Prisons and Probation — House of Commons, 2016-01-27
Topic: Law and Crime
Stephen Charles Brine (Conservative, Centre-right): I will come on to that. The community courts that I saw in the United States were a good step towards that. My hon. Friend will find that the Government are very interested in what is happening over there The Ministry of Justice is currently a demand-led Department—demand for prison places and probation services is fed by the criminal courts, which are in turn fed by the police and prosecution services, which are in turn fed by the incidence of crime. My view is that we should seek to place the penal system on a more sustainable footing by seeking to reduce demand on the system, particularly in respect of prison numbers, rather than pursuing the old, tired predict-and-provide policy If austerity did not force our hand, we should do it anyway. Austerity did not lead to the Right on Crime initiative in Texas, but we should look to it. The Justice Committee of the last Parliament, of which I was a member alongside the current Leader of the Opposition, visited Austin and Houston, where we met Republican state representative Jerry Madden, who is no fluffy liberal—he describes himself as a typical Texan Republican. He told us this: "30% of the people in prison today we’re scared of - 70% we’re just mad at. We need to lock up the 30 and get a whole lot smarter about the 70." I think he is right. Let me be clear before anyone gets excited: this is not about throwing open the doors, but about slowing down the rate at which prisoners come in by providing less costly and more effective alternatives to sentences Custody should not be the only means through which society expresses its disapproval. Treatment should be a way of doing that, too. The Texan focus would therefore be to give judges options and to finally tackle the underlying causes of repeat offending. Madden made what must have been a welcome call on the Texas Governor of the time to recommend that he halve the budget earmarked for new prisoners and spend the rest on treatment instead. The drug courts that followed are one of his most striking creations. I spent an afternoon in Houston in Judge Denise Bradley’s STAR drug court in Harris County observing this new justice in action. Every one of the young people coming before it has been in prison before and is now a non-violent reoffender, which is why they are back Drug courts are a tough alternative. Offenders live in halfway house-style premises, but they hold jobs and maintain links with their families and, most importantly, their children. Every two weeks they come back to court for a kind of progress report. It is working. Recidivism rates in Texas are falling fast, so it is very welcome that the Government are exploring how we can bring these courts here to England and Wales There will always be serious offenders who need locking up and need to stay there. No one, neither here nor in Texas, is arguing any differently, but there are the others and we cannot afford the ongoing rate of state failure that they represent. I agree we should close the old Victorian prisons, but we should not just build more like-for-like. To be clear, I absolutely am saying we should reduce the prison population significantly. The Government should look again at older prisoners, the fastest-growing group in the estate, return to the 82 recommendations from Lord Bradley on the over-representation of people with mental health problems, and look again at Jean Corston’s work on women prisoners The Justice Secretary said, in his first major speech last summer, that there is "treasure in the heart of man" I believe he is right. I believe that, like me, he is an optimist about the human condition. My right hon. Friend will know that Winston Churchill said: "there is a treasure…in the heart of…man"—[Official Report, 20 July 1910; Vol. 19, c. 1354.] at that Dispatch Box when he was Home Secretary with responsibility for police, prisons and prisoners. We have a much more fragmented system these days, but the basics have not changed. We can lock ’em up and spend a fortune biting off our nose to spite our face in the long run, but it is time to try something different.