Examination of Witnesses (Questions 292-299)
MRS OLWEN
LYNER AND
MR PAT
CONWAY
13 JUNE 2007
Q292 Chairman: Could I welcome you, Mrs
Lyner, and you, Mr Conway. We have met before. Thank you very
much indeed for coming. You have heard some of the last session
and you know that of course we are embarked upon this inquiry
into the Prison Service. Are there any initial points you would
like to make before we ask you questions?
Mrs Lyner: Yes, if we could just
make a few brief points. NIACRO obviously recognises the need
for prison and its appropriate use. For us, obviously there is
a focus on punishment, but the key is that as a consequence of
the prison experience there is a reduction in the rate of re-offending
and recidivism generally, and that we focus our prison places
on those who are the most serious offenders and to reduce the
number of individuals who actually have the prison experience,
and therefore it becomes less of a deterrent. The Criminal Justice
Review almost ten years ago was commissioned, as well as the Patten
Commission, and they focused all of their time (certainly Patten
did) on the issue of detecting crime, and then the Criminal Justice
Review looked at prosecuting crime particularly, but actually
we have had very little focus—and we drew that to the attention
of those who were consulting us at that stage—on what I
am going to call the "back end" of the system, the part
of the system which actually deals with people who have committed
the most serious offences. So we do a lot to detect and prosecute,
and then we actually do not have anything like the resources.
Less than 10% of what we spend is actually focused on the back
end of the system and less than 10% of the review was focused
on the back end of the system. Having said that, we as an organisation
have been very involved with the Probation Service, who will be
our partners in this exercise with the Prison Service as well,
in developing the Resettlement Strategy in our name, so we would
have a vested interest in the resettlement of people coming out
of prison. We think that this is a key issue for the Prison Service,
that it actually manages to focus its resources away from security,
the requirement of the last 30 years, and much more towards resettlement
and we would not be convinced that that balance is yet anywhere
we would want that to be. So the prison system does have to move
itself away from being a player, as it was in the conflict situation,
to one now where it is a more normalised situation, and that will
take time. We engage in a number of ways with the Prison Service
directly. We have contracts wit them to supply services for two
of the three visitor centres, at Hydebank Wood and at Magilligan,
and we run a transport system throughout Northern Ireland. We
also run a family links service and we find ourselves through
the Youth Justice Agency to run that, and we have a prison officer
on full-time secondment for that project with us. We attract and
bring in European resources to provide employment and welfare
rights advice to people who are moving through the resettlement
process. We respond to their consultations and we discuss individual
cases with them, and we also do work, we believe, to bridge the
relationship between the Housing Executive and the Prison Service,
and the Benefits Agency and the Prison Service. So we have a number
of relationships which obviously through both secondment and our
location in the visitor centres means that we are in contact with
the Prison Service on a daily basis.
Q293 Chairman: Thank you very much.
You have advocated a thorough review of the Northern Ireland Prison
Service and perhaps that is what we can say we are conducting
at the moment, and I hope we will be able to come up with some
suggestions and answers which will help, but if you were giving
the Committee a short wish list of things which you feel should
be addressed, deficiencies which make the Prison Service of Northern
Ireland less than it ought to be, what would that wish list consist
of?
Mrs Lyner: I think we have to
start with the key considerations, which are that the prison estate
in Northern Ireland for the last 30 years was used for a particular
purpose. All of the capital investment which was put in, or almost
all of the capital investment, was put into the Crumlin Road Prison
and the Maze Prison on the issue of security. Those two prisons
are closed, so if we are going to look at a prison estate which
meets the demands of the current situation we need to invest in
it. One of the issues which is around in every discussion we have
had about the cost of the Northern Ireland Prison Service is the
cost per prisoner place, and undoubtedly it is a high cost per
prisoner place.
Q294 Chairman: It is an exorbitant
cost.
