Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill — House of Lords, 2021-11-15
Topic: Law and Crime
Lorely Burt (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, I support all the amendments in this group, but, for the sake of brevity, I will specifically address Amendments 208B, 208G and 208H, which stand in my name. Like the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, I add my thanks to all the organisations and charities that have helped us so assiduously and briefed us In January this year, a young woman on an indeterminate sentence wrote to me. I will call her Ella; I will not use her real name to preserve anonymity. I said that Ella was a young woman: she was 25 when she first went to prison in 2007. Her tariff expired in 2010, but 11 years past that date, she was still in prison. She was at the time she wrote waiting for a parole assessment in April, by which time she would be 39 I wrote back to her and said that I was not willing to take up individual cases, but, having read her story, I would address the issue if suitable legislation came along. That is why I am here today. I am here for Ella and the more than 3,000 people still languishing in prison under the provisions of this law, despite the IPP sentence having been abolished nearly 10 years ago I wrote to her a few weeks ago to tell her that I was going to raise the matter of IPP sentences under the Bill, but I received no response, which was odd. Having contacted the authorities at HMP Bronzefield, I was told that Ella had been released, but recalled because she had "failed to attend an Approved Premises at a specific date and time as directed." She was therefore back in prison awaiting another Parole Board hearing—a yo-yo process which happens to the majority of IPP prisoners To be released they have to jump through hoops, in the form of various training courses—when those courses become available—but if they do not show a sufficiently positive response, they are not deemed fit to be released anyway. It quite reminds me of something by Kafka, or perhaps Catch-22. When the Parole Board in its wisdom decides an IPP prisoner is fit for release, if they infringe their conditions, such as by failing to attend an approved premises at a specific time and date, they can be hauled back to prison to start the whole thing all over again Indeed, the situation for IPP prisoners is often much bleaker than for lifers. We heard from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, about some of the statistics. The biggest group of IPP prisoners still incarcerated today received tariffs of only two to four years. Some 96% of IPP prisoners are still in prison, after their tariff has expired. Their rate of self-harm, as we have already heard, is double that of lifers. It is a form of modern-day torture, fuelled by a constant sense of anxiety, hopelessness and strong feelings of injustice and alienation from the state. You would feel like that too, wouldn’t you? Even when they have been released on licence, there is a constant sword of Damocles hanging over their and their families’ heads—that some contravention might trigger a recall. Because of this constant threat they are fearful of asking for help with problems, and families often bear the brunt of shielding and protecting the ex-prisoner for fear of recall That, in a nutshell, is why we need a better system. This one certainly does not work. Through my Amendment 208B, I am trying to suggest ways in which we can start removing the Catch-22 element from inside prison. I am proposing a review to examine the quality, effectiveness and availability of offender behaviour programmes, progression programmes and other opportunities to demonstrate reducing risk to the public; the availability of welfare and mental health support to help redress the damage that the system and the constant powerlessness and uncertainty of being an IPP prisoner creates; and, if and when prisoners have been recalled, the support available to help them pick up the pieces while they face another interminable wait for a Parole Board hearing That brings me to the Parole Board. There are many who believe that parole boards are becoming more and more risk-averse, because they conflate the behaviour of some prisoners with the increasing deterioration they experience arising from the treatment they received in prison, not their likelihood of reoffending. Therefore, Amendment 208B describes several measures aimed at improving the parole system and providing better support in the community to facilitate a safer release.