Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-56)
MS ANNE
OWERS AND
MR KIT
CHIVERS
9 MAY 2007
Q40 Rosie Cooper: No, which is the
reason behind the question and the reason why you cannot move
quickly to a solution. But without a strategy, without a plan
you are never going to change things and without changing things
it is a problem which will remain. Even though it is difficult
to resolve, when you have resolved that, when you have resolved
categorising prisoners, when you have got to that stage you have
normality, you have a prison population that deals with prisoner
because they are prisoners. We came across this phrase quite frequently—"ordinary
decent criminals". I want to get to a service which deals
with that with a prison population and officer population which
is without any of these overtones and you are not going to get
that without addressing it, without having a strategy, and hope
will not do it.
Mr Chivers: I think, Chairman,
that this is a question that you will want to put to the Director
of the Prison Service at some stage, but I would say that we have
addressed an aspect of this in that Anne and I have looked in
inspections at whether there is any discrimination against prisoners
as a result of the religious imbalance. We noticed some anomalies
in some of our reports and we encouraged the prison service to
do monitoring of outcomes for Catholic prisoners and, sure enough,
with the latest figures I think the Director would be able to
report very positively that the figures now show that whereas
there were apparent anomalies in the figures this now seem to
have been evened out and there is more equality now in outcomes
for Catholic prisoners.
Rosie Cooper: My question was more presumptive
that everyone was a saint and that there was never going to be
any difficulty, and I am addressing the problems of (a) perception
and (b) equality, never mind what may or may not be demonstrated
by fact. I have just said, okay, everybody is great but still
you are not going to get complete ownership unless you start to
plan to do it. So there is no denigration of anybody in there.
This was, how are you going to deal with what is? It will happen
here if you were leaving one section out of something. It is a
difficult problem which if you do not show normality of time you
have to address.
Stephen Pound: Would you like to respond
to that and to Denis Murphy's next question at the same time?
Q41 Mr Murphy: The anomalies that
you mentioned would be the fact that republican prisoners spend
much more time in their cells and indeed often get meals there.
Would that be as a result of friction between sometimes prison
officers and those particular individuals?
Mr Chivers: Are you talking about
prisoners in a separated situation?
Q42 Mr Murphy: Yes.
Ms Owers: Just the separated prisoners.
I do not know that I can comment on that because most prisoners
anywhere I think were eating in their cells at the time that we
were inspecting Maghaberry, certainly. I think Kit was right in
his earlier answer that when we first looked at the differential
outcomes for Catholic and Protestant prisoners first of all we
were surprised that the Northern Ireland prison service was not
monitoring this itself—it seemed to us a big gap—and
I am thankful to say that it is a gap that has now been met and
that this monitoring is now happening. I would agree with what
Miss Cooper was saying, that as part of the normalisation process
you simply want to see a prison service that reflects the population
of Northern Ireland and also the population that is in its prisons,
and that serves to normalise relationships considerably.
Q43 Mr Grogan: If we can move to
healthcare. I think last year the departmental report suggested
that by this stage prison healthcare had passed over to the Department
of Health. What are your comments on the situation and what is
the reason for the delay and, as far as you can see, what are
the issues that need to be resolved?
Ms Owers: Maybe I can talk about
the issues and Kit, I am sure, has more up to date information
on the reason for the delays. The issue for prison healthcare—again
it is a question of normalisation and of equalisation—is
that one wants to see a situation where there is equivalent care
in prison and out of prison, particularly given the fact that
the morbidity of those in prison is likely to be higher than the
outside community both in terms of physical and mental illness,
but also in terms of the fact that most people are in prison for
relatively short periods of time and they are going to require
care in the community once they are out, and we want a situation
where that is made as seamless as possible. Certainly the thing
that seems to work best is if you hand over prison healthcare
to the authorities that are providing healthcare outside and you
get a much more up to date, a much more equivalent and seamless
service. Certainly it was our hope that that would happen in Northern
Ireland as soon as possible, and we had identified in some of
the prisons that we inspected—indeed most of the prisons
we inspected—specific deficits in relation to mental healthcare.
Also in relation to prescribing practices in the community and
in prison which did not particularly fit, so a whole range of
issues where the fact that services would be provided by the health
service outside would be beneficial. I am not sure of the reasons
why there has been the delay.