Mrs Lyner: It is, indeed. I would
not necessarily be defending that. However, it is not a like for
like comparison with England and Wales. There are not the same
arrangements for third party providers, that is one element. The
second is, we did not worry so much about the cost of this in
the 30 years when we were holding politically motivated prisoners
and we have to realise that all organisations in Northern Ireland
have had a cost in transition. So we certainly do not want to
be spending money foolishly, but we need to take steps at the
appropriate rate to move the Prison Service from what it was,
and had as its role, to what it should be. A key consideration
there has to be capital investment, so the issues we talk about
in relation both to Hydebank and the issue of women prisoners,
which we caught the tail end of, need to be addressed and it needs
to be done properly. I am sure we will come on to the issue around
those with mental ill-health as well.
Q295 Chairman: I am sure we will,
yes. Thank you very much. Did you wish to add anything, Mr Conway,
at this stage?
Mr Conway: A key issue would be
a discussion around the issue of the allocation of resources with
respect to security and where that fits with the care functions
of the Prison Service and the resettlement functions. It has proved
very difficult for us to identify specifically with the Prison
Service just exactly how much is spent on those three areas and
our general view would be that the care and resettlement functions
sometimes suffer at the expense of security. So one thing we would
like to see from this process would be a discussion and, if you
like, a ring-fencing of existing resources to those three areas
and to have a discussion around that. That fits in with what Olwen
was talking about with respect to the back end, that there is
very little discussion on that. All the resources seem to be front-loaded.
Q296 Chairman: Before I bring in
Mr Anderson, could I just ask you one question which arises from
the comments made towards the end of the last witness session,
and I think you may have heard them. It was the opinion of the
Probation Service that a very significant number of women and
a smaller but still significant number of men could be adequately
punished and dealt with without custodial sentences. Is that a
view with which you would associate yourselves?
Mrs Lyner: Absolutely, yes.
Mr Conway: Yes, it is.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
That is very helpful.
Q297 Mr Anderson: When we visited
the prisons, last month or the month before, I was very impressed
by the work going on in the resettlement unit in Crumlin Road,
seeing that the people were certainly prepared to move forward
and were getting good support from the unit they were in and it
seemed to be working well. Can the same be said about the programmes
in and around Magilligan? Are there issues particularly about
the lack of employment opportunities in the Magilligan area?
Mrs Lyner: In fact I would suggest
that in relation to employment opportunities and links to the
local community Magilligan has actually put a lot of time and
effort into those and they are operating well, so you would see
a situation where the resettlement connection would be working
well in that place too. What I think would be slightly different
and what fluctuates from time to time is the staffing levels that
actually can be allocated to the purposes of either resettlement
or family contact, what are called family liaison officers, and
in different situations because of changes to different shift
patterns we would find that the resources available either for
resettlement or in connection with the families would ebb and
flow, and again we find that to be totally unsatisfactory. We
make a loss, and have made a loss, of some of the advancements
in the Prison Service. Visiting arrangements are excellent in
Northern Ireland and we have had a development called child centre
visits for six or seven years. In fact we heard from the Prison
Service at one of our AGMs about five years ago, but with only
two or three weeks' notification, that they are currently suspended
because there is not the staffing available for that. It draws
us back. So we assume we are moving forward but actually we cannot
sustain the staffing level for some of these issues, which obviously
might be seen to be peripheral to security, which will always
get its staff and resources.
Q298 Lady Hermon: The number of prison
officers is too low in order to facilitate the visits?
Mrs Lyner: Yes. It is to do with
shift patterns and changes in shift patterns at the moment. There
are not the bodies available to do it, that is right.
Q299 Mr Anderson: Is the geographical
location of the building a problem in terms of your programmes?
Mrs Lyner: I think the geographical
location of the prison is a problem for families in terms of accessibility,
and I think if we were thinking about an accessible site—and
we actually consulted with local parties about this recently and
everybody came up with the view that accessibility for families
was an important issue. There is no doubt that Magilligan, because
it has been there for a very long time, has lots of links into
its local community, but it will not pass an accessibility test.
Mr Anderson: It is not as if some of
the people who were in that prison, as we saw with Crumlin Road,
can go out into what was their original community because it was
just outside the door virtually. It is 70 miles away and you cannot
do that, can you?
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