Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
268-279)
MARIA EAGLE
MP, PHIL WHEATLEY
CB AND STACEY
TASKER OBE
9 JUNE 2009
Q268 Chairman: Ms Eagle, Mr Wheatley
and Ms Tasker, welcome. In particular welcome to our new Minister
who we congratulate on taking up this appointment and commiserate
on the fact that you have to appear before the Committee after
barely 24 hours in post and to do so taking over when, although
not in mid-sentence, David Hanson was actually answering questions
when we were interrupted. We do not expect you necessarily even
to say the same things, let alone take up exactly where he left
off.
Maria Eagle: It
seems like a lot less than 24 hours.
Q269 Chairman: One of our witnesses,
Professor Andrew Coyle, identified a lack of trust throughout
the National Offender Management Service, and he referred to a
culture of "avoidance of doing wrong, rather than encouragement
to do right". I appreciate that after 24 hours you will not
be in a position to decide whether this is true or not, but is
it a worry that you recognise and one that you would want to have
a look at?
Maria Eagle: I think it would
be fair to say that even after a short period of time in post
I recognise the fact that there is potential defensiveness in
culture just by the very nature of the business that the Prison
Service is engaged in, which is primarily keeping the public safe
from some very serious offenders and making sure that the sentences
of the courts to loss of liberty are carried out. Obviously there
are other purposes and tasks which the Service also has to carry
out, for example primarily trying to reduce re-offending and tackle
the factors which have led individuals into the system that they
find themselves in, but they are there to carry out the sentences
of the courts, to protect the public from sometimes dangerous
offenders and they are also closed institutions, so one can see
why there may be a certain defensiveness and that is bound to
be a part of culture. I think that has been changing significantly
over the past few years, certainly I imagine that Phil Wheatley
would have seen big changes in the time he has been in the Service,
and I am sure anybody working for it who you were to ask, were
you to ask them, would be able to point to significant examples
of increasing openness and activity focusing on the needs of the
individuals in the care of the Prison Service.
Q270 Alun Michael: I wonder if we
could clarify some things with Mr Wheatley in particular. Towards
the end of last session you were making some comments about the
figures which were about to be published, and of course they have
been published now. You referred to the best escape figures and
suggested that we should have a look at the figures as soon as
they were available. Looking at them, juvenile re-offending figures
seem very encouraging but when you look at adult re-offending
across all disposals they rose by 2.3% between 2006 and 2007,
with the rise for custody alone appearing to be much higher than
that. Are we seeing the start of an upward trend? Was that what
you wanted us to draw from the figures which of course had not
been published when you last spoke? Can you help us on this?
Phil Wheatley: I did not know
what the figures were when we last spoke, they were a secret from
me at least, I had no idea what they were going to be. They are
slightly worse than the previous year, your figure is correct.
Short-term custody looks slightly worse than before. There is
a skew towards older offenders doing less well and some of the
increase is also in women offenders, which is a bit counterintuitive
from my point of view because there is probably more resource
deployed to women offenders, and we are drilling down into that
to understand why. Having said that, we are already hitting the
end target at the moment of making a 10% reduction in re-offending,
so although it is slightly worse than the previous year it is
still a 10% reduction in re-offending on the base year, which
I think is 2005, so we have made improvements. The improvements
were very good in the year before and the 2007 results are slightly
worse than the 2006 results.
Q271 Alun Michael: That does suggest,
does it not, that we need to look very carefully at the year-on-year
figures?
Phil Wheatley: Yes.
Q272 Alun Michael: You are not suggesting,
are you, that we should discount the latest figures?
Phil Wheatley: No, not at all,
and I am not trying to discount them. What I think we are seeing,
and we are doing more careful analysis on, because you are quoting
the straightforward re-offending, the reduction in frequency of
offences, we are also looking at the drop-dead measure of do people
offend or not within the one year period, which you can do a prediction
on so I can see with that whether there has been an increase in
the risk of the offenders we are receiving. I do not think that
is the explanation.
Q273 Chairman: Can you just define
that again?
Phil Wheatley: There are two measures.
There is the measure that says what is the frequency of re-offences
committed by people who are discharged from custody or on community
sentences, and the older measure which says within a fixed period,
now a one year period, how many of that same number actually re-offend.
Some of them may re-offend on 10-15 occasions but it is one conviction
when they are dealt with. They are two different measures. You
can predict the number of people who may re-offend on that drop-dead
measure
Q274 Chairman: An unfortunate phrase.
Phil Wheatley: Yes, sorry. It
is a phrase that the researchers use and I have picked it up from
them. I shall try and do better. It is the simple "did they
offend or did they not" measure. What we think is going on
is that with the big increase in offending behaviour programmes
and provision for education, because it was not just offending
behaviour programmes, improvements in resettlement work was funded
by substantial increases that came in the post-2000 period and
we are now in steady state, we have that investment, which is
still there, but we are not increasing the investment in that
group at the moment. I think that is what causes it.
Q275 Alun Michael: What is the timescale
of doing that drilling down and would it be possible to share
the more detailed conclusions with the Committee fairly quickly?
Phil Wheatley: The timescale is
within the next month. I am not sure how that fits with the Committee's
timescale.
Q276 Chairman: It might be too late
for us, it might be helpful, but we would love to know anyway.
Phil Wheatley: Some detailed work
is being done by the researchers to drill down in the data which
is literally very recently out. I was at a meeting yesterday at
which we were asking these questions to try to understand precisely
what is happening, which offenders are most affected by any changes.
The changes are small, you are right, but they are in the wrong
direction.
Q277 Alun Michael: Will you be looking
at not just whether there is any explanation but whether there
is any trend in terms of those figures?
Phil Wheatley: Yes, we have been
doing. As I say, the trend we have identified so far is that performance
is worst for the older offenders. Although they re-offend less
we are making less reductions with them. By "older"
I mean the 40-plus group, I am not speaking about 21-plus. With
the younger age group we are doing better. We have looked at the
data on the women offenders we are dealing with, which probably
relates to the selection of the women in that group because there
is a disproportionate number of women in our custody who have
got substantial drug problems. Some of this may relate to how
we deal with people who have got drug problems. This is all speculative
and I am sharing that speculation rather than having a pat answer.
I do not have an answer.
Chairman: That is very helpful.
Q278 Julie Morgan: I was just going
to pick up that point about women offenders. I am slightly dismayed
to hear that because of the extra efforts the Government has been
putting into women offenders. You do not have anything more to
add to that at this stage?
Phil Wheatley: Certainly as we
looked at the detail yesterday in the discussion, which is all
out on the website so I am not using information that is not public
if you look at what is on the website, in our women's population
there are a large number of women who have substantial drug problems.
At one point, and the older offenders are also affected, I would
have expected, perhaps 15 years ago, those who are 50-plus not
to use drugs, they might have drunk too much but did not use drugs,
but that is no longer true. I have now got offenders who are in
their late 40s who have had a lifetime of using drugs and they
are working through the system. If you do not break clear of drugs
you are likely to commit prolific and relatively minor offences
to fund a habit. Getting people off drugs is one of the key things
with that group. There is probably a disproportionate number of
them in the older age group, but that is speculation rather than
based on enough hard analysis for me to say it is certain.
Q279 Julie Morgan: So you will be
able to give us more information?
Phil Wheatley: We may be able
to give you more information as we drill down into it. It may
still be speculative because there is a limit to the amount we
can get out of the data we have got.
Chairman: It will be relevant to other
inquiries as well as this one, so we will be very happy to have
it.
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