Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
MS ANNE
OWERS AND
MR KIT
CHIVERS
9 MAY 2007
Q1 Stephen Pound: Ms Owers and Mr Chivers,
welcome again. You are very, very welcome. Obviously we value
your evidence so much that we keep asking you to return. Can I
apologise for the absence of, by indisposition, Sir Patrick Cormack,
who is unfortunately not with us—he has bronchitis. I will
be taking the Committee this afternoon, so if I could ask you
for your forbearance and indulgence. You are both more than familiar
with the process here of questions coming from various parts of
the horseshoe. This is the first evidence session of this new
inquiry, so we will be asking certain general questions, although
we will direct most of them to specific areas of expertise. I
do not think I need to introduce the members of the Committee,
who are probably known to all of you, but they will certainly
be introduced as they are called to speak. Before we come on to
the questioning section could I ask you if either of you would
like to make an introductory statement, remembering that the last
time Anne Owers gave evidence she did the whole thing without
notes and impressed us mightily. Also, if it is possible for you
individually or collectively to make a small scene-setting statement
about the way your two positions affect each other, because it
is the definition of the role and the interface that is of some
concern to some people.
Mr Chivers: I am the Chief Inspector
of Criminal Justice in Northern Ireland and my remit covers the
prison service, among others. I have power to delegate my responsibilities
to other Chief Inspectors to assist me in the execution of my
duties, but in most cases I prefer to work in partnership with
other inspectorates because I find it more productive, rather
than having a formal delegated relationship, to work as partners
with other inspectors and to form joint teams. So that is the
way we operate in Northern Ireland, that whenever there is an
inspection Anne or her designated inspector takes the lead in
organising the activity—because that is clearly their area
of expertise—but the lead inspector from the Inspectorate
of Prisons will form up a team to which I would contribute a couple
of inspectors, and they work together and we share our findings
and write the report jointly.
Q2 Stephen Pound: When it comes to establishing
a work plan do you discuss with each other or is it when something
is about to occur that you notify and consult?
Mr Chivers: We follow the pattern
of work basically that the Inspectorate of Prisons was following
before my advent. So there is a pattern—and Anne will speak
to this—and there is a programme of inspections which we
have continued very much in the manner in which England and Wales'
prisons are inspected.
Ms Owers: Basically, inspections
are based on a mixture of chronology and intelligence. Chronology
dictates that every prison should have a full inspection and a
follow-up inspection once every five years—so two inspections
in a five-year period. Intelligence would be based upon concerns
about the prison at its previous inspection or any other information
that came the way of the Inspectorate, and that might mean that
an inspection occurred earlier than it otherwise would or it might
mean that an inspection, which otherwise would have been a short
inspection, would be a full and longer inspection.
Q3 Lady Hermon: Are your inspections
always announced?
Ms Owers: No. At least half of
them are unannounced. The follow-ups to full inspections are always
unannounced and Kit has the power, as I do here, to order an unannounced
inspection at any time if he feels that that is appropriate. So
what we do is draw up a programme between ourselves for the year.
Q4 Stephen Pound: Could I ask you
for the record, is the relationship between the two departments
statutory or informal?
Mr Chivers: It is statutory. It
is defined in the Justice Northern Ireland Act 2002.
Q5 Stephen Pound: Thank you very
much. Did either of you want to make any opening statements before
we come to the questions?
Mr Chivers: No. If I had done,
Chairman, it would have been about that relationship.
Q6 Stephen Pound: Thank you. There
are probably a few questions to Ms Owers principally about the
conditions and the satisfactory state of accommodation in the
prison estate. Do you feel that the problems of which we are aware,
and you are aware, are being satisfactorily addressed on all the
sites in Northern Ireland?
