Examination of Witnesses (Questions 470
- 479)
TUESDAY 25 MAY 2004
PAUL GOGGINS
MP AND MR
MARTIN NAREY
Q470 Chairman: Minister and Mr Narey,
thank you very much indeed for coming. Both of you are well known
to the Committee. Can I begin, Minister, by asking about current
rehabilitation strategy. In the Home Office publication Reducing
Crime—Changing Lives, I think it is fair to say that
there is a great deal of evidence on what should happen beyond
the prison sentence: resettlement, housing, education, drug treatment,
those sorts of issues. I wonder if you could say, because we are
focused in this inquiry particularly on the prison regime itself,
what changes in what goes on in prisons will be necessary to deliver
the overall rehabilitation strategy.
Paul Goggins: I think if we look
in prisons, then what I see are some very encouraging signs that
the rehabilitation process is well under way. Certainly as I visit
prisons and meet the staff involved in resettlement work, they
emphasise to me the importance of it and, if we look at the offending
behaviour programmes, the educational courses, the skills training
and so on, we can see in most cases that the Prison Service is
outperforming the targets that have been set. However, I think
we face a couple of big issues which we have to overcome if what
happens in prison is to be even more effective. One of those is
to reduce the number of short-term sentenced prisoners who occupy
so much of the resource within our prisons. If we look at 2002
for example, 95,000 people were sentenced and, of those, 53,000
were sentenced to six months or less. You can do very little with
those people in the very short time that they are there in terms
of rehabilitation, training and so on, and of course there is
no follow on supervision for them under the current arrangements
because short-term sentenced people do not get that though in
the future they will. I think we will have to reduce the number
of short-term sentenced prisoners in our system. The other change
is that we need to join up the Probation and the Prison Services
in the new National Offender Management Service in order that
we get the real benefits of investment of money but also of time
and skill that goes on in prison continuing on beyond the discharge
from prison in a way that frankly does not happen at the moment.
In summary, I see encouraging signs for what happens in prison.
I am sure that we could do more. As the two services come together,
I think we will see better in the longer term.
Q471 Chairman: Would it be a fair
summary to say that it is not so much the prison regime that you
have at the moment that is the focus of your attention, it is
either reducing the flow of prisoners in on short-term sentences
or joining up the prison regime to the services that will lead
outside?
Paul Goggins: I think the quantity
and the quality of what happens in prisons is vitally important.
Providing detoxification programmes for drug-abusing prisoners
is an important first step. The drug treatment programmes which
increasing numbers will go on are very important. If we do not
feed that benefit through into the aftercare beyond their release
from prison, then we waste a huge opportunity and, until we get
that full joining up, we will not get the full benefit in terms
of resettlement and reduced re-offending that I intend to improve.
Q472 David Winnick: Minister, how
many people are in prison at the moment?
Paul Goggins: As of today, 75,304.
Q473 David Winnick: Would you like
to break that up in to male and female.
Paul Goggins: There are 4,510
women in prison—there has been a huge increase of women
in prison, although it is a small proportion of the overall total;
it has been a huge increase over the last 10 years—and the
remainder are male prisoners. As I said, a large number of sentenced
prisoners over the course of a year are sentenced to six months
or less although, if you take a snapshot at any one time, obviously
the figure is much smaller.
Q474 David Winnick: So, how many
male prisoners?
Paul Goggins: Just under 71,000.
Q475 David Winnick: Would it be right
to say that this is the highest number in prison?
Paul Goggins: The record figure
from a few weeks ago was 75,544.
Q476 David Winnick: And that was
the highest ever?
Paul Goggins: That was the highest
ever. Indeed, it is true to say that the increase over the last
10 years has been huge at a time when there are not that many
more offenders and they are not committing particularly more serious
offences. It is very clear, in our analysis, that the reason for
the increased number of people in prison is more severe sentencing.
You are three times more likely to go to prison in front of a
magistrate and twice as likely to go to prison in front of a Crown
Court judge as you were 10 years ago and you are five times more
likely to go to prison if you are a shoplifter than you were 10
years ago. So, clearly, there are some fairly fundamental issues
that need to be addressed there. One of the responses that I am
seeking to develop is more robust community sentences, which can
be an alternative particularly to short-term prison sentences.
Q477 David Winnick: What would you
say to those sitting on the bench passing sentence and also to
the general community who say in effect, "That is all very
well, but what does this community service really amount to?"
There is the general feeling that they may or may not turn up
as the case may be, that it is a soft touch, that it is all pretty
useless and that the only real way of punishing offenders is by
sending them to prison. What is your response to that?
Paul Goggins: What I would say
is that we are developing some very robust and intensive community
sentences: the drug treatment and testing order and the intensive
control and change programme. These are very intensive programmes,
frankly far more rigorous and challenging to offending behaviour
than a short-term prison sentence is. We are seeking to use electronic
tagging in greater measure and increasingly, I hope, tagging in
the future. Also, in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, we have brought
forward the generic community sentence, which will enable sentencers
to pick from a menu of different kinds of activity which can be
put into a community programme, maybe drug treatment, maybe some
reparation, maybe tagging as I indicated. These things will be
in the power of the sentencer to decide. I think it is incumbent
on the Home Office and the Prison and Probation Services, in the
future the National Offender Management Service, to provide those
robust alternatives and then to persuade sentencers that that
is a more effective way to deal with particularly low-level less
serious offenders who, at that moment, in too great a number go
into prison.
Q478 David Winnick: Clearly, judges
and magistrates are not so persuaded because presumably, unless
they have some obsession with sending offenders to prison regardless,
they must be taking the view that non-custodial sentences remain
a soft touch and I put it to you, Minister, do you not have a
particular responsibility with your fellow ministers to persuade
those passing sentence that that is not the position and that
non-custodial sentences, as you have been indicating to us, are
simply not a soft touch?
Paul Goggins: No, they are not
a soft option and we have to make sure that that is clear. We
have to enforce community penalties.
Q479 David Winnick: What are you
doing about it?
Paul Goggins: I think one of the
key things that is happening is the dialogue which is now opening
up with the New Sentencing Guidelines Council. Martin Narey has
a place within the New Sentencing Guidelines Council, which no
doubt he will want to outline to you, and he is able to feed back
to sentencers the evidence for what actually works and my belief
is that, as that evidence is fed back, it will become clearer
that short-term prison sentences are, frankly, a waste of time
and that robust community penalties are a very credible and effective
alternative.
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