisoners and community. You are taking evidence later from National
Grid Transco, which is a good example of using the time in prison
essentially for training and then getting people out into the
community to do the actual work. That is another way of bridging
the gap and effecting the transition.
Q322 Chairman: In relation to short-term
prisoners, which everyone recognises is a major challenge for
the Prison Service, do you think that prison work, commercial
prison work in particular, has any real value in relation to short-term
prisoners?
Mr Wrench: I think for the shortest
periods in custody it is difficult to do more than occupy people
in workshops, and the ability to get out of your cell and do something
more purposeful than lying on your bunk and watching television
is important for that group. Certainly in a number of locations
there has been a useful bringing together of that sort of workshop
activity with basic skills education. In a lot of establishments
around the country we have got classrooms attached to workshops
which can pull people out and in between industrial activity do
some work on basic skills. So it can be part of a regime that
works for short-term prisoners but I am hesitant about claiming
too much for what we can do through workshop activity alone for
that group.
Q323 Chairman: When we have new regimes
like Custody Plus, where people spend a period of time in prison
and then a period of time closely supervised in the community,
do you see any possibility that there could be a continuity between
any employment opportunities people had when they were in prison
or training opportunities they had when they were in prison and
the sort of employment or training opportunities you might like
them to have when they have been released?
Mr Wrench: We will have a much
better opportunity under that new regime when we have got Custody
Plus sentencing in, with supervision in the community after a
period in custody and also with the new approach by the National
Offender Management Service of a case manager seeing the case
through from the time of sentence through custody into the community.
We will have a much better ability to look at it as a cohesive
whole and manage the transition.
Q324 Chairman: Even if that meant
somebody returning to the same location that they had done work
in as a prisoner when they have been released? I can see you have
a seamless transition in terms of management of the offender.
I suppose I am raising the possibility that if one were able to
create a work opportunity for somebody who has not previously
had a job during the period of time when they were in prison it
might be highly desirable to find a way of enabling them to continue
with that during the six months that they serve of their Custody
Plus sentence after they are released.
Mr Wrench: Yes, I can certainly
see the attractions of that. Let me emphasise, the shorter the
period of custody the more difficult it is to achieve.
Q325 Bob Russell: Mr Wrench, moving
on to prison workshops, the recent Internal Review of prison industries
commissioned by the Prison Service estimates that prison industries
expect to employ 9,808 prisoners, a very precise figure, in 298
workshops working an average of 25 hours per week for the period
2003-04. Taking that into account, we have had witnesses agree
that prison workshops provide an opportunity for giving prisoners
the disciplines and skills needed to participate in real working
life. There appears to be a conflict though between the prisons
securing additional revenue through often menial labour and equipping
prisoners with skills such as carpentry and plumbing to increase
their chances of employment on release. Can it be resolved?
Mr Wrench: I am not sure that
there necessarily is a conflict. There is a range of sorts of
activities that happen in the workshops and some of them are pretty
mundane, menial and not particularly demanding. I would go back
to the point I made earlier, there is a role for that in occupying
people who would otherwise not be doing anything with their time
in prison. At the other end of the scale we have some considerably
skilled jobs that are being done in prisons.
Q326 Bob Russell: What is the driving
force here? Is it the financial justification for prison work?
Does that always outweigh the rehabilitative justification?
Mr Wrench: No, but I think purposeful
activity in itself is an important part of this process. If we
were to say to ourselves we are only going to provide work places
where there is a definable skilled component in it that is going
to equip people for work outside we would be cutting back quite
a lot on the volume of what we do at the moment and I think that
would be to the detriment of the overall running of the prisons.
Q327 Bob Russell: If you are going
to fill these 9,808 places at the end of the day what is the end
product? Is it skills or is it to break even and make a profit?
Mr Wrench: I would say the overriding
most important element is the provision of purposeful activity.
Within that provision of purposeful activity we want to maximise
the beneficial resettlement impact for individuals, but that contribution
to an orderly, safe, humane regime is the single most important
outcome, I think.
Q328 Bob Russell: Can we seriously
accept though that the current system of prison workshops fosters
the work ethic in prisoners participating in them?
Mr Wrench: I think some do but
they are not all as good as they could be; certainly the ones
I have been to have varied. I have been to some where there has
been a real buzz of activity within the workshop where I have
seen very good education going on alongside the work. I have been
to some where people have seemed bored and listless and are sitting
round chatting. So it is a mixture.
Q329 Bob Russell: So is it the prison
management or is it the type of work that the prisoners are called
upon to do which is the issue there? In other words, could a lousy
job be made better by good management and vice versa?
Mr Wrench: I am sure there is
always room for better management making even the most basic of
activities more interesting.
Q330 Bob Russell: Your evidence is
that good management can create the genuine work ethic?
Mr Wrench: I think it can help,
yes. What we have got, again coming out of the industries review,
is a new approach of trying to produce a weighted score card,
if you like, for individual workshops to show what we are getting
in terms of hours of activity and what we are getting in terms
of resettlement opportunities, what the resource side of it is,
and trying to come to a balanced view of whether it is worthwhile
or not.
Q331 Bob Russell: If the existing
constraints were not there how would you enhance prison work to
create a more positive work experience for prisoners?
Mr Wrench: I would want to carry
on the trends that I think have already become apparent over the
last few years of a) that integration of education with work activity
and b) the encouragement of more demanding and creative work where
it is possible to do so.
