Examination of Witness (Questions 20-39)
HOME OFFICE,
PRISON SERVICE
AND NATIONAL
OFFENDER MANAGEMENT
SERVICE
19 DECEMBER 2005
Q20 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: In paragraph
3.10 on page 25 it says you have an aspirational target to get
50% of prisoners involved in learning. Why is it only aspirational?
Mr Wheatley: This is, of course,
the Learning and Skills Council and Department for Education and
Skills' target with their money which is being spent in prisons.
It is aspirational because the money has not yet fully arrived
as we are now increasing the amount of money that is coming in
and changing the organisation so that Learning and Skills Councils
from next year effectively will be responsible in all prisons
for delivering education in prisons. It will not be education
contractors working for me, it will be education contractors working
for the Learning and Skills Councils on their instructions, as
it were.
Q21 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: So you have
put the target on the Learning and Skills Councils?
Mr Wheatley: No, not me. The decision
has been taken within Government that this is how education should
be funded in prison. It is important it is mainstreamed and it
is linked to wider education targets. Within the public sector
Prison Service I am acting as the host for this to happen and
making sure that governors select prisoners, get them to the education
facilities and make sure they monitor what the contractors do,
but we no longer control it, it is being run by education as part
of the mainstream learning and skills in the community.
Q22 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: My time is
up, but whose is this 50% target then?
Mr Wheatley: It is the Department's
and Learning and Skill's target.
Q23 Sarah McCarthy-Fry: Do they set
their own target or is it a target that has been set by you for
them to achieve?
Sir John Gieve: No, it is agreed
with us and with NOMS. We have just published a plan called Reducing
Reoffending through Skills and Employment which was jointly
promoted by the Home Office, DFES and DWP.
Q24 Mr Khan: As you can tell, time
is limited and the 10 minutes we have is precious. On my first
question, if you could limit your answer to no more than one minute.
Can you give me your views on the Report and in particular the
recommendations on page 21?
Sir John Gieve: It was a good
Report. We generally agree with the recommendations, which I do
not find on page 21.
Q25 Mr Khan: That is fine. Wandsworth
Prison is in my constituency and we have an excellent governor
who took over relatively recently. Can I draw attention to table
five, page 12. Can you put your finger there and then look at
table 21 on page 36. When you look at the figures for both sharing
cells and overcrowding, do you not think that the governor of
Wandsworth has an almost impossible task bearing in mind the conditions
placed upon him in terms of the aspirations we have to prisoners
to rehabilitate?
Mr Wheatley: There is no doubt
that the governor of Wandsworth has a very challenging task and
the levels of overcrowding in Wandsworth are high. Of course,
Wandsworth is one of the few prisons serving the capital where
much crime is committed and brought to justice. All the London
locals are under great pressure. We have to move prisoners out
of the London locals into the surrounding training prisons, which
is what we hope will happen to prisoners once they have been sentenced,
in order to make room for those coming in from the courts. The
London local prisons are particularly pressured and Wandsworth
is one of the most pressured prisoners and it does not make his
life easy at all.
Q26 Mr Khan: Bearing in mind there
have been four suicides in Wandsworth since January 2004, as Reported
here, what are you specifically doing to alleviate the problems
Wandsworth has outside your control, for example overcrowding?
Mr Wheatley: We are trying to
make sure that Wandsworth is able to manage the overcrowding better—
Q27 Mr Khan: How?
Mr Wheatley:— hence the
governor that we have been put in that you correctly draw attention
to as being very capable running a difficult establishment, the
introduction of a new anti-suicide monitoring measure, the so-called
ACCT scheme, which involves much more detailed decision-making
about individuals and much more support to those individuals,
by putting mental health in-reach into all prisons, including
Wandsworth, so we can support those who have mental health problems,
and the initiative with the Department of Health which delivers
health with health money into prisons commissioned by PCTs, also
happening at Wandsworth. There are a number of initiatives designed
to improve the situation but I do not want to mitigate the fact
that Wandsworth is a very challenging environment and requires
a high class governor.
Q28 Mr Khan: None of the things you
have mentioned, all of which I welcome, deal with numbers.
Mr Wheatley: I am not pretending
that we are dealing with the numbers. As long as the population
remains as high as it is, although numbers recently have come
down quite significantly during November, for which I am very
grateful, and that has moved—
Q29 Mr Khan: Christmas spirit?
Mr Wheatley: That is before the
Christmas spirit, so it is not the Christmas drop and it is really
quite striking. As long as the numbers remain so high, if we want
to stay out of police cells, and I do, we have to use those Wandsworth
places to their maximum. It is not the most overcrowded prison
but it is one of the most overcrowded.