Mr Chivers: Certainly nothing
has actually changed on the ground yet in prisons. I think the
original thinking was that staff working on healthcare in the
prisons would transfer to the Health Service and that does not
seem to be happening. Presumably there are difficulties about
changing terms and conditions of people. So what they seem to
be heading for is that the healthcare will be provided by the
existing prison service staff but under the supervision of the
local health authority. The idea is that there will be set up
partnership boards between the local Chief Executive of the health
Trust and the prison governor, which will oversee these arrangements.
I think there is a certain amount of uncertainty around all this
because we have had a review of public administration which is
going to change the arrangements for the administration of health
in Northern Ireland, and I think that everyone is in a state of
some fluidity about all that at the moment.
Stephen Pound: Nicely put.
Q44 Mr Grogan: The Hydebank Wood
inspection report from 2005, I think, highlighted concerns regarding
anti-bullying courses, first night care and dealing with prisoners
who self-harm and so on, and I wondered if you had any general
comments on those issues?
Ms Owers: No. That was of course
what we found at the time of the inspection and we made recommendations,
which I hope would have led to some change. We had some particular
concerns with the women at Ash House, some whom were prolifically
self-harming and who were being held in segregated conditions
and strip conditions very often; and for the young men at Hydebank,
bullying, which is always an issue in Young Offender Institutions—it
is always something that is very difficult to detect and to deal
with unless you have proper systems for underpinning that in place.
Q45 Rosie Cooper: You have touched
on purposeful activity before and I wonder how you see it at Maghaberry,
Magilligan and Hydebank Wood, and then perhaps I can come back
with some more questions?
Ms Owers: I think in all of them
I would describe at the time we inspected them, which is obviously
different periods, as disappointing. Purposeful activity again,
historically, had not been, for very understandable reasons, the
key priority of the prison service in Northern Ireland. It was
something that was just beginning to develop five or six years
ago. Certainly during our inspections there was a lot less of
it than you would want and a lot less of it than you would need
if prisons were going to be places that were going to be able
to overcome some of the deficits that men and women were going
in with and were going to come out with. At the time when we inspected
Maghaberry, which at that time I think was holding around 750
prisoners, there were 80 vocational places available, plus some
education as well. At Magilligan, which was and is a training
prison, it had 80 prisoners who were actually unemployed but it
had a whole lot of other prisoners who were supposedly cleaning,
and that often just meant being issued with a broom and being
allowed to be out of your cell. As I have already said, at Hydebank,
with young men, only 25% of them were engaged in any kind of vocational
training. Those are low figures, and one of our main recommendations
for all the prisons we have inspected is there should be more
purposeful activity, and that works best, we have always found,
where it is linked into purposeful training. Where there are educational
deficits it is often best to deal with those by way of providing
literacy and numeracy through vocational and skills training for
people—and they are usually young men—who have not
done well at school often or been expelled from school, or whatever,
and who are more likely to take in education, if it is provided
in a work setting, allowing them to do something that they consider
to be useful.
Q46 Rosie Cooper: We have not been
to Maghaberry yet, but that which you describe is really sad and
really very serious in trying to reduce the prison population
in the future. Of the two prisons we saw I have to say that the
atmosphere, the regime at Magilligan, whether it was just a brush,
or whatever, we saw people cutting grass and things like this,
and, yes, they may not be educational but they would be doing
something. I was quite pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere
and fairly pleased. Can I ask you about sex offenders and what
your understanding is of how the policies and protocols relating
to them would get their purposeful activities? Are there any special
provisions for them?
Ms Owers: You are thinking specifically
of Magilligan and of sex offenders who are in Sperrin House. My
recollection is that there was not so much activity for them but
I would need to go back to the report.
Q47 Rosie Cooper: It is a slightly
loaded question, and I do not mean it in a bad way. It was loaded
because we went into a joinery workshop and the men were all working
away and an officer told us that virtually everybody in that workshop
at that point was a sex offender and they were encouraged to take
up joinery because it was close to where they were billeted and
it having saved them experiencing any difficulties. When we later
addressed that to senior representatives of the prison service
they said absolutely not, this would never happen. So I have a
real problem. Either Magilligan were doing what they believed
to be right for their prisoners but it is against perhaps policy,
or nobody has a real clue what they are doing and there is not
one, and I find that quite worrying.
