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Finally, on local partners, yes, they are waiting for that and we all know that they want to do it. Why on earth have we not listened to the advice on which everyone agreed 19 years ago?
4.53 pm
The Lord Bishop of Liverpool: My Lords, the Howard League for Penal Reform has provided us with a huge service. The Commission on English Prisons Today offers us detailed statistics, robust analysis and radical recommendations. In my visits to prisons, bail hostels and community sentencing programmes as bishop for prisons, I often hear people echoing what is in this report. Why, then, is this not already public policy? We know that prison has the threefold function of punishment, protection and reformation but unfortunately we allow the media focus on punishment to distort our public policy. The punitive element seems to obscure every other aspect. As this commission demonstrates, we are left with a criminal justice system that is financially wasteful, educationally ineffectual and socially negative. In other words, a better system, as proposed here, would save public money through greater and better community sentencing, reduce reoffending with local programmes on restorative justice and enhance social stability through local, strategic interventions. These are the messages that all of us concerned with community justice need to get out through the media and bring to bear on public policy.
It is extraordinary that millions of pounds can be found to build more prison places, while budgets are squeezed and purposeful activity in prison is reduced. We are putting more and more damaged people into prison regimes that are less and less restorative. That is not a recipe for a stable society, let alone a humane one. This is not about being soft on crime. It is about understanding why and how people get into crime, and why and how they get out of it.
In the faith sector, huge independent and voluntary resources are already being deployed in the rehabilitation of offenders. They would have a key role to play in the commission's proposal for local strategic partnerships. But if we look at interventions to prevent criminal behaviour, we cannot ignore the role of the family. On listening to prisoners, I am constantly struck by how much of their behaviour can be traced back to parental neglect and family dysfunction. We need bold, new initiatives that will target the hard-to-reach parents.
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Like the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, I was pleased to see that the commission had visited the community justice centre in Liverpool and had observed its success in working collaboratively across the criminal justice system in addressing criminal behaviour holistically. This is a government initiative and a government success on which they should be congratulated. However, when you ask why this approach cannot be adopted everywhere, the same issue-that of money-arises. Surely, as this commission suggests, it is profligate spending to build prisons and to incarcerate at huge public expense, when you could spend less money by diverting from prison those who could be punished and rehabilitated in other ways.
4.57 pm
Lord Elton: My Lords, I do not congratulate the noble Lord on getting this debate, because that is easy. But I thank him for doing so, because it is something he might not have done. It has provided us with an occasion on which to discuss this extraordinary and important report, although I recognise what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has said about it being, in a sense, an echo of something that has been said previously. However, it is said in a different voice and has a different scale of detail. It lays much more emphasis on the most important aspect of this issue; namely, the role of the community.
Seeing a right reverend Prelate behind me tempts me to say that when God asked Cain where his brother was, Cain said, "Am I my brother's keeper?". The answer should certainly have been yes, because that is the basis of community. People are built by their homes-we have heard references to failed parents-and by the communities in which they live. They should be able to be safe in their streets, to know each other and to look out for each other's children. That is the basic pillar on which society rests.
When someone gets damaged and is not supported by the system, they are taken out of their community, put into a prison miles away and then shunted around. The answer to this is to localise the prison service and its management, to stabilise and reduce its population, and to have recourse to the community to pick up the results and make a far better answer of it.
Page 145 of the House of Commons Justice Committee report refers to the experiment in the Deschutes County of Oregon, USA. The experiment devolved the management of youth offenders, excluding violent offenders, to the local authority and, to a certain extent, delegated the funding thereof. The report only summarises the statistical findings. The detail can be found on an Oregon website. The cost of incarceration by the county per day was greater than that provided by the state-$202 a day as opposed to $166. But the average length of stay in the correctional facility was 4.4 months, as opposed to 8.3 months. Therefore, it costs a good deal less. The cost of aftercare/parole was $62 a day, as against $20 when administered by the state, so it cost a great deal more. The average stay in aftercare/parole was 11.5 months, as opposed to 14 months-so, again, the cost was much less. The total cost per case was $48,396 when locally done, and $65,866 when done state-wide. The approximate saving
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5.01 pm
Lord Elystan-Morgan: My Lords, like all other speakers in this debate, I recognise the wealth and significance of this report, and I believe very deeply that we ignore its research and recommendations at our peril.
