Prisons and Courts Bill — House of Commons, 2017-03-20
Topic: Law and Crime
Madeleine Moon (Labour, Centre-left): I hope to bring great cheer to the right hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), because I am proud to say that one prison that has developed a world-class suite of rehabilitation interventions to reduce reoffending is Parc prison in my Bridgend constituency. Those interventions are largely thanks to the leadership of the prison’s director Janet Wallsgrove as well as Corin Morgan-Armstrong, the head of its family intervention unit and his team of staff and volunteers. Most importantly, the prison has clear partnerships with numerous local organisations within the community, which has led to rehabilitation work with families being not only possible but successful The Invisible Walls Wales programme was set up in 2012 and funded for four years by the Big Lottery Fund, Bridgend County Borough Council, Barnardo’s Wales, Gwalia housing and the Welsh Centre for Crime and Social Justice—money not from the Ministry of Justice but from organisations within Wales that are worried about reoffending The three core aims of Invisible Walls Wales meet all four of the aims of this Bill. Parc is a 62-bed family intervention unit aimed at reducing reoffending, reducing intergenerational offending and encouraging community cohesion. The funding has transformed family engagement at Parc prison. The environment of prison visits has been fundamentally revamped and, in a bold step, the prison’s visit hall feels more like a community centre than a prison Across the prison estate, 48% of prisoners receive regular family contact, but at Parc, thanks to a small change, the proportion has now risen to 69%. As we all know, evidence shows that people in prison who maintain links with their family are 52% less likely to reoffend. Some 90% of prisoners were misusing drugs and alcohol at the start of the Invisible Walls Wales programme, but that fell to 24% by the end of the project. There were particular benefits for the children of prisoners—by the end of the project there was a 30% reduction in the number of children assessed as having school attainment and attendance issues, and 91% of the children had appropriate peer relationships In June 2016, Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons declared that the children and families work at Parc was "innovative and radical" and "probably the best" it has seen in the UK. The work has been exported internationally to prisons in the Netherlands, Uganda and Australia. The President of Malta has visited to see what can be learned from Parc, the first prison in the EU to achieve an "Investors in Families" charter mark. This week, Parc’s head of family interventions, Corin Morgan-Armstrong, is to speak at the International Coalition for Children with Incarcerated Parents conference in New Zealand Parc represents a global hub of excellence, especially given that we are expecting evidence to show that the reoffending rate among 80 high-risk families is to reduce to about 10%. The results speak for themselves: before the changes, physical altercations in the visit halls were witnessed by family members and children once a week, whereas since the revamp Parc has had just one incident in the past six years. Facilitating positive family engagements becomes all the more important when, as we have discussed, six out of 10 boys with fathers in prison will end up incarcerated themselves. We need to place more emphasis on family engagement as a tool for reform. We have all said that, but Parc actually makes it possible I cannot tell Members how many ways Parc has changed lives. For example, Mark won the platinum award—the highest possible award—in the 2016 Koestler Trust prison art awards, which attract entries from prisoners from around the UK and abroad. Parc is among the top three establishments to have submitted the most entries to the trust, whose chief executive, Tim Robertson, said: "HMP & YOI Parc’s outstanding record of success in the Koestler Awards is a testament to the excellent education staff and facilities at the prison: they turn prisoners’ latent potential into concrete positive achievement. It also reflects the fact that G4S, across all its establishments, takes the arts seriously as a means of learning and rehabilitation." Many Members will know of the Hay literary festival in Wales, but they may not know of "Hay in the Parc", which takes place at the same time. This literary and arts festival encourages prisoners to write and to present their artworks, and sometimes the presenters at the Hay literary festival go to "Hay in the Parc" to talk to prisoners Schools now go into the prison to work with dads, helping with their reading and understanding of educational jargon, and with developing their listening and reading skills, so that they can engage in their children’s education. Schools are provided with the information they need to support children affected by parental imprisonment. Contact details are provided to schools so that if issues arise they can go to the prison to ask for information and advice. Prisoners are helped to improve their children’s literacy and numeracy, while also building their own literacy and numeracy skills. Building a parent’s confidence in parenting and teaching them how to do it while incarcerated really makes a difference in the life of that family and of that prisoner once they leave prison. The "Fathers Inside" scheme focuses on intensive group work on parental responsibility for a child’s education, development and wellbeing, using drama, fiction, games and written portfolios. A Duke of Edinburgh leadership pilot at the prison gives fathers the opportunity to gain a Duke of Edinburgh leadership qualification while mentoring their children or siblings through different sections of the bronze award. The prison also has a beaver scouts group, the first in the UK for prisoners and their children, while the "Baby Steps" programme provides innovative antenatal education to parents so that they know how to parent The prison has developed an introductory booklet that enables a robust risk assessment to be made, so that prisoners who may be violent are identified and measures can then be put in place immediately to reduce that violence. New arrivals are screened for discriminatory views, and prisoners found to have contravened the prison’s community inclusion policy are required to attend a diversity training programme, whereby set actions are fed into their sentence plan I talked earlier about the work of Emmaus with Parc, but this works only if Parc prison works in advance of a prisoner’s discharge to make sure that they are ready: ready for the change; ready for the responsibility; ready to move into work; ready to build a new life; and ready to change and move away from the old patterns, the old friendship group, the old offending and the behaviour that led to it, before moving towards becoming a "companion" in one of the Emmaus homes. I ask the Secretary of State also to work with the Department for Work and Pensions, because the new proposals on changes to access to housing benefit will damage the Emmaus scheme; the only income companions have is that housing benefit, and that makes it possible for Emmaus to continue its work I know that time is running short, but I must say that money is not everything; skilled and dedicated prison officers, partnership working outside the prison and maintaining the family link are vital to rehabilitation, but so, too, are taking risks and trying new, innovative ideas which do not fit the traditional view of punitive sentencing. It is not a soft option for someone to know that they will lose contact with their children if they take drugs; to have their child tell them about their bed-wetting and about the bullying they face because their father is in prison; or to have to face their own illiteracy and innumeracy, and the way in which their offending has damaged their community and family life. I hope that the Secretary of State will visit Parc to see the work that has been done there. I hope she will have the same kind of look on her face as the previous Justice Secretary did when he came to Parc and spoke to one of the prisoners about their educational experience there. This young man told him that he had dropped out of education because it was not for him and it was not going to take him anywhere, but Parc had given him a chance, not only to do his GCSEs, but to do a degree. He was asked, "In what?" He replied, "Philosophy." If prison can take people through degrees in philosophy, that is the sort of rehabilitation and changes in people’s lives that I hope this Bill will be able to produce.