Clause
24
Detention
and training orders: early
release
Mr.
Garnier:
I beg to move amendment No. 22, in
clause 24, page 17, line 39, leave
out subsection (2).
I
shall be relatively brief in dealing with this amendment, which stands
in my name and those of my hon. Friends. Subsection (2)
reads:
“The
amendments made by subsection (1) apply in relation to an offender
detained under a detention and training order which comes into force
before this section comes into force as they apply in relation to an
offender detained under a detention and training order which comes into
force after this
section.”
I want to point
out some of the complications and difficulties that arise under the
current sentencing regime. I have here a Crown Court Bench Book, which
is given by the Judicial Studies Board to full-time judges and also to
recorders. I possess it. Whether or not it belongs to the Lord
Chancellor, I do not
know.
The
Chairman:
You nicked
it.
Mr.
Garnier:
I do not think I can be accused of having nicked
it, as Mr. Atkinson so kindly
suggests.
Mr.
Garnier:
Allegedly. It is a very valuable
compendium of sentencing powers and the forms of words that judges are
recommended to speak when sentencing an individual. I do not want to go
through all of that. I simply want to point out to the Minister that
the whole sentencing regime, as created by this Government over the
past 10 years, is incredibly complicated. It does not make clear to the
defendant the sentence they will get and it does not make it clear to
the public, and more particularly the victim of the offence, what the
defendant is about to receive.
Let us look at several headings
which relate to sentences for defendants aged under 18 on conviction.
For custodial sentences, we have detention and training orders. We have
detention under section 91 of the Powers of the Criminal Court
Sentencing Act 2000 for less than 12 months or for 12 months or more.
We have a required minimum sentence of detention under the Firearms Act
1968. We have an extended sentence of detention under the Criminal
Justice Act 2003. We have detention for public protection under the
Criminal Justice Act 2003 and we have detention for life under the
Criminal Justice Act 2003.
Under
non-custodial sentences, we have youth community orders of a general
nature. There are curfew orders, exclusion orders, attendance centre
orders, supervision orders, action plan orders, community
rehabilitation orders, community punishment orders, community
punishment and rehabilitation orders and drug treatment and testing
orders. That is as of January 2006. No doubt it has changed several
times since then. Do not worry—I am sure that I will be on a
Judicial Studies Board course to correct any mistakes that I have made
before very long.
The
detention orders early release aspect of this is complicated. It is
complicated even more by the context in which one has to understand it.
The purpose of my amendment is to get the Minister publicly to explain
precisely what is intended by clause 24 and how it fits into common
sense and honesty in sentencing.
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
The hon. and Learned Gentleman makes a wider
point again about sentencing policy and the advice that is given. He
will be aware that the Home Secretary announced in July that we were
looking at all of this and that there is a consultation process taking
place at the moment about sentencing. We do want to see greater clarity
in the sentencing provisions, but we also want the public to understand
clearly what sentencing is about.
Clause 24 makes a minor
technical adjustment to the arrangements for early release from a
detention and training order. At present, a trainee who is granted
early release must be released on a particular date. If for some reason
that date is missed, the trainee must stay in custody for a further
month. This can happen for a number of reasons. Problems with finding
accommodation suitable for electronic tagging is a notable example.
Clause 24 introduces greater flexibility by allowing the release to
take place on any day after the early release point has
passed.
11.15
am
The amendment
will prevent trainees sentenced before the new arrangements come into
force from being released in accordance with them. The Government see
no reason for delaying the effective introduction of the more flexible
arrangements in this way. We are not proposing any change in general
practice. Trainees serving between eight and 18 months who qualify for
early release will continue to be released one month before the
mid-point of the order. Qualifying trainees serving 18 months or more
will be released one or two months before the mid-point. If for some
reason the early release date is missed—for example because of a
delay in finding accommodation suitable for electronic
tagging—it will be possible to
release a trainee later without having to keep him or her in custody for
a full extra month. There is no point in keeping trainees who are
qualified for and being granted early release in custody for an extra
month unless there is a substantive reason for doing
so. The clause is
highly appropriate and will give us flexibility. The amendment would
not, and in our view it would make matters worse. I understand why the
hon. and learned Gentleman raised the matter—he wanted to
discuss the wider issue of sentencing guidelines. He is assiduous and I
am impressed by his ability to deal with his roles as a judge and a
Member of Parliament. He is clearly an exceptional
person.
Mr.
Garnier:
I remember once advising the Prime Minister of a
foreign country on a matter of defamation law. After I had advised him
not to take action against a particular publication, he thanked me and
gave me a set of first-day covers from his country. I was about to
pocket them, hoping that a cheque for my fee would follow shortly
thereafter, when my instructing solicitor took them away from me and
said that he would have them on the basis that philately would get the
Prime Minister everywhere.
I am afraid that the Minister
is good at flattery—I expect first-day covers to head my way
shortly—but the clause seems to be a means for the Government to
get around the custody overcrowding problem. That is at the heart of
the problems faced by the Prison Service and the custody system. Until
the Government sort out the overcrowding problem and stop pretending
that early releases are for criminal justice reasons rather than to
make space for the queue of people coming into our prisons and young
offender institutions, confidence in their ability to manage this
aspect of public policy will be diminished.
