Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-319)
MRS OLWEN
LYNER AND
MR PAT
CONWAY
13 JUNE 2007
Q300 Chairman: If he were here, Mr
Campbell, who unfortunately cannot be here today but is a Member
of Parliament for the constituency which includes Magilligan,
would argue passionately for a rebuild but a rebuild within the
general Magilligan area. Do I infer from what you have just said
to Mr Anderson that you would take a different point of view?
Mrs Lyner: Yes, we would feel
that there would be two advantages to a site which would be more
centrally located in a stretch that might run between Antrim and
Ballymena. One is that it would be more central in terms of the
transport network, and secondly there would be a useful connection
with Maghaberry Prison in terms of the movement of staff, so you
would not be requiring people to -
Q301 Chairman: Although you do acknowledge
that there is a strong and fruitful community link-up with Magilligan?
Mrs Lyner: Yes, without doubt.
Q302 Chairman: Notwithstanding that,
you are advocating a move?
Mrs Lyner: Yes, I am.
Chairman: Thank you. It is helpful to
have this on the record.
Q303 Mr Anderson: Can I move on to
educational opportunities and training opportunities within Maghaberry.
Are there differences between those offered to mainstream prisoners
and those who are separated?
Mr Conway: I think our understanding
would be that the opportunities—certainly dissident Republicans
(to use the generic term) feel that they do not have that same
access. There is a debate about whether they are making that more
difficult for themselves. They certainly do not feel, in terms
of representations which have been made to us, able to take up
those opportunities. We would not get into the sort of political
rights or wrongs of whatever a particular grouping would espouse,
but I would focus on the accessibility debate and argument. Basically,
we would hope that all people in prison would have the same opportunities
to engage in vocational and educational opportunities. I think,
in reference to your previous question, it is certainly true that
Magilligan has a reputation, and a deserved reputation, of having
good local links and vocational and employment links within the
area we are talking about. We would like to bring it back to the
view of looking at the whole estate and whether the vocational
opportunities which exist within the three estates, the three
institutions, actually meet the needs of the labour market externally.
That is not just purely the responsibility of the Prison Service
but also other organisations such as the Department for Education
and Learning. I think it is true to say that we and other elements
of the criminal justice system have had difficulties in engaging
(DEL) with respect to providing training and vocational opportunities
to prisoners and ex-prisoners.
Q304 Mr Anderson: Can you give us
the specifics on what you mentioned in relation to what I was
saying to you about a specific programme, or whatever? You mentioned
that dissident Republicans were saying that they felt they did
not have the access. Can you give us specifics on what particular
area?
Mrs Lyner: I suppose they will
have understood when they were moving into the separated regime
that the Prison Service would have to offer education in a different
way. As an ordinary prisoner, I can opt into the programme for
basic skills or any range of other programmes and go to the education
block for that, as I am programmed to do, whereas with the separated
regime education comes into their area and there is in each of
the areas just one classroom, so it is restricted. When people
apply to go into the separated regime they understand what that
may mean, but it undoubtedly is a restricted regime because of
both the fabric and the numbers and the choices. There are options
for an engagement in some level of education, but because there
is one room and because it has to come in, it is going to be obviously
less.
Q305 Sammy Wilson: That is contrary
to the evidence which was given to us by the Prison Officers'
Association last week when they indicated that actually it is
due to the staff shortage where choices have been made. The choices
were always made in favour of those within the separated regime,
not within the—I do not want to use the term "general
prison population". So are you saying that the prison officers
were wrong?
Mrs Lyner: I think we might be
answering two different questions there. This is in terms of the
provision of education. There was never a commitment that it would
be any more than what would be brought to the locations where
they are, so I think that maybe the question being answered, which
was different, was that if there is a staff shortage the numbers
who would be on duty in relation to the separated regime would
always be maintained, and I think that is right. I think that
is what happens, yes.
Q306 Sammy Wilson: Can I take you
back to the question the Chairman asked you. You indicated that
you believed a lot more prisoners could be dealt with outside
the prison regime in Northern Ireland than are dealt with currently.
Given that our prison population is about half of what it would
be in the rest of the United Kingdom and that according to the
Chief Constable—and he said there were many examples—it
was far easier to get bail in Northern Ireland than in other parts
of the United Kingdom, on what do you base your view that we are
putting too many people, putting more people than we need to,
in prison when the figures show that actually they put significantly
less in prison than other parts of the United Kingdom?
