Rehabilitation of Offenders (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts

Friday 21st January 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

My Lords, I am very grateful for the chance to support the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, today. It is clear to all of us that the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act is in need of long overdue reform. That is widely understood but has not been acted upon.

The original Act was a hugely important measure that recognised that rehabilitation is essential to the prevention of reoffending and needs to be designed intelligently and practically, but the Act is now increasingly out of date and ineffective. The original ambition must not be lost, but the Act has to be made to work as it was originally intended. In an age when sentences have lengthened considerably, rehabilitation periods have lengthened in parallel but that is not because the severity of the crimes has changed. In addition, the introduction of the Criminal Records Bureau has introduced a whole new dimension. Arguably, the whole working of the CRB should be the subject of a thorough review so that its work is more targeted—it has become so widespread that, arguably, the most important cases are not receiving the attention that they need.

There has also been a more process-driven and risk-averse approach to recruitment among many employers. Although there are excellent exceptions that many of us know, for all too many ex-offenders, once the box is ticked, their application has no chance of progressing further regardless of any further positive information that might be available about them. Again, that issue would warrant a proper piece of work, which should focus not necessarily on the legislation but on best practice and ways in which that might be shared. That should involve the CBI, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the TUC and others. I hope that at some point somebody will grasp that and move ahead with it.

I want to focus briefly on young offenders, particularly as we know that the youth unemployment rate is at such a high level and is still increasing. We all know that since the early 1990s Britain's prison population has experienced a significant increase, including in the number of young offenders. One of the characteristic features of the prison population is its lack of skills. Almost 40 per cent of prisoners have a reading level below literacy level 1—equivalent to that of an 11 year-old—while young male offenders are nine times more likely to be unskilled than non-offenders of a similar age and young female offenders are 15 times more likely to be unskilled.

As chair of the charity Future Leaders, which trains potential head teachers for disadvantaged secondary schools, I have a lot of contact with schools, as do many other noble Lords here today. The message that I see often is clear and somewhat depressing: poor children are disadvantaged from birth. In urban areas in particular, such children are often without a father in any real sense who can play a full part in their lives and their parents often lack the parenting skills that are necessary to nurture, develop, stimulate and guide young children. Such children arrive at nursery school unused to social interaction, unable to sit at a table and eat with cutlery and without any of the basic knowledge—be that about colours or early counting—that is automatically passed on by many parents. If the children take their reading book home at the end of the day, it often comes back unread. Life is often chaotic for them outside the school gate. Without intensive intervention, that gap develops further. We know that high-ability poor children are overtaken by low-ability rich children early on in their school lives. By age 11, only half of pupils eligible for free school meals reach the expected level in English.

Such problems may be somewhat masked up till the end of primary school, where the friendly environment and one-teacher relationships often manage the problem without really dealing with it, but in secondary school they often escalate quickly. Without the literacy level to access the new wide curriculum that they face, such students find that the constant moving between lessons and teachers means that they are not supported or even tracked. They fall further behind, are embarrassed and then they misbehave. The next sad change is internal exclusion, then external exclusion, and then, for many, full exclusion and inadequate outside provision. As soon as they are away from the security of school, they are prone to gang culture. Indeed one head teacher with whom I work says that the biggest plea that mothers make to him is, “Please keep my son safe. Don’t let him be outside the school building”. They support his tough approach, involving intensive schooling and a long day, as they think that that is the only chance for their sons. Some head teachers are great exceptions to what I have described and people are doing fantastic work to change this culture, but it is still there in far too many of our schools.

For too many youngsters the next stage after trouble at school is offending, which leads to an inexorable journey into the criminal justice system and the prison system. I am sure that other noble Lords have, like me, sat on exclusion inquiries and agonised about whether to exclude a child that is known to be causing massive disruption in school when you also know that excluding such children puts them on that journey to the next stage of offending.

Inquiries by Ofsted and various other inquiries, several of which were held as recently as 2010, have identified a range of concerns about young offender institutions. Young offender institutions often have the wrong information about the skills levels of young offenders when they arrive. The vocational learning that young offenders receive is limited and basic skills are poorly delivered. People are often transferred between institutions, so even where good practice exists it is not continued. There is no work on the soft skills that we all know are needed for the employment that young offenders will seek when they get out. Often, people cannot gain accreditation for work that they have done, especially in short sentences. In addition, colleges and work-placed learning providers do not understand the young offending world, so it is extremely hard for ex-offenders to continue their education. The information available to young offenders is pretty hopeless and they struggle with accommodation. The recent IFLL study found that, unless ex young offenders find employment or training and somewhere to live within three weeks, they are likely to reoffend. We know that the reoffending rate among young offenders aged 18 to 20 is 75 per cent.

On top of all that, there is the effect of the unreformed Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Of course, the rehabilitation rate for an offender who committed a crime when they were under 18 is lower—typically half that of those over 18—but it is still enough to hugely damage the chances of an ex-offender being able to get into work or training. Thus, there is a massively increased chance of reoffending and of a subsequent downward spiral. For young people aged 18 or over who offend, the normal adult rehabilitation rates apply.

Reports from Nacro and others always feature case studies, and I have a case study of my own that struck me recently. A young man whom I know well was hard-working and ambitious but got in with the wrong crowd. He was on the edge of that group, but he was nevertheless there and he ended up, sadly, with a drugs conviction and a custodial sentence. He lost his job, where he had been doing really well and was well regarded. His employer came to court and appealed on his behalf, but to no end. He lost his flat. He lost his support systems. He was 20 and he had never been in trouble before. He came out of prison recently but has been unable to get a new job. He is still ambitious and he even thought about setting up his own company—he is a computer repair technician—but he cannot get a loan because no one will consider him. He is trying to find any job and he gets bits of unskilled work, but he cannot get back into the sector that he was in, where his skills are needed. However, he is still skilled, bright and ambitious and, crucially, has a family supporting him. If you meet him, you will know that he has learned his lesson and that he will not go back there. He cannot get beyond the application-form stage, yet he is reasonably well educated and has a great mum and dad backing him.

I do not pretend for one moment that reform of the Act will transform the life chances of young offenders. In many cases, much goes wrong before they reach that stage. However, I strongly believe that a combination of better education and skills while in prison and a reformed Act would at least give more young offenders a chance. Crucially, that could also reduce the reoffending rate, which must be in everyone’s interests. I strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, in his effort to bring forward a much-needed reform in this area.