Offender Management and Treatment — House of Lords, 2019-10-03
Topic: Law and Crime
Michael Hastings Jay (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, I am very glad to take part in this debate, and it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia I should perhaps declare an interest: my wife has been a prison visitor and governor most of her life, and, as the High Sherriff of Oxfordshire this year, will have visited every prison in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire. She also recently visited the NHS secure hospital at Broadmoor. I also thank my noble kinswoman Lady Bottomley for her remarks My own interest in this matter is less expert but no less concerned. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies, for every 100,000 people in the population of England and Wales 148 were in prison, compared with 94 in Germany and 85 in France. I do not want to turn this into a Brexit debate, but I do not believe that the British are more criminally inclined than the French or Germans. The only justification, therefore, for such an imbalance in the figures would be that we believe that locking more people away and then releasing them back into the community is the best way of achieving the Government’s objectives of reducing offending rates and keeping costs down That, however, does not seem to be the case. Sir Tom Winsor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, said recently: "Very high proportions of people in prison are unwell, uneducated, undervalued and justifiably angry … Many more have severe and chronic mental ill-health, intensified by years of lack of diagnosis or adequate early treatment" Furthermore, the Prison Reform Trust has noted that violence has risen to record levels in England and Wales Of course, the public need to be protected from violent offenders and society expects violent offenders to be punished—but surely not violently. Surely, too, that does not mean that the conditions under which prisoners are held should so often be appalling I suppose that conditions inside prisons might be less reprehensible if prisoners were released into the community at the end of their sentence in a way which reduced their chances of reoffending, but that, alas, seems not to be the case either. Figures from 2017 indicate that roughly one-third of released prisoners commit crimes and go back to prison within a year, and about two-thirds of adults who have served less than 12 months in prison reoffend There are fortunately some extremely good and dedicated charities which help train prisoners in prison so that they have the skills to prosper outside, such as Fine Cell Work and The Clink, or which help prisoners when they are released, such as Aspire Oxford, but surely it would be infinitely better if fewer people were sent to prison, at least for lesser crimes, in the first place. Evidence published by the Ministry of Justice shows that community sentences are more effective than short prison sentences in helping people desist from crime. However, the Government’s policy—I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—seems to be to lock up more people for longer despite the woeful shortage in properly trained prison staff. Of course, I welcome the Government’s recognition of the need to spend more to make such a policy work, but it would surely make more sense to adopt a policy which reduced or abolished short sentences and invested more, working alongside charities and others, in community-based initiatives that reduce the rate of reoffending—all as part of a coherent strategy, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said so powerfully in introducing this debate.