Mrs Lyner: That may well be right.
I suppose it is also to do with the crime surveys in Northern
Ireland. We would say that we have a different experience of crime.
We have a very significantly lower experience of crime. We may
fear it, but we actually fear it less than they do in England
and Wales by comparison, and we experience it less, but there
are several issues. We do have, in terms of the bail issue, very
long remand waiting times at the moment, which the whole of the
criminal justice system is concerned about and feels actually
devalues it because people are waiting too long for justice, particularly
victims are waiting too long for justice. On the other hand, when
people do end up with very short sentences, two or three month
sentences, there is very little that actually can be done in relation
to those sentences to do something meaningful or purposeful which
might intervene and turn their behaviour around. In fact, to be
on a year or 18 month probation order might in fact be a lot more
challenging in relation to your behaviour than two or three months
in prison. So it is really about trying to see what has an impact
in reducing people's offending behaviour, because the ultimate
prize is to reduce their offending behaviour so we have fewer
victims. While there is much clamour to send people to prison,
it is not always the most successful intervention in terms of
their re-offending. That has to be, for us, important in terms
of the resources of staff.
Q307 Lady Hermon: I have a number
of questions. Could I start with question number one? Has NIACRO
done any research at all about the sentencing policy in Northern
Ireland? Is there evidence to suggest that when a woman comes
up in court the judiciary in Northern Ireland take a much more
severe attitude towards the sentencing of women as opposed to
men?
Mrs Lyner: We have not done any
work on this, but the Prison Service and Probation did quite a
piece of work in the last 18 months, which was published about
a year ago, which is what Paul (PBNI) has drawn his references
from, and that is available and it would seem to indicate, as
he suggested, that first time female offenders are more likely
to be sent to prison. Sure, in some cases the offences are quite
serious; in others the offences would not be comparable with those
which males would have in terms of going to prison, so certainly
that is within a piece of research. That has been looked at. What
was also interesting about that was the difference, in terms of
the numbers of people who went through this research process within
the period, between what probation assessed to be those women
at risk of re-offending and the Prison Service's view of their
risk in terms of management within the estate. In the main, Probation
actually reckoned, for the majority, that their risk of re-offending
was certainly in the medium to low, whereas the Prison Service
assessed the majority as at high risk and actually one of the
recommendations was to try to look at why that was so.
Q308 Lady Hermon: Completely to the
contrary, yes. Thank you for that. That confirms what I have believed
for a long time. Number two: could I just ask, since we have had
evidence that there is a very high percentage of prisoners right
across the prisons in Northern Ireland who have got very poor
literacy skills, how do they actually become aware of NIACRO?
Is it just leaflets, or do you have someone who actually meets
with a female prisoner sent to Hydebank or Magilligan, or Maghaberry?
How do you engage with the prisoner at the very earliest opportunity?
Mr Conway: First of all, all the
prisoner families would be in receipt of a pack of the detailed
services that we offer. That is by proxy.
Q309 Lady Hermon: To the family?
Mr Conway: To the family, yes.
In terms of direct services, we do have various programmes. One
of them is an employment-based European funded programme, through
the EQUAL Programme, and that is a pilot scheme focusing on about
250-300 prisoners across the entire estate. The idea there is
to develop a model in conjunction with the Prison Service's Resettlement
Strategy. It is employment-led but it takes into account things
like if you just go in with an employment hat on you try and get
somebody a job by paying regard to other elements such as finance,
accommodation, drugs, alcohol abuse, lifestyle issues, the situation
at home or in the community, just a range of factors which need
to be taken into consideration alongside employment. We have those
connections with a targeted number of people and we would want,
and hope, that programme to be rolled out right across the prison
estate and to be a plank of resettlement. We believe there is
an acceptance in principle by all professionals engaged. We are
not swimming against the tide on this one. The difficulty is,
as we were referring back to the emphasis on security at the expense
of resettlement, sometimes it is hard to see a generic approach
being adopted and ruled out because security takes priority.