The report shows that our policies on imprisonment over the past 30 years have been laced with inconsistencies and misconceptions. The central irony is that while crime that is recorded by the British Crime Survey has fallen by 45 per cent in the past 15 years, the prison population has gone in exactly the opposite direction, more than doubling between 1992 and the present year. That is a very sobering central irony in the whole situation.
Parallel with this development, and certainly not unassociated with it, is the fact that Her Majesty's Government have, in each of the past 13 years, added on average 100 brand new offences that carry a custodial sanction: that is, something in the order of 1,400 offences in the past 13 years. Since 1997, Parliament has passed no less than 23 criminal justice Acts. It is worth noting that between 1925 and 1985-a period of 60 years that included a world war and all the disruption of its aftermath-only six criminal justice Acts were regarded as necessary: one every 10 years.
As the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and others have mentioned, we incarcerate 153 persons per 100,000. That is more than any other country in western Europe bar Spain, which has a figure of 160, and Luxembourg, for some reason-presumably because of the number of banks that it has every acre-which has a figure in the order of 155. We incarcerate 60 per cent more people per hundred thousand than France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and the Irish Republic. I ask the same question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile: are we 60 per cent more wicked, more criminally disposed, than the people of those countries, or is there another reason? I believe clearly that there is. There is mass hysteria in the community about imprisonment that has been brought about by successive Governments, who have led people to believe that you can wave a magic wand and that crime will simply disappear.
Opposition parties have shown that that is wrong, as they are entitled to do, but have given the impression that the Government of the day are presiding over a mounting crime wave. That is not the case. The ordinary citizen could certainly be excused for believing that we were going headlong down the path to disaster in relation to crime. Tabloid editors have predictably seen it to be to their profit to perpetuate these myths. Yet, for all the hysteria, the system has failed. Nothing shows that so remarkably clearly as this report. The system has failed to reform or assuage public fears, and in every respect. The statistic of two-thirds of persons being reconvicted within two years clearly shows that.
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There is an alternative, as shown in this report. The situation calls for change not only in policy but also in the psychology of the whole community. It is possible to reduce the prison population in a sensible and safe way. It has been done before. Between 1908 and 1939, the prison population was halved. That was done by long-sighted people with vision and resolution. It is exactly what has to be attempted now. Whichever public leader stands up and advocates this policy will be traduced and vilified. He will be said to be a namby-pamby, starry-eyed romantic-but he will be sane. He will be putting forward a better idea and vision than what we have today in our brainwashed society in relation to imprisonment.
5.07 pm
Lord Sheikh: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, for securing this debate. The growing prison population and further increases in the number of offenders who return to custody are complex issues that require a multifaceted solution. It is encouraging to see that the Howard League has produced a thorough and informative account of the problems facing our prisons today-and the possible solutions.
The commission's research shows that there has been a marked rise in the number of ethnic-minority prisoners, especially Muslims, compared to a lower increase in the number of white inmates. It goes on to reveal that the number of Muslim prisoners has doubled over the past 10 years and now stands at nearly 10,000 persons. This is particularly disturbing as Muslims account for 3 per cent of the total population in Britain but make up almost 11 per cent of the prison population. Why has this unacceptable situation arisen and what remedial action will be taken to address this alarming trend?
The annual report by Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons draws attention to the fact that approximately one quarter of Muslim prisoners said they felt unsafe. More than 30 per cent stated that they had been subjected to bullying by prison staff. I acknowledge the reality that prison staff do a tremendously difficult job. However, any type of bullying is unacceptable. Will the Minister be forthcoming in revealing what measures the Government will take to remedy this situation?
A survey by the Muslim Youth Helpline highlighted that 63 per cent of reoffenders felt that they did not have the help they needed upon leaving prison. Some 82 per cent stated that faith-based support networks in the community would have prevented them returning to crime. It is therefore important to encourage and increase the number of prison volunteers from all faiths, while recognising that there is an important role to be played by religious leaders in our communities. Does the Minister agree that a greater emphasis should be placed on helping communities to develop faith-based projects that specifically target offenders?