Mr Chivers: I am afraid I cannot
answer that question, to be honest.
Stephen Pound: Miss Cooper did say it
was a slightly loaded question.
Rosie Cooper: It is a really important
one because how are you treating those prisoners guilty of sexual
offences? Are you making special provision or are you not? I happily
accept that we do not get an answer but I just need to put that
question out there.
Stephen Pound: Could I suggest to the
Committee that there might be a specialist evidence session incorporating
someone who can speak to this particular subject because it is
slightly off the main area of responsibility of our witnesses
this afternoon? It is none the less important, though. Lady Hermon,
did you want to come in on that?
Q48 Lady Hermon: I really wanted
to put on record that when we did visit Magilligan there were
some prison staff—and I do mean the staff—who were
enormously dedicated and enthusiastic, particularly in their vocational
training and trying to assist prisoners and that included those
who were convicted of serious sexual offences as well. But one
of the areas that they did highlight was the lack of funding,
and Limavady College, which had had a very good relationship with
Magilligan, the funding for that had been entirely withdrawn.
Is it within the remit of the prison inspectorate to recommend
to the newly established Assembly, particularly the relevant Minister,
to make recommendations in regard to funding for educational projects
like that?
Mr Chivers: I see no difficulty
about me making recommendations to anybody. I am not part of the
government department and if I think it is in the interests of
the criminal justice system I can say what I think. I am concerned
that there are a number of partners of the prison system, particularly
voluntary and community section organisations, which are particularly
likely to suffer in the current budgetary squeeze and these are
organisations which do a great deal of work to support resettlement
and getting people back into the community.
Q49 Rosie Cooper: I visited the Northern
Eastern Institute—LEA—where they teach—not in
the prison service—building skills and construction skills
and the union person there came to see me—and I know you
supported them—but people who are teaching construction
skills throughout Northern Ireland are falling rapidly behind
in teachers' pay and therefore you are not going to encourage
people into that part of the profession, and if you are not you
fall much further behind.
Mr Chivers: Yes.
Ms Owers: It may assist the Committee,
there is a sort of double delegation or triple inspectorate commitment
in relation to education and training in Northern Ireland as in
England and Wales. When we inspect prisons in England and Wales
as an inspectorate we always do so jointly with the adult learning
inspectorate, which has responsibility for both the quality and
the quantity of education training in all the further educational
institutions in England and Wales and until recently we have done
that also in Northern Ireland, so that we are applying the same
set of eyes to what happens in Northern Ireland, to an inspectorate
that is used to looking at good quality education and training.
That has been all that has been available until now, but fortunately
now there is a Northern Ireland equivalent, there being the Northern
Ireland education and training inspectorate, with which we will
be linking for inspections, and presumably that will also provide
some sort of leverage with the Assembly.
Q50 Lady Hermon: I have a great deal
of sympathy for the Director of the prison service, Robin Masefield,
who I think does an excellent job, but is he over inspected? Without
any disrespect to either the Chief Inspector of Prisons, for whom
I have enormous regard—and I am very, very pleased that
Ms Anne Owers was not rolled into some other general inspectorate—is
the prison service over inspected? Now with the additional right
of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission to also visit
places of detention it concerns me that the morale of the prison
service and the directorate and his management team are trying
to adapt to changing circumstances in Northern Ireland that actually
may be impinging on their effectiveness to be so overly inspected.
Am I right or wrong?