Today is not the day for a
prolonged debate on the matter. The Opposition will constantly return
to it, but for present purposes, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Clause
24 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
25
Accommodation
in which period of detention and training to be
served
Mark
Williams (Ceredigion) (LD): I beg to move amendment No.
40, in
clause 25, page 18, line 25, leave
out subsection
(5).
The amendment
stands in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle. I
think that the appropriate expression may be that I have been left
holding the baby, but I shall proceed. Clause 25(5) allows the
Secretary of State to direct that some young people be removed from
young offender institutions into adult prisons once they have reached
the age of 18. We seek to remove that subsection from the
Bill.
Before 2000, the
law required that 18 to 20-year-olds be held in young offender
institutions. Approximately 9,000 young adults aged between 18 and 20
are now in prison in England and Wales. The Government attempted to
reduce the minimum age of imprisonment
to 18 in section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000.
Perhaps in the light of pressure from interested parties that were
rightly concerned about the standard of provision for young people in
adult prisons, that section was not brought into effect. The Home
Office has called in interested groups to consider the specific needs
of the 18 to 20-year-old age group, including standards for the
management of offenders in custody and in the community. I should be
interested to know the Minister’s feelings about that
consultation and the views of those who were consulted. The Government are attempting
to enact an idea to which many groups, such as Rainer, the Prison
Reform Trust and the Howard League for Penal Reform, are opposed. I
cite the views expressed by Her Majesty’s chief inspector of
prisons in her 2004-05 annual report, which stated:
“Our reports continue to
document the inadequate provision for young
adults”.
Is prison the
best place for 18 to 20-year-olds? This age group suffers severe
difficulties and therefore requires special attention. The Prison
Reform Trust found that 78.4 per cent. of young men released from
prison in 2002 were reconvicted within two years of
release.
We have heard
about the general problems of mental health from which young people
suffer proportionately more highly than others. To deal with the
problems of education and training as well as mental health problems,
special provision is needed to accommodate such needs. Reducing
reoffending in this age group requires us to prepare young offenders
for the world and to teach them skills that we often take for granted,
such as how to organise personal finances and how and where to look for
employment. We have often discussed such needs in the Committee.
Without being taught those skills and receiving other treatment for
drug abuse and mental health problems, young adults will remain as
likely as ever to reoffend. Crucially—the Minister showed his
personal commitment to this in his evidence to the Welsh Affairs
Committee—that cannot be done in
prisons.
The 2004-05
report of Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons
stated:
“The
poorest provision at present is to be found in establishments that hold
young adults within an adult
population.”
Different
age groups have different needs, but there is inadequate funding in
prisons to take account of such needs. The Prison Reform Trust report
“A Lost Generation: the experiences of young people in
prison” revealed that far too many 18 to 20-year-olds were being
moved around an overcrowded system and experiencing impoverished
regimes involving long hours locked up without the support and
supervision that they require, causing disruption and
distress.
Will the
provision as drafted make the situation worse? Will it not be a case of
having no room for young adults in secure training centres because
resources are a big issue, which means that they will be put into
prisons instead? The Minister knows that there is a problem in Wales,
as his evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee showed. The hon. and
learned Member for Harborough referred to the matter in his
contribution on mental health issues. Can the Minister
assure us that the measure will not be used as an excuse to free up
space in the already overcrowded youth custody
system?
Mr.
Garnier:
The hon. Gentleman may be reassured that the
measure is not being put in place to relieve overcrowding in the young
offender detention system by placing such offenders in the adult prison
system, because the adult prison system is itself overcrowded. One does
not cure one bit of overcrowding by further overcrowding an already
overcrowded adult prison estate.
There is a young offender
institution and an adult prison in my constituency, and I have visited
several young offender institutions and adult prisons in the past 18
months or so. Young offender institutions take people up to the age of
21, and there are often people of 19 or 20 in those institutions who
look about 13 or 14, yet some people aged 16 or 17 in custody look 25.
Some foreign nationals in young offender institutions do not have
accurate records of when they were born, so they may be over 21.
However, I am told by people who work in young offender institutions
that such detainees often say that they are under 21 in order to be
imprisoned in the young offender institution rather than the adult
prison. There is a huge problem of actual age as compared to maturity,
and the slightly lesser problem of older foreign prisoners being housed
in the young offender estate.
I am concerned about what
considerations the Secretary of State takes into account in deciding
whether a person who is 18 but not yet 21 is to be considered for
detention in a prison as opposed to a YOI. Clearly the Secretary of
State will not personally make that decision. I do not imagine that
even the Minister with responsibility for prisons will make that
decision; it will be delegated to people within the Prison Service or
in the private prison estate. We need to be extremely careful that
prisoners who are vulnerable young people in some respects—yes,
they have committed serious crimes, otherwise they would not be in
custody; I do not shed a tear about that—are not pushed into the
adult estate when they are not suitable and could not cope either
physically or mentally with the conditions of an adult
prison.
