Examination of Witnesses (Questions 640
- 659)
TUESDAY 13 MARCH 2007
RT HON
BARONESS SCOTLAND
OF ASTHAL
QC, MR VERNON
COAKER MP, MS
HELEN EDWARDS
CBE, MS URSULA
BRENNAN AND
MR SIMON
KING
Q640 Ms Buck: Is there a target or
should there be a target for reducing exclusions and for closing
the gap between black exclusion and non-black exclusion?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
think—and I have to be very careful here—that we are
across government talking about what our new PSAs should be, and
one of the things that we are very interested in, and certainly
education is very interested in, is to look at prevention, to
see whether we cannot prevent young people from entering into
the criminal justice system, and there is debate as to whether
that should not be a target. And there is the target, you will
know, in terms of disproportionality, because we want to see a
proportionate response to how we are dealing with all our different
groups.
Q641 Ms Buck: So at the moment there
is not an explicit commitment to reduce the differential between
black and general levels of school exclusion?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: There
is a commitment certainly, and there is part of the Home Office
PSA, to reduce disproportionality. We are working and discussing
with other departments as to how that should be better shared
and indeed we are discussing with the Department of Education
what we can do together in relation to this issue.
Q642 Ms Buck: One last question.
The DfES report released earlier this month found that racial
discrimination was a factor in determining the disproportionality
in black exclusion; is that something that you accept?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
am sorry; I missed what was a factor?
Q643 Ms Buck: That racial discrimination
was a factor in the disproportionate level of exclusions of young
black pupils. Is that something that you accept and, if so, what
do you think the Home Office's role should be in tackling it?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: We
believe that the level of disproportionality cannot currently
be explained and we want an explanation, for if it is fair, what
is it? I think we are all committed to finding that. We do have
at the moment a commitment to reduce but we do not have a target.
As I have said to you, we are looking at the moment—and
you will know that PSAs will very soon be confirmed—as to
what our cross-departmental PSAs should be.
Q644 Chairman: I will bring Mr Coaker
in, and if you come in, Minister, perhaps you could address this
question. Have you actually discussed the DfES report on school
exclusions with DfES Ministers?
Mr Coaker: I know Baroness Scotland
can say something.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: We
have discussed those. As I have said to you, I am discussing how
we reduce re-offending, I am discussing disproportionality with
Phil Hope, and I am also going to discuss this issue further with
Lord Adonis.
Mr Coaker: Chairman, thank you
very much. Very briefly, two additional things which may be of
use to the Committee with respect to education. Firstly, is the
fact that DfES officials are on the Home Secretary's round-table
on guns, knives and gangs as well; so that is the first thing.
The second thing is that following the summit at Number Ten Downing
Street, Beverley Hughes did write to me from the DfES because
we did raise the issue of gun culture and gun crime and the role
of extended schools and we wanted to identify more clearly where
there were issues with respect to that in particular areas. And
our officials, DfES officials and Home Office officials are now
working together to look to see how we can make sure that we get
a proper geographical spread of extended schools.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
really do want to emphasise that the reason we set up the inter-ministerial
group is that we want to make a difference and we are going to
judge our performance by outcomes; not by the number of policies
and procedures we have put in place but what difference we make
to reducing re-offending. This inter-ministerial group has only
been up and running for a period since July—the first meeting
was July.
Chairman: Thank you Minister.
We need to move on. Richard Benyon.