Ms Owers: I truly do not think
that needs to be a concern. I cannot speak for the Northern Ireland
Human Rights Commission because that is something that is specific
to Northern Ireland, it is new and obviously Kit will be working
out what the relationship is with that. But the whole reason that
we do inspections jointly with the education inspectorate and
the healthcare inspectorate—and we shall be doing the same
with the healthcare inspectorate in Northern Ireland—is
so that prisons do not get three or four separate people turning
up on three or four separate occasions to look at education, which
inevitably is going to involve looking at the whole of the prison
regime, because unless you look at how prison officers get prisoners
there you are not going to be able to inspect education; it is
looking at healthcare which also obviously involves prison officers
and their terms and conditions, and so you are looking at the
whole of the prison. So to avoid prisons either in England and
Wales or in Northern Ireland being subject to a different inspection
by a different group, maybe a couple of times a year, that is
the whole reason that we have protocols with all these other inspectorates,
so that we and Kit together organise the programme for inspection
and bring in these other organisations to provide their specialist
assistance, as we do it. So we can do two things. First of all,
we can reduce the burden on the prison and prison service and
secondly an inspection can provide a holistic picture of the whole
establishment and all the bits of it which tend anyway to reinforce
each other, either for good or for bad. So we are very conscious
of the need not to overburden any prison system and particularly
the prison system, as you say, in Northern Ireland, which has
a lot of historic baggage to deal with and a lot of current issues
to deal with. So we are very aware of that. The difficulty is
that because there are still some fundamental issues to be dealt
with in Northern Ireland prisons, on a purely intelligence-led
basis, which as I was saying to the Chairman at the beginning,
is one of the ways that we would suggest inspections are done,
Northern Ireland prisons really ought to expect to be scrutinised
quite closely at the moment. But one has to balance that against
the capacity of the service to be able then to do its job and
that is where it is very helpful that we are all working together
because Kit and his inspectorate have a good sense of what is
actually going on in Northern Ireland, which can feed into the
inspection programme.
Q51 Rosie Cooper: A final question.
Magilligan was the first prison I have ever been in, and notwithstanding
the estate I thought that the regime was good—yes, it was
lock-up and people came and went in an orderly fashion—and
it was very clear that while everything was running smoothly everybody
had their responsibilities and if you did not obey the rules then
they would react, but there was not that command and control presence;
you did not feel it, it did not weigh you down. I would also add
to that the aspect of where you are, looking out at the green
and everything else, that all of that adds to it. But if I can
draw you a little picture of difference when we went to Hydebank
Wood? The blocks below the windows had numbers on them and we
asked questions like why were there numbers and we were told that
if somebody is shouting or there is an incident you would be able
to direct resources to the right place. Very good. And there was
a "10" on the fence and one of my colleagues said, "I
would not like to live in room number 10" and we were told,
"That allows us to police the perimeter as well and we would
be able to go directly to that point." I then dozily said,
"Do you have many incidents?" The difference response
was, "Of course we do." "Often?" "Every
day, we are a prison." And I just thought that response was
so different to that of Magilligan that I just wondered how that
really reflects the ethos of the different prisons?
Ms Owers: It may reflect ethos
but it may also reflect the volatility of the prison population.
In young offender institutions generally there are more incidents
both between prisoners themselves and between prisoners and staff
because you have some very active young men aged between 17 and
21, highly charged and lots of physical aggression and lots of
physical stuff going on and too few outlets for that kind of activity.
Whereas the PE facilities at Hydebank are pretty good, as I have
said earlier, there was not enough activity, when we were there,
for those young men to make sure that they were purposefully occupied
for as many hours in the day as possible. Certainly our experience
in prisons generally would be that that reduces the level of incidents.
Q52 Stephen Pound: Can I thank you
both very much indeed. Just a couple of rounding up points. When
it comes to terms of priority we are famously told that a prison
place in the GB estate costs more than it costs to send someone
to Eton, and it is about £40,000, and I believe from our
last evidence session twice that in Northern Ireland, so it is
over £80,000. Would it be presumptuous for me to say that
that is simply not sustainable if you factor that into your own
consideration?
Mr Chivers: I think the Director
of the Prison Service is acutely conscious of that and of course
the Treasury sets him targets year by year for reducing the cost.
The problem is that prison officers have their established terms
and conditions and those are sacrosanct. The way that the prison
service is tackling it is, as I suggested, by bringing in auxiliary
grades and I think as the prisoner numbers increase that will
have the effect of reducing the unit cost of the prisoner place.
So I think there is hope is that but it is not something that
can be changed quickly. It is certainly something that everybody
involved in the system is very conscious of.
Q53 Stephen Pound: I appreciate that,
but one of the most cost-effective ways of preventing recidivism
is education in prisons. I think virtually the whole House agrees
that it is not an issue which is remotely contentious and the
education service in prison throughout the UK estate, not just
the Northern Ireland and GB estate, is, I would suggest, under-funded
in terms of the efficiency of a fully funded system that is available.
