Examination of Witness (Questions 80-99)
HOME OFFICE,
PRISON SERVICE
AND NATIONAL
OFFENDER MANAGEMENT
SERVICE
19 DECEMBER 2005
Q80 Jon Trickett: In paragraph 1.8,
it is referring to Lord Carter's Report and it says that far greater
use is being made of prison and yet the number of people being
arrested and sentenced is more or less the same. Does that not
demonstrate that prison does not work?
Sir John Gieve: No, I do not think
it does. Perhaps you would like to take that a bit further.
Q81 Jon Trickett: If the number of
arrests is broadly the same and the number of people being found
guilty is broadly the same and yet the number of people going
to prison is rising, it is counter-intuitive, is it, not since
one of the primary arguments about imprisonment and incarceration
is for it to be a deterrent to potential criminals from entering
into criminality? You would expect, would you not, if that case
was correct, that more use of prison would reduce the number of
people being arrested and convicted?
Sir John Gieve: Ideally in the
long term but actually only a minority of all offenders are arrested
and so it is perfectly possible for the level of offending to
go down and the level of arrests and convictions to go up, and
that is precisely what has been happening over recent years. The
police are becoming more effective at bringing people to trial
and yet the total number of crimes is going down. The real measures
of success for prisons are protection of the public and the level
of crime. If prison is working to reduce crime and protect the
public it would be contributing to a reduction in the level of
crime.
Q82 Jon Trickett: Can you submit
evidence in writing that the conviction rate is increasing? I
do not need it now but you are resting your case on that to some
extent and I am not quite sure that the facts bear you out.[2]
Is there not a series of measures which might be taken in partnership
with other agencies to reduce the number of people in prison?
I want to go through a number of categories. The first is the
mentally ill. How many mentally ill people are in prison rather
than being cared for in an appropriate institution?
Sir John Gieve: There are different
categories of mental illness and Peter probably has the figures.
A high proportion of prisoners have some addiction, for example,
or other problems.
Mr Wheatley: At the very acute
level where prisoners are thought by appropriate psychiatrists
to need admission to hospital we get them admitted. The waiting
period is slightly reduced on that. The biggest issue that you
are homing in on is the number of people who are still in our
custody who have some mental problems and for whom we are using
mental health in-reach workers to assist them. They in the main
are the people who would have been cared for in the community.
They would not have required to be put in hospital.
Q83 Jon Trickett: According to the
Howard League there are 5,000 profoundly mentally ill people in
prison at any one time.
Mr Wheatley: I do not recognise
those figures in that form.
Q84 Jon Trickett: What are the figures
then?
Mr Wheatley: There are acutely
mentally people in prison whom we are moving into psychiatric
hospitals.
Q85 Jon Trickett: How many of them
are there?
Mr Wheatley: We will have to get
you the figures separately on those, which I do not think you
have available, so we will have to write with those. They are
monitored as a group. We monitor their waiting times and they
are being moved into psychiatric hospitals. It is the group above
that who do have mental health problems and are receiving mental
health treatment in prison who would, if they were in the community,
have been being cared for in the community.
Q86 Jon Trickett: I am not asking
about them. Here it is the profoundly mentally ill. I do not know
if that is a category defined by the Mental Health Act 1983 but
this paragraph seems to imply that. There are 5,000 who should
properly be dealt with in a secure hospital rather than in a prison.
Mr Wheatley: That is not a figure
we recognise at all.
Q87 Jon Trickett: What are the figures
then?
Mr Wheatley: The figures are,
as I say, that the people who are profoundly mentally ill and
who require hospitalisation we gain hospitalisation for—
Q88 Jon Trickett: That is not the
question I am asking you.
Mr Wheatley: It is much less than
that and we will write with the details, is the answer. It is
not 5,000.
Q89 Jon Trickett: I asked you a simple
question: how many are there? I did not ask you at what rate you
are getting them out of there because, as fast as they are going
out, there are other people coming in, and therefore there is
a population which is transient.
Mr Wheatley: You are quite right.
The number of people who have moved into psychiatric hospitals
is monitored and we can give you those figures. From memory I
think it is 700 but I do not want to give the committee a figure
from memory. I think we should write with the figure. It is well
below 5,000.