Q645 Mr Benyon: Moving on to family
and parenting issues, we have had statistics of the number of
black and ethnic minority families with dependent children who
have just one resident parent, and we have also had evidence to
this Committee of the strong feeling that family breakdown and
the absence of strong male role models is a major contributory
factor to offending. Do you agree with that statement and what
action do you believe should take place to encourage more male
role models to have influence amongst young black men in particular?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: Firstly
we think, as I indicated earlier, that parenting has a huge and
can have a huge impact; that the role model, both of male and
female role models are very important. So the Young Offending
Teams, as you will know, have engaged quite trenchantly in promoting,
through the Respect Agenda, the parenting, and they are also looking
at the cultural differences of families, so with the Young Offending
Teams providing the interventions to parents of all backgrounds
and based on risk and need, and ethnicity is one of the factors
that have been taken into account, and we have a recent evaluation
of the parenting interventions by the Youth Justice Board and
it did not highlight there any race disproportionality in the
level or types of intervention. But I think it is absolutely critical
that we do provide better support for families and positive role
models is something that we know can have a very beneficial effect.
As Vernon Coaker said earlier, negative role models equally can
have a very damaging effect. So we are seeking to better support
parents to provide that concrete nurture for children that we
know makes a material difference, but also we are trying to address
the negative, stereotypical role models that are coming out which
have a deleterious effect on young people. So it is doing both.
Mr Coaker: To help our understanding
of that—and I know that you have had Decima Francis here
as well—I went to the From Boyhood to Manhood Foundation
a couple of weeks ago to talk to Decima with a group of young
people and some of the people who work there, to try and get a
better understanding of the important work that they were doing
and what we could learn from that as we try and develop the policies
that Lady Scotland has spoken of.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: To
put it in context, we have about 11,000 young people with final
warnings or other community penalties, and the Committee will
know that final warnings are actually very successful, and they
are being supported by parenting interventions, and where we have
parents engaged in this activity we have noticed that there has
been a difference between the likelihood of them then going on
to need more trenchant interventions. So it is something that
positively works.
Q646 Mr Benyon: You can coerce or
support fathers to have more influence in the upbringing of their
children and you have spoken of some of those areas, but one of
the most impressive bits of evidence we have had before this Committee
was Shaun Bailey, and he said to us that he was saved by the cadets;
it was the first time that a man had shouted at him and told him
to do something and he just did it. He said that that one organisation
pulled him out of a pathway which would have led him, he is quite
convinced, in the wrong direction. Is it not time to really unleash
the power of the voluntary sector into some of these communities
to provide just those sorts of positive role models you are talking
about?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: You
will know that everything that we are doing in terms of the Offender
Management Bill was to enable the voluntary sector to be full
partners in reducing re-offending, and the voluntary sector has
a huge contribution to make, not just in this area but also in
a whole series of areas. The Committee will know that I launched
in 2005 the Reducing Re-offending Alliances—that is the
corporate alliance, the faith-based alliance and the civic alliance,
to garner the energy of the community and volunteering, to help
us to address some of these issues, and it is about creating really
exciting and positive role models in local communities and we
want to harness that. I think it would be simplistic to think
that only one sector can deliver this; it will take everybody
working together to deliver the change we seek. It will need the
public sector doing its part, it will need the non-governmental
agencies doing their part and it will need volunteers to do their
part too.
Mr Coaker: It is never an either/or
with these; it is all of it. As Ms Buck was saying, in terms of
schools that is a crucial role; the voluntary sector is very crucial.
We have spoken about the From Boyhood to Manhood Foundation; we
meet with Mothers Against Guns, the role that they play; but also
we talk to Street Pastors. I know that Reverend Isaacs has spoken
to you and again it is fantastic work they were doing. I have
to say I was astonished because when I went to speak to them about
what work they were doing they told me that three-quarters of
their pastors are actually women. We all stereotype, and I did
not think that that would be the case. So that is positive models,
and three-quarters of the people going out and doing the valuable
work that they were doing were women, and I think what they are
doing is fantastic—both the Street Pastors, From Boyhood
to Manhood and Mothers Against Guns, all of those. But it is everything,
and this is something that will only be solved by every part of
the system, state, voluntary, individuals, all of those things
working together.
Chairman: Gwyn Prosser.