It is a source of some surprise to many of us when we see £82,000
being spent per prisoner per head that we do not have a better
education service. Is there a priority mechanism within your individual
directorates to increase the amount of education in prisons in
Northern Ireland?
Mr Chivers: We are certainly stressing
the importance of education, training, anything that contributes
to the resettlement of prisoners, but it all comes down to changing
the culture of the prisons. The prisons still have this culture
of being basically obsessed with security, being instruments of
security of the State and not focusing on resettlement and reducing
convictions as their first objective. I would say that in the
Prison Director's latest business plan the most challenging targets
he proposes are ones connected with this area of improving purposeful
activity, improving education and improving the things that will
contribute to getting the prisoners resettled back in the community.
I am sure that that priority is well understood by the management
of the prison service, the problem is actually changing the operation
of the prison officers on the ground and getting them to change
their mindset from being basically turnkeys to being professionals
who are interacting with the prisoners and preparing constructively,
as you found very good examples because there are some excellent
people there. In the prisoner development unit they won an award
last year for their work in this area. That is not the general
rank and file of the prison officers, it has to be said: there
are still a lot of prison officers who have a limited view of
their role and responsibilities and it is a gradual process of
changing what is expected of the prison officers and training
them up to do more difficult and challenging work.
Q54 Stephen Pound: When we have taken
evidence from the Prison Officers' Association they frequently
defend their staffing levels by saying that they are in a period
of transition and that a lot of men—and I use the word men
generally—from the Longkesh/Maze period do need to adjust
and there is a great need for training and that is actually seen
as transitional. Yet in my two or three visits to Maghaberry I
have been told that vocational training provision is not a major
issue but basic literacy and numeracy is a huge problem, and that
they can find people to do what they rather quaintly call metalwork
and woodwork but they find it intensely difficult to find people
to do the absolute basic literacy and numeracy skills. Is that
still the case?
Mr Chivers: Yes, I think it is.
Ms Owers: Again, it is about relationships
with colleges like Limavady College at Magilligan and about bringing
in those skills. As Kit says, it is partly about culture but it
is also partly simply about redirecting resources into workshops
that can provide both literacy and numeracy and skills that really
will get people jobs outside the prison and pushing the resources
into those kinds of activities. I agree with Kit, I think that
is certainly an aim of the Northern Ireland prison service, but
it has taken quite a long time to get there.
Q55 Stephen Pound: I think for the
record we should enumerate a point that has been made directly
and peripherally by a number of Members of the Committee, that
the Northern Ireland prison service has existed through just about
as trying and testing a time as could humanly be imagined, and
it is a matter of record that 29 officers have died whilst on
duty. Therefore, I think we all of us appreciate the exceptional
circumstances. However, we are now moving into a different era
and I very much hope that some of the items that we have touched
on this afternoon can feature more strongly in our report. For
the record I would say that the principal issues affecting us
are an increase in the prison population, the quality, condition
and location of the estate, the management of the prison population
in the context of paramilitary separation, the issues regarding
purposeful activity and education and the dichotomy between large
central locations and small specialist ones; is that a fair summing
up of the principal areas of concern?
Ms Owers: And possibly healthcare
as an additional one.
Q56 Stephen Pound: I am sorry. Mr
Grogan has left the room but he would have certainly reminded
me.
Ms Owers: And how that will pan
out. Also for the record for myself I want to say that we recognise
very much the historical issues facing Northern Ireland. One of
the personal disappointments for me is, as I say, when nearly
six years ago I first began to inspect prisons in Northern Ireland
I was hugely impressed with the steps forward that the prison
service as a whole and individual prison officers were making
in what must have been a terribly difficult situation with very
recent memories, and I think one of the disappointments has been
that for various reasons—and there is no blame to be attached
to anyone in particular—a collection of different things
that have happened within the prison service and outside the prison
service have knocked that back. I hope that now there is an opportunity,
for all kinds of reasons, that that can be rediscovered, because
the way in which individual prison officers were prepared to move
in around 2001 and 2002 I think was an example to the prison service
in England and Wales at that time, and I hope that that can be
recovered.
Stephen Pound: Ms Owers and Mr Chivers,
thank you very much, indeed not just for your evidence sessions
but for the work that you do in between coming and giving evidence
to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. I declare this session
closed.
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