The commission's research shows that between 2004 and 2008 the number of foreign national prisoners rose by 29 per cent. I believe that those who enter our country and breach our laws have lost their right to a place in all areas of British society. We should therefore
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There is a correlation between overcrowded prisons and the number of inmates who are committing suicide. This tragic state of affairs calls for greater attention concerning the mental health of inmates as well as their overall well-being. Prison is a deplorable sanction for young people, and should be reserved for only the most serious youth offenders. This view reiterates the ardent belief that child welfare is paramount to reducing youth crime and curbing reoffending rates. Our justice system should be fundamentally based on the principles of enforcing punishment and educating prisoners. Investments made in crime prevention measures will pay dividends in efforts to counter reoffending.
5.12 pm
Baroness Hamwee: My Lords, from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench, as it were, I welcome this report-and not only because it confirms my own prejudices. I have never been attracted by the sort of sentencing policy that tests the machismo of the current Government. Rather, I regard a willingness to work at the harder options-community-based responses are not a soft option, if properly structured-as a test of a community's dignity. We must not underestimate the need to win the hearts and minds of the community, nor the difficulty of that task. Community-based responses need to be accepted.
This morning, in a local shop, I overheard a discussion about a number of burglaries that had taken place locally, where someone commented: "Lock 'em all up, that's what I say". That is an instinctive reaction from both a victim and a potential victim. As the report says,
The report refers to a characteristic of a more,
That could not be said of the media in this country; they carry a heavy responsibility, and the right reverend Prelate's term "distortion" was a temperate one.
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Wallace for covering the issue of localism. I hope that stronger local partnerships are ideas whose time has come; they have been bubbling up for a little while, with other organisations looking at the same issues. We know that the risk of reoffending is much reduced by stable housing, employment, drug treatment planning and programming and family and local contacts-all things that are the very stuff of local partnerships. Education and training are vital; an offender needs skills to go straight. Partnership work between business and prisons or other penal schemes can help to achieve purposeful activity. I have one specific question for the Minister; do the Government recognise all this as an appropriate component in the Total Place work that is now being carried out, up and down the country, and is sponsored by the DCLG?
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The report also mentions prisons built under the public-private finance initiative, an issue presently being considered by your Lordships' Economic Affairs Committee. A good privately financed prison should be not just about bricks and mortar but also about facilitating a modern, productive regime through the bundling of building and services.
I was also interested in the report's references to New York City being,
but it has reduced crime and the prison population. I wonder whether that goes with the broken-windows approach of tackling crime at the lowest level to seek to stop it escalating. That was pioneered in New York.
I congratulate the Howard League. If prison does not work, then more of the same will not work either. I believe that the report has identified and described what is far more likely to work.
5.16 pm
Lord Henley: My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Elton, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, for giving us the opportunity to debate the Howard League report. Sadly, we have only four minutes each to speak and only an hour for the whole debate. Perhaps the usual channels would consider a fuller debate on this matter in due course. We will also be debating some of these matters later in the Chamber, when the Minister repeats his Statement on prisoners' early release. At this stage, we are debating a much broader strategy about prisons and, on that occasion, we should be able to listen to what the Government are doing or claim they are doing.
In the time available, I shall not set out the entire opposition policy on prisons, which was set out very ably by my honourable friends in another place in their report of last year, Prisons with a Purpose. I commend that to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and others and I hope that they will look at it. In the title of that document, Prisons with a Purpose, my honourable friends made it clear what they thought prisons ought to do: for example, that people should emerge from prisons in a better state than when they went in. One of the problems, which will be addressed in the Statement later, is gross overcrowding within the prison system, which makes it is very difficult for prisons to achieve much in the way of improving the lives of prisoners and making them more fit to face society when they are released.
Our brief debate has been very useful and a great many ideas have been put forward by all who have spoken. My noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern was quite right to highlight the dramatic increase in the number of 10 to 14 year-olds in custody. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, was also right to draw attention to the problems of NOMS, with which virtually everyone who has spoken in the debate would agree. The Minister will have to address the defence of NOMS when he replies, if he can.