Ms Owers: I think there is a real
dilemma at the moment in terms of the prison service in Northern
Ireland, which is whether you make the best of a bad job and make
what are often unsatisfactory accommodation, unsatisfactory locations
a bit better—the sticking plaster approach, put in a few
more temporary units, do a bit of tidying up around the edges,
putting in a reception area here and there—or whether actually
what is wanted is significant capital investment with more of
a root and branch approach to getting rid of some of the extremely
unsatisfactory accommodation too and having, for example, a separate
prison for women, all of those things. I am not clear—and
Kit probably has more up to date information than I do—where
the prison service is going at the moment. Our instinct would
be that that is what is needed and what would be a really good
fresh start to the prison service in Northern Ireland would be
a significant programme of capital investment which allowed Northern
Ireland to have the prison service it needs for the 21st century.
Q7 Stephen Pound: The Secretary of
State made a commitment on the floor of the House a couple of
hours ago for a very large degree of capital investment, particularly
towards infrastructure, which I assume includes the prison estate.
I am sorry, this is an impossible question, but if you were starting
from somewhere else other than where you actually were, would
you aim for more small specialised units or large central units,
or a mixture?
Ms Owers: The ideal in a prison
system is small, specialised units, where prisoners can be held
reasonably close to home, thus making resettlement easier, and
where you can have focused environments for, for example, your
high security prisoners, women, young people and so on. The problem
with that is it is not cost effective, and when you are looking
at relatively small populations—and although the prison
population in Northern Ireland is growing considerably it is still,
certainly by the standards of England and Wales very small—this
does pose some efficiency issues. I think that from our inspections
we would certainly be arguing for a separate prison for women
that could focus on the specific needs of women, and a separate
prison for young offenders, as Hydebank Wood has been and could
be again. There is also a need to move forward with the security
reclassification so that you can get a much clearer idea of what
the shape of the prison population is and whether there is scope
for a higher security prison or a zone within a prison, and what
you want to do with remand prisons. I think until there is a much
clearer picture of what are the real security needs of the prison
population in Northern Ireland it is quite difficult to make those
calls. But if you were to go for a larger prison option then the
only thing that would make sense would be to have, as it were,
prisons within prisons, to have quite separate zoned arrangements
for different categories of prisoner because one of the problems
at the moment—for example, at Maghaberry—is that every
prisoner is subject to an extremely high security classification
because you have to run the prison with reference to the most
risky prisoners that you have in it, and that obviously has implications
for those prisoners who are much lower risk.
Q8 Stephen Pound: For the record
could you refer to secure psychiatric accommodation—is that
within the prison estate or within the health board?
Ms Owers: That is within the health
board.
Q9 Stephen Pound: Do you have any
oversight?
Ms Owers: No, we do not inspect
specific secure psychiatric accommodation.
Q10 Stephen Pound: So if you had
a person who was a convicted criminal who was sentenced to a period
of service which was then transmuted into a placement in a secure
psychiatric hospital, that person would be outside your estate?
Ms Owers: Yes.
Q11 Stephen Pound: The categories
that you talked about, women and young people, and you also talked
about remand prisoners, are there any other categories that you
would suggest for small specialist units, for example drug users?
Ms Owers: I do not know that you
would want to have those in a separate prison, not least because
if Northern Ireland's experience mirrors—and it is beginning
increasingly to mirror experience in England and Wales, a significant
proportion of your prison population would have issues around
drugs, and it is growing in Northern Ireland too. So I am not
sure about that. If you had the luxury of being able to design
prisons from scratch one thing you would be looking at is small
resettlement units that were for low risk prisoners or prisoners
nearing the end of sentence, which you would want to locate close
to the areas from which they came and therefore to where they
were being resettled.
Q12 Stephen Pound: We will come on
to that in a moment. My last question before I hand over to Lady
Hermon is that the issue of the geographical isolation of Magilligan
is constantly raised. How much of an issue is that for you?
Ms Owers: It is an issue. Magilligan
is a training prison and it is a low security prison and it is
therefore one from which prisoners are likely to be released.
The geographical location is an issue, certainly.