Mrs Lyner: Could I say something
else in relation to that? We asked how did they come to know about
it and a lot of it is word of mouth because there are 6,000 people
going through in a year and we can target three or four hundred,
but interestingly in this programme, perhaps talking about this
ReachOut programme, what we do get is a number every Tuesday,
Wednesday, who come through to do their CSR training. So they
have been through prison and they understand that they can come
to us and do a one, two, three day course around health and safety
in the construction industry, and they come in and they do that
and it becomes a form of accreditation which means that they go
onto building sites, et cetera, after they have done that. Numbers
of them will come and will buy into that process, or they will
come and want to go off to the driving school we work with, where
they do fork lift truck driving, or whatever else. It is difficult
to get adult males, and females, to look at issues of basic literacy
and numeracy. If they find that they have enough skills to get
by to do the job which is required of them, that is where they
move to. There is a big focus in the Prison Service on literacy
and numeracy, and I can accept that because the evidence is very
strong that people are lacking in it, but it is easier to motivate
people towards skills which will take them to employment. They
are not bought on the notion that literacy and numeracy will necessarily
take them there. They want the fork lift truck driving and they
want the card to go onto the building sites, and it is in that
area that we need to work with people's motivation, because unless
you have got somebody who is motivated it is very difficult to
get them to engage.
Mr Conway: For example, if you
take a driving test the theoretical side of it is by computers,
touching the screen, so you do not have to have a high level of
English comprehension to be successful in that.
Q310 Lady Hermon: I think actually
my question really was, for women and for young offenders it is
very traumatic when they find themselves—it is very traumatic
for us as a committee actually to go and visit a prison and to
find people caged up, but they are caged up behind steel doors
at night and I find it particularly traumatic, I must say, so
when women prisoners find themselves in prison and they are handed
leaflet after leaflet, "These are the services, these are
the leaflets," and whatever, we know as a fact that a very
high percentage of those prisoners have very poor literacy skills
so handing them leaflets is absolutely useless. So my question
was, how do prisoners become aware of the services provided by
NIACRO—not about the European funding, but actually how
do they engage with you?
Mrs Lyner: Accepting the point
that you make, with some of the money—and we needed money
in some way to make it—we made a DVD which runs on a loop
in the reception and induction centre. So that raises awareness.
It is a mixture between cartoon and whatever else, so it does
engage them. So there is a number of tools, but it is important
also that families do get information in some sort of way where
there is a telephone number for them to come back to us to enquire
into the information, so that is also there for people who want
no further contact with us or the system but to do it themselves,
to have those tools. For those who want more, they can come back.
Q311 Lady Hermon: Thank you, that
is very helpful. In fact, I think it would be very helpful to
the Committee if we could actually have a copy of that.
Mrs Lyner: Yes, that is fine.
Mr Conway: We can provide that.
Q312 John Battle: Just as a practical
suggestion, in Leeds (which is men, not women), I can remember
some seven years ago taking children's books into the men and
proving that the words in the children's reading books were the
same as the words on the back page of The Sun where they
could read the football, and if they could learn to read children's
books, read them onto a tape recorder or a CD, or an iPod now,
and it could be given as reading to their kids at night, so they
could read to their kids, if they did it three times they could
get more access to their kids and I found that was an incentive
for them to read to their children. Has anything like that gone
on?
Mrs Lyner: Very similar to that.
I think you are talking about the Storybook Dad, that initiative?
Q313 John Battle: Yes. Is that going
on?
Mrs Lyner: Yes, it is going on,
and it is linked into some of the parenting programmes which are
going on, and the child centre visits. I have to say, it does
not happen in lots of cases, it happens in some cases, but you
are working with—
Q314 John Battle: It is not a mainstream
programme then?
Mrs Lyner: No, but it is available
and it is well-used by those who—
Q315 Chairman: It does exist, yes.
Mrs Lyner: Absolutely, yes, and
it is important.
Q316 Lady Hermon: I have a couple
of questions about the accommodation of women prisoners, which
does concern me greatly, and I think as a Committee we were very
struck by the fact that the women prisoners in Northern Ireland
share the same site at Hydebank as young offenders, which I must
say struck me as wholly inappropriate. I am very aware that NIACRO
still has criticisms, despite the very good refurbishment of Ashe
House on the Hydebank site. You are still very critical that women
prisoners are on that site. You talk—and the terminology
is very interesting—about a women's centre, not a women's
prison or a women's hostel. Could you just elaborate on why it
is, even with the refurbishment of Ashe House, you still find
yourselves very critical of women being housed at Hydebank and
why you particularly choose the words "women's centre"
and what you would expect to find at a women's centre?