Q647 Gwyn Prosser: Minister, several
witnesses have told us that some of the more extreme forms of
rap music and films, which glorify violence and crime, even talking
about killing being "cool" can have an influence on
the young people and draw them into crime. To what extent do you
think that that sort of material is an influence?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
think that that sort of material can have a deleterious influence,
but I think it is very difficult to draw a line between legitimate
expression of artistic licence and that which is pernicious, and
I do think that we have to look very carefully to see whether
some of this music is not incitement. You will know that the police
and others are looking at it because if it is glorification or
incitement to commit a crime then there is an issue that we already
have legislation that can deal with it. We have to be a bit cautious
though because we know, for instance, that there is a lot of very
exciting rap music at the moment, which is done by the pastors
to engage young people into positive role models. The YOT teams
are doing a lot of rap music with a positive and lifting effect
on young people. So I think it is very difficult to target a whole
genre of music and say that this sort of music should be eradicated—it
is the content which is obviously something of real importance.
But it can be inspirational and it can also motivate in the wrong
direction too.
Q648 Gwyn Prosser: You do not see
any policy issues arising out of it in terms of the content, other
than the legislation you already have in place?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
think it is an issue that we have to look at, but it is one of
the things that is so sensitive. Most of the people around this
table may remember the mods and rockers.
Q649 Chairman: That is not the way
to endear yourself to the Committee!
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: Or
the punk rockers!
Q650 Chairman: That is more like
it!
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: So
for every generation there has been the generation before who
thought that the music enjoyed by young people is reprehensible,
excites their passions in a way that is inappropriate and leads
them into error. That is about different generations. I think
we just need to be a little sensitive about where the line should
be drawn because I think that people—and this is before
anyone's time—thought that Elvis Presley was a detrimental
impact on sexual morality. I have heard about him in the past!
Mr Coaker: It is very difficult.
Again, as the Committee itself raised, I think Mr Winnick raised
about Lady Chatterley's Lover and Tom Jones and Delilah, it is
a very difficult issue but that is not to understate the fact
that we do have to keep it under review and we do have to look
at it to see whether we need to do anything, but it is a very
difficult area to move into, where you are moving to censorship
rather than things that are impacting on people's behaviour.
Gwyn Prosser: We certainly do
not want to ban rap.
Mr Winnick: Or Lady Chatterley's
Lover!
Q651 Gwyn Prosser: I want to move
to the issue of disproportionality with regards to stop and search,
and it has been mentioned briefly already. Minister, in 2004 the
Home Office stated that by 2008 black people would have more confidence
that the criminal justice system treated them fairly, and then
it went on to say that the disparity in stop and search would
be reduced. We are in 2007 and we are told that you are still
six times more likely to be stopped and searched if you are black
than if you are white. So have we failed in that target?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
think we certainly are not achieving it and I cannot tell you
how frustrating that has been. We have now developed, as I told
the Committee, an effective action plan which we developed together
with the action teams in terms of trying to better understand
what would work, because so many things we have tried in the past
do not appear to have worked. This new protocol does appear, in
the forces that are operating it, to have reduced the level of
disproportionality. So, if you like, we are on our way. Am I disappointed
that we have not been able to move faster? Absolutely. It has
not been because of lack of energy, it has not been because we
have not spoken to as many people as we can. We have brought expertise
in from the community and we have asked the community—and
young people actually—"What do you think would make
the difference? How do you think you would need to be approached
so that you would think it was fairer?" And we have put all
that into the new protocols that have been rolled out. The only
light I can tell you that we certainly have at the end of the
tunnel is that in those areas where we have rolled out that approach
it does appear to be reducing disproportionality. I am personally
very, very disappointed that we have not been able to move more
quickly on it, but I think we have to look at every single level
of the criminal justice system to try and address this issue.
It is getting there but I do not think it is getting there quickly
enough.