Prison is not
a nice place to be. Young offender institutions are not nice places to
be. I am afraid that sometimes people have to be sent to them because
they have committed serious crimes, but we need to be careful about
treating people badly within the prison system by sending unsuitable
youngsters into the adult system, for example, because it could lead to
more damage than the Minister would want.
Mr.
Sutcliffe:
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ceredigion
for speaking to the amendment and for the comments from the hon. and
learned Member for Harborough. I wholeheartedly agree that we have
tobe careful about this issue. I want to reassure the
Committee and, I hope, the hon. Member for Ceredigion that we are
seeking a contingency for the reasons that he outlined. Clearly there
will have to be a great deal of discussion, and I will come to some of
the things we are already doing in terms of adult offenders and what
needs to happen.
A project was set up as part of
the National Offender Management Service offender management programme
to look at management and standards for young adult offenders by March
2007. It is talking to the stakeholders that the hon. Gentleman quoted,
including Rainer and a variety of bodies. The project has carried out
four reviews of matters relating to young adult offenders: age range;
legislative arrangements for their management; custodial estate
provisions; and community provisions. Each review was informed by an
examination of recent publications, analysis of statistical data,
workshops and focus groups, and in addition meetings were held with
operational staff and offender policy leads, the voluntary community
and private sector, leading interest groups, inspectorates and the
prison and probation ombudsman. The team also visited a number of
prisons, youth offender institutions and probation areas, including the
north-west pathfinder for offender management. The project has worked
closely with the Youth Justice Board throughout.
The age range review has
examined the practice across all Departments, good practice overseas
and research evidence in relation to offending patterns and maturity.
There is an emerging argument in favour of looking to realign our age
definitions in line with other agencies, but the full implications need
further exploration before any firm recommendations are put to
Ministers. As yet, no firm decision has been made. Decisions on
legislative changes, if necessary, will be made once any change options
have been decided; for example in respect of YOI age range
definitions.
The
custodial and community reviews have been based on an assessment of the
way forward on the key characteristics of the young adult offenders age
group and, consequent on those, the development of a regime to reduce
the reoffending. The review of the custodial estate has identified
options for the future management of young adult offenders. The
priorities of public protection and reducing reoffending while ensuring
that vulnerable offenders are protected will determine the preferred
option, dependent on the offender need profile and the outcome of the
cost-benefit
analysis.
11.30
am
I hope that
that underlines what the Government are trying to do with young adult
offenders and young people provision across Government, focusing on
prevention and then dealing with reoffenders. I have been impressed
with the work of organisations such as SmartJustice, in the deflections
that they are trying to achieve in the development of young offenders.
We are attempting not to put 18-year-olds in prison but to enact a
contingency that is required under current
legislation.
Subsection
(5) allows detention and training order trainees who become 18 during
the course of their sentences to be placed in an adult prison, which is
a necessary provision for a situation that might arise when section 61
of the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act is brought into force.
Section 61 abolishes the sentence of detention in a young offenders
institution that is currently available for 18 to 20-year-olds.
Following that change, if we then decided that young offenders
institutions would no longer be provided for 18 to 20-year-olds, that
would create a
problem for the under-18 estate, because moving an
18-year-old trainee to a young adults institution would no longer be
possible. Clause 25 would instead enable him or her to be placed in an
adult prison. I might
be asked why 18-year-old DTO trainees cannot stay in the juvenile
estate until the end of their sentences. There is no difficulty in a
trainee remaining for a reasonable period, but an offender who is just
under 18 at the time of conviction may be over 18 by the time sentence
is passed and may then have to serve up to 12 months in custody. He or
she could then well be over 19 by the end of the custodial period. An
even more extreme case would be if the trainee was then released from
custody but subsequently breached the terms of the notice of
supervision. He or she could be sent back to custody by the court. By
that time, the trainee could be over 20.
Forcing the Youth Justice Board
to place 19 or 20-year-olds in the under-18 estate, where they would be
mixing with 15-year-olds and so on, is clearly not desirable. There are
obvious safeguarding implications. As I have tried to make clear, the
policy on young adult offenders in custody is currently under review
and no decision on the way forward has yet been taken. We are listening
to the groups—experts in the area—that the hon. Member
for Ceredigion asked us
to.
If and when there
is a need to place DTO trainees in prison, policy guidelines will be in
place to ensure that the transfer to prison happens only in appropriate
cases, with due consideration to the requirements of the Human Rights
Act 1998 and to meeting the needs of individual vulnerable people. I
should emphasise that, unless detention in a young offenders
institution is abolished and the age of adult imprisonment consequently
reduced to 18, we have no intention of placing DTO trainees in adult
establishments. The subsection is purely a contingency arrangement.
With that explanation and commitment, made in Committee and Select
Committee, the hon. Member for Ceredigion knows what we are trying to
achieve and should be able to withdraw the
amendment.
Mark
Williams:
I thank the Minister for that generous response.
Again, he has assured me that there is a precautionary principle at
work here, but my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle and I wanted to
flag up the needs of this very different group. The Minister has
assured me that the Government share, at least in part, that concern. I
beg to ask leave to withdraw the
amendment.
Amendment,
by leave,
withdrawn.
Clause
25 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause 26
ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
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