Q332 Bob Russell: Mr Wrench, I have
been given a list of the production workshops which is quite a
roll call. At a time when the manufacturing base in this country
is collapsing, it seems the Prison Service is bucking the trend.
I have got down here engineering, woodwork, furniture, plastics,
footwear, printing, textiles and clothing, concrete, catering,
laundry. As from 1 April I understand that hard charging is to
be piloted and three products have been selected—sheets,
towels and socks. Out of all that can you explain why sheets,
towels and socks are to be the hard charging pilot?
Mr Wrench: Simon might want to
come in and say a bit more about this but the important thing
really—following a clear policy decision to move to hard
charging generally in this area—was to get the ball rolling
and test it out. These might seem like three odd products but
they are three high-volume products and ones which will test the
accounting systems.
Q333 Bob Russell: If anyone can solve
the mystery of the single sock in the washing machine! What are
the Prison Service's reasons for refocusing prison industry production
on the internal market? Is over-crowding a motivator or are prisoners'
rehabilitative needs a consideration at all in this decision?
What is the driving force behind the hard charging?
Mr Wrench: The driving force behind
the hard charging is to try and make the internal market work
properly by giving people a realisation and appreciation of what
the true values of the product and activities involved are.
Q334 Bob Russell: But at the end
of the day are you there to rehabilitate prisoners or to balance
the books because that is what the accountants want?
Mr Wrench: We are there to run
an orderly Prison Service and at the same time to try and rehabilitate
prisoners.
Q335 Bob Russell: Finally, Chairman,
how can the production workshop model be restructured, if indeed
it can be, to generate revenue for the Prison Service, bearing
in mind your last answer which said that the ultimate objective
is the rehabilitation of prisoners so they return to society as
good citizens.
Mr Wrench: As I said earlier,
I would not want to make the generation of income the primary
purpose of this.
Q336 Chairman: Can I just ask one
question so that I am clear. Usually when markets are introduced
to the public sector the idea is to reduce costs by, for example,
reducing the number of people employed in a particular activity.
If the outcome of hard charging in the internal market in the
Prison Service is to reduce the number of people employed, for
example in prison laundries, I can see that that helps you balance
your books but that would presumably reduce the number of employment
opportunities available for prisoners?
Mr Wrench: Not necessarily. The
key thing for us is to reduce waste and I think there is quite
a lot of waste within the system at the moment in terms of over-ordering,
over-stocking, over-consumption and inefficiency in way that workshops
are run. To make it a bit more business-like and transparent where
the costs and benefits are going should allow us to drive out
some of that waste.
Mr Spurr: As we have been growing
in terms of population then we are going to have to be more efficient
to make use of the workshop spaces that we have got and to make
use of the laundries that we have got. We are on occasions having
to put laundry out to outside sources at the moment. That does
not make sense. If the population continues to increase to any
level that will become increasingly a problem for us so we have
got to make good use of the facilities we have got. I certainly
do not see it as leading to reduced employment places. I see better
use of the employment places that we have got and better use of
public money in terms of using them. Socks and sheets are actually
ones that turn over an awful lot in prisons. Prisoners throw them
out their windows, people do not take care of them for whatever
reason. We need to reduce the amount of usage that we have got.
Q337 Mr Taylor: May I ask whether
Contract Service Workshops offering low-level menial work have
a role in the Prison Service's rehabilitation or does this kind
of low-level menial work in the prison environment in fact work
against the aim of fostering a worth ethic?
Mr Wrench: I would go back to
earlier answers that I have given that I think it can make a contribution.
It is not necessarily always the case that it does at the moment
but I certainly do not think it is an activity without potential,
put it that way
Mr Spurr: Could I give example
that might be helpful. A contract workshop that is working very
well—and we have done this in a number of places—is
where we have linked basic skills, accounting skills and numeracy
skills to contract packing. So packing the little spoons and forks
you get for airlines, for example, which is a common thing we
do in contract work, people have to count out the number of spoons
in large numbers and then they get put into individual packs.
Where we are being innovative is to use education alongside that
to say we can do numeracy work here alongside the menial work.
The prisoner is getting paid for the work because it is contract
work and we are getting some funding for that which gives them
a better wage and they are learning something at the same time.
We have to be innovative in those types of workshops and that
is what we are attempting to do.
Q338 Mr Taylor: Thank you. May I
ask about the £7 million operating loss arising from Contract
Services Workshops. What changes need to be made to existing operations
to make the Contract Services Workshops financially viable or
do we have to be reconciled to this kind of loss?
Mr Wrench: Expressing it as a
£7 million loss is perhaps a bit misleading. I said earlier
that we want to get to a position where we were clearer about
all the costs and benefits in this area of activity. What is important
to remember is that that £7 million difference between the
inputs and the outputs actually bought about five million hours
of activity by inmates in these workshops. If you say that inmates'
activity in those workshops cost just over a pound an hour then
it is not a bad deal.
Q339 Mr Taylor: Mr Wrench, to be
candid with you I am more comfortable with your answer than with
my question. May I move it on a little bit further to ask you
is the Prison Service's unwillingness to extend the number of
vocational workshops purely based on financial constraints?
Mr Wrench: I do not know that
we are unwilling to extend vocational training workshops. What
we do want to do is see vocational training alongside the rest
of education rather more than we have done in the past. As of
this year the Offenders Learning and Skills Unit in the Department
for Education and Skills has taken on the budget for vocational
training and as we develop new arrangements for delivering education
in prisons vocational training will be incorporated in the same
way it is in the community these days.
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