Q90 Jon Trickett: What I would like
from you is the number of people who the Prison Service or the
medical profession regard as being inappropriately housed in a
prison because they ought to be in a place of care provided, presumably,
not by the Prison Service, whether that would alleviate overcrowding
or not. Can I just ask you the simple question: if all those people
were appropriately housed presumably would that alleviate overcrowding?
Mr Wheatley: If I am right from
memory in thinking that is 700, and I would like to check that
but it is about that, then 700 people in the course of a year,
that is, spread throughout the year, would have made a slight
difference to overcrowding but a very small one.
Q91 Jon Trickett: Hang on. Is it
700 people or 700 places because, as fast as somebody is put in
who needs care, there are other people being identified in the
community for whom there has been a crisis of some kind which
has led to some kind of criminality and they have been incarcerated?
Seven hundred people doing a couple of months each in a prison
is not a huge number of places but if it is 700 places annually
occupied by a rotating number of people that is a different matter,
is it not?
Mr Wheatley: No, it is 700 for
two months' waiting.
Q92 Jon Trickett: I think we will
wait and see what the figures actually are.[3]
Sir John, would it be the Home Office which would provide alternative
secure accommodation for these people or is it the NHS?
Sir John Gieve: The NHS would
provide the secure hospitals.
Q93 Jon Trickett: Do you pay for
it or do they pay for it?
Sir John Gieve: They pay for it.
They pay for mental health treatment in prisons now as well.
Q94 Jon Trickett: What discussions
take place between yourself and the NHS to secure an adequate
number of places, whatever that number of places is? It is obviously
inappropriate to have somebody who is acutely mentally ill in
a prison, is it not?
Sir John Gieve: We work very closely
with the Department of Health, much more closely in the last couple
of years than ever before, which is one reason why the waiting
times are much reduced. It is partly because the Department of
Health has the responsibility for the quality of health care,
mental and physical, inside prison and they are committed to achieving
the same standard of care in prisons as outside. There are a large
number of disturbed people in prisons, going well beyond hundreds
into thousands. In fact, prisons are in many ways a sieve for
collecting some of the most disturbed people in our society, so
I can well understand why the Howard League and other people may
say, "It is many more than the people you actually shift
into hospital care". There are many more people who are in
need, I do not think we are disputing that, but we do have a system
of getting clinical judgments made as to who needs to go and that
is what Phil is referring to.
Q95 Jon Trickett: That is the question
which I want answering. How many children are held by the Prison
Service?
Sir John Gieve: The figure I have
got is 2,500.
Q96 Jon Trickett: And that has doubled,
has it not, over the last few years?
Sir John Gieve: I have not got
that figure.
Q97 Jon Trickett: Perhaps you could
provide the committee with a figure for, say, over the last 10
years, the number of children held in prison or in accommodation
provided by the Prison Service.[4]
Is that the most appropriate way of incarcerating children?
Sir John Gieve: The YJB, as you
know, who do the commissioning here, have a variety of types of
custody in local authority secure homes, in their own STCs and
in prison. I think prison can offer an appropriate form of care
and often does, and I have visited special units in East Anglia,
for example, which I thought were doing an excellent job.
Q98 Jon Trickett: My time is out
and I would just like you to provide us with information in writing
because it is something I would like to pursue further but cannot.
I think that the Lord Chancellor's report indicates that there
is huge variation in the courts' operation in terms of remanding
people into custody and about half the people who are held in
prisons on custody are not then given custodial sentences but
the practice of different courts varies very widely. If we were
able somehow or other to encourage the criminal justice system
to operate at the mean, if all courts operated at what is now
the statistical mean, how many people—and I do not expect
you to answer this now—would that mean would not be incarcerated?
Do you understand the question? There is a huge variation in practice
between the courts in remanding people into custody.
Sir John Gieve: I think if it
was at the mean it would be the same.
Q99 Jon Trickett: If the maximum
was the current mean, is what I am trying to say. I understand
that it is thousands of prisoners at any one time.[5]
Sir John Gieve: There is certainly
a very wide variation.
2 Ev 23 Back
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