Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-83)
DEPARTMENT FOR
INNOVATION, UNIVERSITIES
AND SKILLS,
LEARNING SKILLS
COUNCIL AND
NATIONAL MANAGEMENT
SERVICE
19 MAY 2008
Q80 Mr Bacon: I am asking about time
served.
Mr Wheatley: We would need to
research it.
Q81 Mr Bacon: If you could send the
Committee a note that would be very helpful, showing on any given
night of the week of the roughly 80,000 people in prison how many
you are expecting to be there for one week, two weeks, for one
month, two months, et cetera.
Mr Wheatley: I think the crucial
thing is not just on any one night because I can tell you that
just over 10% of the population are serving less than 12 months,
but because that group are churning round very quickly in the
course of a year we have had a lot of them whereas the person
who is doing life, they are there for ten years running so we
need to show you how, in terms of release, the balance is struck
between them.
Q82 Mr Bacon: If you could spread
it out across the entire year and also show us how it affects
the balance that would be very helpful.
Mr Wheatley: I will do my best
to give you a note on that.
Q83 Mr Williams: Mr Wheatley, you
referred to privileges and incentives where you get access to
phones and more time out of cells. Does that mean that someone
who goes in who is reasonably well-educated actually loses out
because there are no courses that would be appropriate?
Mr Wheatley: We use it to incentivise
people to go along with their sentence plan; we do use it in that
way. If you had a very low chance of re-conviction and you were
behaving perfectly well and there was no need to give you any
intervention, you would not be required to go to education to
fit in with your sentence plan. You might very well be required
to go to a workshop and do ordinary work or clean toilets or something
like that. That would be your sentence plan. We can use it to
incentivise cooperation with a sentence plan which then takes
account of people's needs, and that includes attending offending
behaviour programmes. To give an example, sex offenders who deny
that they ever committed the offence we can say, "We are
not going to make you an enhanced prisoner unless you cooperate
with sex offender treatment" which incentives some people
to think that actually they should really accept that they did
it and then be able to deal with their offending behaviour, which
is obviously important to us in society.
Mr Williams: Gentlemen, I can only say
that I do not envy you your challenge. I think it is clear you
are trying to find a way through the problems that confront you.
Thank you so much for coming along today and being so helpful.
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