We would agree with the vast majority of the report's recommendations and the general direction that it takes. It is an excellent report. However, in some respects it is perhaps a little optimistic in that it goes further than we would as regards closing prisons. We are in a very strange state where the Government are
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We offer broad support for the report, while being careful to state that implementation would be possible only when resources allowed. Some speakers referred to the very severe constraints as a result of our current economic position-I think particularly of my noble friend Lord Elton, who referred to the Oregon experiment with localism, to which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, also referred. That is a way of looking at things in other ways, which might lead to a reduction in the costs that this will impose on the taxpayer.
I welcome the chance that we have had to debate these matters briefly, and look forward to the Government's response.
5.20 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bach): My Lords, I start by paying tribute to the Howard League for Penal Reform and to its president, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I thank the Howard League for the chance to discuss the important and radical report that it produced last summer and the noble Lord for introducing the debate. I also thank all other noble Lords who have spoken.
We very much welcome the contribution that the report has made to a continuing debate, although we do not of course agree with all its conclusions. The report argues for "penal moderation". The Government agree that the use of prison must be effectively targeted, but we are in no doubt about the important role that prison continues play in delivering a fair and just society for victims of crime, the general public and communities. Prison remains the right option for dangerous, serious and the most seriously persistent offenders. To that end, we have increased prison capacity by more than 25,000 places since 1997, and are committed to increasing net capacity to 96,000 places by 2014, following the report of my noble friend Lord Carter. We will always make sure that there are enough prison places for those the courts sentence to custody or place on remand, and we make no apology for that. Resource spending on prisons was 42 per cent higher in real terms in 2007-08 than was the case in 1996-97.
One consequence of providing that additional capacity is that we can now withdraw the end of the custody licence scheme, as my right honourable friend the Justice Secretary told the other place earlier today and as we will discuss later. That scheme was introduced in 2007 as a temporary measure to ease pressures on the prison population, and we now have sufficient headroom in the estate to withdraw the scheme. We have always made it clear that the scheme would be temporary and it is right that we have ended it as soon as it was safe to do so. However, we do not believe that the Government are engaged in unthinking "hyperactivity", as the report and some noble Lords have alleged. We are thinking through carefully the establishment of this new capacity, with a close eye on the needs of offenders. The new prisons, each of around 1,500 places, that were announced a few months ago, will be built in areas where places
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We are also committed to providing alcohol and drug treatment for offenders in prison. The Committee will know that since 1996-97 funding for prison drug treatment has increased 15-fold with the introduction of the integrated drug treatment system, in particular. We are working with the third sector and the private sector further to improve the drug treatment framework available to offenders, as well as strengthening the continuity of support between prisons and the community. We have also done good work on alcohol offending.
In our view, prison remains a key, valuable and necessary element in our criminal justice system, but the Government agree that less serious offenders can often be better dealt with in the community. Therefore, we have programmes in place to divert offenders from custody when appropriate, including vulnerable women offenders. The female prison population decreased by 5 per cent between June 2008 and June 2009. Following the report by my noble friend Lady Corston, we committed to reduce the women's prison estate by 400 places by March 2012. We are providing £15.6 million of new funding over two years to provide additional services in the community for women offenders who are not a danger to the public and for women at risk of offending.
We are also committed to action on diverting offenders with mental health needs, where that is appropriate. In response to the Bradley report, we published a national health and criminal justice delivery plan in November last year. We are committed to developing those policies further. Offenders with mental health needs and vulnerable women are not the only groups where we have seen the population falling or where we are putting into place measures to reduce the population. We have seen a decline of more than 600 in the population of under-18s in custody in the past 16 months.
We cannot be accused of treating prison as the be-all and end-all of the criminal justice system. We have ensured that the courts can use tough community punishments in place of short custodial sentences where doing so is justified and proportionate. Community sentences allow for direct payback to the community, while interventions that help offenders tackle the causes of their behaviour are provided. These sentences are enforced rigorously, with more than 90 per cent of offenders who fail to comply returned to court.
Within this broader approach to the promotion of community sentences, we are doing some important focused work on seven intensive alternatives to custody pilot projects currently under way around the country. They are targeted at offenders who would otherwise receive short custodial sentences. Nearly 1,000 offenders
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