Mr Coaker: I went to Choice
FM a few weeks ago to talk about this issue with some black
people and it started off about the disproportionality, and in
the end we had a good discussion because what I said was that
stop and search is actually an important tool for the police to
have in order to prevent crime, but that disproportionality is
an issue. The work that we were doing that Lady Scotland has just
alluded to is about trying to do something about that. We have
a stop and search community panel, which is chaired by Lord Adebowale,
with Doreen Lawrence, and there is a delivery board of stakeholders.
So we are trying to do something about that. It goes to the heart
of many of the discussions that we are having here today and the
discussions that you have had over the last few months of your
inquiry, that despite many of these attempts and many of these
real efforts to make a difference there is a stubbornness, almost,
for it to change. So what is it that will bring about that effective
change? Again, to reiterate what Lady Scotland said, in the end
the judgment is the change in the statistics and that is what
we are searching for, and obviously what your inquiry is trying
to help with as well, because clearly a lot of work has been done.
If you talk to senior police officers about stop and search they
go and talk to young black people, they talk to their officers,
there is a lot of training and yet it stubbornly stays at a level
at which we would all not wish to see it.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: There
are two things that make me more hopeful. One is the practice-orientated
package, because we wanted to give officers something that they
could implement in a way that made sense, on the ground. Staffordshire,
which is an example, have applied it. They used to have disproportionality
at the rate of 4 to 1, and since they have been using this new
approach it is 2 to 1; so that is a halving. So we know that these
practical things can and do make a difference and we are trying
to roll it out right the way across the country, and we hope then
to see a reduction. The other thing that will make, I think, a
big difference, is that as we get a bigger data set we will be
able to compare like with like. I hope that we will be able to
move, even if it takes five, 10 years, into real-time data, so
that real-time data will be able to be used by practitioners on
the ground, by the Chief Constable, by the Head of the Unit, to
then disaggregate where disproportionality lies within their own
workers. So you will have issues where individual A has a disproportionality
rate at 9 to 1, at the stage of individual B having no disproportionality
at all of 1 to 1. You are able then as a manager to ask a question:
"Why are you 9 to 1 when your fellow worker"—officer,
whoever it is—"does not have any disproportionality
at all?" That gives us a level of acuity that we have never
had before, and it will give us a level of acuity in real-time,
so that we can target where are the causes of that disproportionality,
and hopefully we will then be able to say who will need to be
trained, because we are training everyone at the moment, and we
have to assess what is the impact of having done that, who do
we have to train and also who do we have to take out?
Gwyn Prosser: That analysis might
give you an unhappy answer. Thank you, Minister.
Chairman: Moving on, Martin Salter.
Q652 Martin Salter: I will wrap my
questions together—I will not "rap", others on
the Committee do that! There is a report by the Youth Justice
Board in 2004, which showed that a much higher proportion of black
males, 92%, as opposed to 62% of white males, received custodial
sentences of 12 months or more—another example of disproportionality.
Have you done anything to address this disproportionality and
is there anything that you can do at the Home Office to address
this disproportionality? And could it be something to do with
the fact that—and there is an explanation in the report
here—black males are more likely to plead not guilty and
therefore not necessarily benefit from the discount, and could
that be a factor?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: This
is an issue that we are looking at across the criminal justice
system, at the National Criminal Justice Board, and it is being
dealt with with the Office for Criminal Justice Reform, which
is trilateral, because some of the issues about how people get
sentenced is that we have an issue about who gets arrested, who
gets charged and if charged who gets prosecuted, if prosecuted
who gets convicted, if convicted who gets sentenced and why are
we seeing a difference in the length of sentences applied to black
and minority ethnic offenders compared to others? These are questions
which we are asking systemically. So it is not an issue just for
the Home Office, it is an issue for us all. You will remember
that we have had two Hood Reports; there was the original Hood
Report, back in the late 1980s and we have had a more recent Hood
Report looking at those issues too. But it is an issue that we
want to look at right the way across the criminal justice system
and one of the things we are looking at is should there be a target
or a PSA to reduce the level of re-offending across the board,
because if we do that it will reduce, I hope, the disproportionality
as well. There are a number of things we are trying to do with
the DCA, with the CPS and ourselves to attack this issue. But
at the end, of course, sentencing, as you know, is an independent
activity carried out by judges on an independent basis, and we
cannot, of course, control the decisions that judges come to,
but I think there is an issue about helping to share better information,
to help people to come to better informed decisions.
Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. Bob Russell.
Q653 Bob Russell: Lady Scotland,
it has been reported in Parliament that 32% of all black males
are on the DNA database in comparison with 8% of white males,
and it has been reported more recently that perhaps as many as
77% of young black males will soon be on the DNA database. Are
those figures correct?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: The
figures in relation to 77% I think are correct, and we have to
look at why that is. The database, of course, simply collates
information properly retained from the criminal justice process.
We changed the rules, as you remember, to enable us to retain
DNA data on a greater number of occasions than we have had hitherto.
At one stage we could only retain data if someone was convicted;
then we could retain data if someone was charged, tried and convicted
or acquitted. Then we have moved it back to be able to retain
data on arrest, and as we have done that we have been able to
collate more and more data to the successful extent that we are
able to better identify those who have committed crime, but also
better identify those who have not committed crime. So it is a
sword and a shield.
Q654 Bob Russell: It is not the same
for the white population though, is it?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: No,
and that I can say to you is a matter of concern to us because
the disproportionality that may be reflected in the criminal justice
process is being reflected in the DNA database. Overall, of course,
from the statistics available the difference is not so great,
so, for instance, we have 84% arrests are white, 9% are black,
5% are Asian, 1% are classified as other and 1% are unknown, and
the figures in relation to arrest are reflected in the data sets
that were kept.
Bob Russell: I want to keep to
the DNA database because that is where I am putting the questioning.
So if three out of every four young black men are on the DNA database.
Chairman: This is one out of every
three at the moment.
Q655 Bob Russell: 77%, three out
of four. Trevor Phillips made the observation—and I am quoting
him—"This is tantamount to criminalizing a generation
of young black men." Do you agree with him?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
do not think that it is tantamount to criminalizing a generation
of black men, but I think the way in which the criminal justice
system is operating is something that this Committee is looking
at because of the level of disproportionality. The disproportionality
in the criminal justice system is being reflected in the figures
that we are collecting on the database. So the data that we have
reflects the arrest rate, more or less. So it is whether someone
is arrested, because at the point of arrest if your DNA is taken
and put on the database it does not mean that you are subsequently
charged, it does not mean that you are subsequently convicted;
but it does mean that your data will be retained.
Q656 Bob Russell: I think those percentages
in that last comment speaks volumes.
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: As
I have said, if you look at the arrest rates of 84% white, 9%
black, 5% Asian and 2% either other/unknown, the database reflects
that arrest proportionally.
Q657 Bob Russell: I will leave it
there and move on now. As the Home Office has a statutory duty
to promote race equality why does not the Government collect figures
on the ethnicity of ASBO recipients and recipients of fixed penalty
notices?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: Of
course, as we have tried to make clear, we are improving the data
set of information that we are collecting. Our main focus, of
course, has been to improve the data which we get from those who
are arrested, charged and put through the criminal justice system
and the full panoply. That is our first and, if I may respectfully
suggest, the most important thing we need to do to get a data
set which is actually worthy of being used as a management tool.
Q658 Bob Russell: It is difficult
to monitor it though, is it not, if you do not have the information?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: We
are collating that information more and more, and I do not think
we have a complete set, as I have made clear.
Q659 Bob Russell: My last question
is, is there any anecdotal evidence that ASBOs are being applied
disproportionality to some ethnic groups?
Baroness Scotland of Asthal: I
have no indication that that is so.
Mr Coaker: Can I just add to that?
| 