Mrs Lyner: I suppose there are
two different bits to your question. In terms of the women-centred
approach, it would look at particularly both daytime activities
and evening time activities which would be more appropriate for
women than those which were set up—Hydebank Wood was set
up as a young offender's centre for young men. So in fact at this
stage in terms of daytime activities for the women, gardening
is the one area where the young men used to be involved and the
women are now involved, but we have not looked at—or it
certainly has not been shared with us—a range of other options
one might look at to do with retail training or other things where,
at the end of the period of time in prison, people might find
useful employment. All the workshops are metalwork and joinery
work, so their focus is what I would call male-centred as opposed
to women-centred. But there would also be key issues around health,
I think, health programmes and taking care of yourself, and there
would be issues around childcare. One of the issues which I think
is distressing in relation to Hydebank Wood is the women sharing
the visits area with the young men. The interaction that the women,
whether they be 20 or 40, have with their children is quite different
from that which young men have with very small children and for
all of that to be happening in the same place is difficult for
the women. That is what comes back to us. So at the very least
the range of shared facilities which are currently in place, such
as the visiting, healthcare, time for being transported back and
forth to court, seem to us to take away from the fact that there
are very specific issues and stresses which you are dealing with.
Q317 Chairman: You make those points
very well. Would it be, in your view, possible—one of our
witnesses suggested this last week—to keep the two institutions
on the one site but by redistribution and the building of walls
and things to separate them? Is that feasible, in your view, or
not?
Mrs Lyner: I think it depends
on how that would be done. There is certainly a fair amount of
land in that overall Hydebank area, but if there is any fudge
about separation and we are sharing things, and kitchens from
the male unit are being used so that food arrived cold—it
depends whether it is done properly or not. There are issues around
economies of scale in relation to organising visitor transport
and a number of other issues where there could be some useful
connection, but we need to recognise that we had a facility, we
had Mourne House. There was a lot of bad history with it and we
do not want to go back there, but some years ago we thought it
was appropriate that women had their own dedicated resources and
there was no good evidence to suggest to me that they still do
not need it. It is expedient that they do not have it, but it
is not right.
Q318 Chairman: That is very clear.
So you are absolutely emphatic that there must be proper physical
separation? You have an open mind as to whether it could be done
within the one site, but if it could not you would want to move,
is that correct?
Mrs Lyner: Yes, absolutely. The
other factor is that there will be pressure on the Hydebank facility,
if we continue in the way in which we are going, in terms that
the numbers of young men requiring to be housed there will be
an issue, so that would become another pressure. Now, part of
that pressure could be released if we were firmer on the issue
that those who were under 18 should not be in the YOC. We have
another very good purpose-built facility in Bangor, the Juvenile
Justice Centre, and we should be looking at whether or not there
are young children who are in the YOC at the moment who in fact
should be in Bangor.
Chairman: Perhaps you could let us have
a note on that point. That would be very helpful. Could we move
to healthcare and Mr Hepburn.
Q319 Mr Hepburn: What do you think
are the benefits of transferring healthcare to the Department
of Health?
Mrs Lyner: The immediate issue
in relation to any transfer is to bring in other disciplines and
other departments to take an interest in people who are essentially
citizens. Whether we like the way in which they demonstrate their
citizenship or not, they are citizens and the state is responsible
for service to them. So I believe criminal justice on a broad
sweep needs to engage very broadly with health, with education,
the Department of Employment and Learning, the Benefits Agency,
a lot of these organisations which actually have been quite happy
to leave to the side those who have committed offences and who
are in the care of the Prison Service. So the first major change
would be that it would be a step in the right direction, an agency
coming in, and one would expect that we would get a set of clinical
engagements which would be the same as we would expect in the
general public, and out of the inspections there have been of
the prisons, which are coming through in a very transparent fashion
now from the Criminal Justice Inspectorate and the Home Office,
it is clear that there is a view that we are not getting the level
of clinical expertise that we might expect. So we would hope that
the level of that would be improved as a consequence, and that
by bringing people in from the outside that would open up the
relationship between the Prison Service and a major state provider,
and that would be a positive as well.
Mr Conway: I think we were also
concerned with the clash of cultures when the transfer occurred
and our understanding is that the process seems to have stalled,
with the health side being unhappy about the standard they are
expected to be involved in in terms of clinical governance. We
have just heard that by hearsay, we have no direct evidence, but
it seems to be doing the rounds at the moment.
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