Q30 Mr Khan: Of the 77,000-odd prisoners
who are guests of Her Majesty's Prisons, how many of those are
foreigners convicted, how many of those are asylum-seekers and
how many of those are people on remand waiting for trial?
Sir John Gieve: I can give you
some of those. Nearly 13,000 are on remand. Just over 10,000 are
foreign nationals. I do not know how many of those are asylum-seekers,
I would have thought only a minority I have forgotten the other
question you asked.
Q31 Mr Khan: That is fine. The Report
also says that between 2002 and 2004 there has been a 17% increase
in prison numbers without there being any significant increase
in prisoner unrest. Is that a fair summary?
Mr Wheatley: Certainly there has
been no significant increase in prisoner unrest.
Q32 Mr Khan: What is the breaking
point?
Mr Wheatley: The breaking point
would be population levels in prison above the safe operating
capacity, operating at the maximum operational capacity, which
is an assessment of the maximum number we can hold without significant
risk to safety and security. It is absolutely crucial that we
do not exceed that.
Q33 Mr Khan: Do you not accept the
implication and the inference one draws from that phrase is you
have scope to go higher vis-a"-vis overcrowding because
at the moment there is no prisoner unrest?
Mr Wheatley: No, I would not say
that. The reason why there is no prisoner unrest, and I have made
this point on a number of occasions in a number of different arenas,
is we do not take more prisoners in any prison than it can safely
hold and that operational judgment, which is not a question of
space it is an operational judgment of what we can manage in that
prison, is a robust operational judgment which I will not have
challenged by other people.
Q34 Mr Khan: You will have seen that
the Report at paragraph 1.49 on page 12 deals with the number
of changes that are supposed to limit the rise in population in
the long-term. Can I ask you, Sir John, to give me your views
on those things set out there? How likely are they to achieve
what they want to achieve?
Sir John Gieve: Sorry, I was just
looking for—
Q35 Mr Khan: Paragraph 1.49. Is that
pie in the sky or will it happen?
Sir John Gieve: It is very difficult
to say. We know that there is greater use of electronic tagging.
We know the Sentencing Guidelines Council have issued some guidelines
which taken by themselves would tend to reduce the prison population
and, similarly, the Criminal Justice Act has a mix of measures,
some of which could increase it and some of which would reduce
it. At the moment, in our latest projections we have got 10 scenarios
and I think two of them show us living within the 80,000 projected
population limit more or less indefinitely, some get very close
to it or cross at points, others go upwards and break through
that limit in the next two years. We are trying to work on all
the scenarios. In particular, both the Criminal Justice Act and
the Sentencing Guidelines Council are very new and we are not
yet at a point where we can say what the overall impact will be.
Q36 Mr Khan: If I was to ask you
how optimistic you are, would you give me an equally long but
no clear answer on that as well?
Sir John Gieve: I am not confident.
Q37 Mr Khan: That is helpful. Can
I ask you then about the National Offender Management Service.
Is this a drama turning into a crisis, the setup, the objectives
not being achieved, the holistic approach? We know, of course,
that the reoffending rate is 40% in the first two years, as referred
to Mr Wheatley. It has not turned out how we hoped it would, has
it?
Sir John Gieve: NOMS is still
at the early stages and the main point of it is to draw the Prison
and Probation Services together into a single system which is
based around concerted offender management from the point of arrest
through to the point of resettlement and all of that is very sensible.
I do not see it as a prison number control mechanism. Over time,
we hope it will reduce reoffending and we have set a target of
10% by the end of the decade. That would make an impact on the
prison population, although it is not the only driver because
a lot depends on the criminal justice system and the police. If
they are more active, if they drive up the number of arrests and
convictions, then even with a reduced level of reoffending we
could see a rise in prison population. I do not see the level
of the prison population as the measure of success for NOMS.
Q38 Mr Khan: Would you like to see
judges around the country monitored in their sentencing and consistency?
Sir John Gieve: I think that is
very difficult. What, league tables for how tough they are and
that sort of thing? I do not think it would be right for the Home
Office to do that.
Q39 Mr Khan: Final question: bearing
in mind we have had one piece of good news about the November
figures, do you have anything positive to say about the reforms
in this area, any good news around the corner that we can expect?
Sir John Gieve: Yes, I think there
is a lot of good news. Firstly, on education, as you have heard,
there has been a massive increase in investment in education in
prisons and we are carrying that forward. Secondly, the same thing
has been happening on health. The healthcare for prisoners is
much better now than I should think it has ever been and is getting
better still. Thirdly, we have got the outcomes in terms of not
just basic skills awards but also behaviour programmes and so
on which we are still delivering despite the pressure on the estate.
Finally, we have not even discussed security and that is because
security has been outstanding for a number of years and remains
outstanding.
Mr Khan: Thank you very much.
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