Q13 Lady Hermon: We are delighted
to see you this afternoon Mr Chivers and Ms Owers. Ms Owers, may
I take you back—and I have volunteered for this question,
and it is to do with women's prisons—to when we as a Committee
visited Magilligan and then we went to Hydebank and obviously
we had the young offenders and the women's prisons on the one
site. You have already indicated that your preference would be
for a separate women's prison. Was it a mistake in both of your
views—and there is presumably agreement, but just in case
there is not—to take women away from Mourne House, and should
the prison service think about taking the women's prison out of
Hydebank and back to Mourne House?
Ms Owers: I cannot say whether
it would be feasible now to put women back into Mourne House,
given that it is now being used for something completely different.
I think in terms of location and in terms of the kind of building
it was a mistake not to use Mourne House because Mourne House
was set up specifically as a women's prison; it was modelled on
Corton Vale. It had a great deal going for it in terms of the
kind of environment that made it suitable for women. Of course
the kind of regime and the kind of relationships that were developed
at Mourne House were very negative indeed, and it was—as
is well known—to break that that the move was made, and
at a time when there were so many difficulties in running Maghaberry
anyway that Mourne House was more than could be dealt with at
the time. I think moving women to somewhere like Mourne House
or something like I saw when I inspected prisons in Canada, which
were women's prisons with small residential units where women
can self-cater, and a few higher security units for those women
that need it, if you were starting from a baseline that is what
you would be looking for. But I do not think you would want to
go back to whatever accommodation it was for women being run as
part of another prison, particularly another complex prison like
Maghaberry.
Mr Chivers: I agree with that.
Mourne House is being well used now for lifers and I cannot see
a prospect of moving back to it for the reasons that Anne says.
I think what we need to think of, whenever it can be afforded,
is a separate women's facility on a different site outside the
perimeter of Hydebank Wood at least, so that there is clear segregation.
Q14 Lady Hermon: So at the present
time does it concern either of you that young offenders are sharing
the same site as women prisoners at Hydebank?
Ms Owers: Yes, it does.
Mr Chivers: It is a matter of
concern, yes, but having said that I think the lot of the women
is better where they are now in Ash House, than it was in Mourne
House. So I think the move has been justified in the context in
which that decision had to be made.
Q15 Lady Hermon: Would you care to
elaborate on how it is actually much better for women where they
are presently housed in Hydebank?
Mr Chivers: The regime that has
been introduced, the prison service has put a lot of effort into
introducing new management for them, having a separate governor
looking after them, and I think a much more purpose built regime
for them. So they certainly seem to be happier than they were
in Mourne House, and of course there were tragedies in Mourne
House and it was an acutely unsatisfactory situation.
Q16 Stephen Pound: On that point,
have there been any applications for pregnant prisoners to remain
with their babies or for prisoners with very young babies to have
a period of time with the infant in custody?
Ms Owers: Yes.
Q17 Stephen Pound: Roughly how many?
Mr Chivers: One or two at the
most.
Q18 Stephen Pound: Two, three months,
or six months? What is the period?
Mr Chivers: I am afraid we do
not have it precisely; it depends on the child.
Stephen Pound: I apologise for not giving
you advance warning of that question.
Q19 Lady Hermon: I think from our
visit to Hydebank we were given information that it is around
a nine-month period when a baby has been in a prison. I would
like to touch upon Jean Corston's report, particularly on women.
How can the prison service in Northern Ireland go about now implementing
some of the recommendations—the very valuable recommendations
identified by Jean Corston in an extensive and hugely interesting
report?
Ms Owers: I think there is now
an opportunity to do that. If there is the capital investment
and if it is accepted—and I think the Northern Ireland prison
service accepts that it is far from ideal to have women on the
same site as the young men at Hydebank—then you could look
at the Corston report and you could model something on what Jean
Corston recommends, which is smaller units, not with the level
of security that you need for high security men's prison, with
a lot more permeability between women and their families and also
putting in place the kind of mental health and vulnerability support
that is needed for an awful lot of the women that end up in prison.
So you could see this as a really positive opportunity to develop
something that really was modelled around the needs of women because
prisons in all the jurisdictions in the United Kingdom were built
largely around the needs of men.
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