Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Baroness Stern Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I put my name to the stand part debate for exactly the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, has outlined. In his letter to us of 12 December, the Minister said that a curfew can be an effective tool in punishing offenders, preventing reoffending and giving respite to victims. At the same time, the National Audit Office said in a report that such curfews were a problem for employment and could pose real barriers to people finding work. That seems to be the antithesis of preventing reoffending through helping people to live purposeful lives.

I have two comments, one about Clause 67 and one about Clause 75. There is a particular problem with women who are disproportionately affected by such increases, especially if they have children. I cannot believe that this has been thought through.

The other people I am particularly concerned about are those with mental health problems. They certainly do not need to be locked up under virtual house arrest—they need the stimulus of company and everything that goes with it. Again, I do not think that extending such a curfew for a year would serve any useful purpose.

I will always remember visiting young offender institutions where the youngsters were locked up all day, and watching what happened when they were let out for an hour at about 6 pm. They were just like puppies, all over each other. The prison staff, who did not know how to handle this, called it assault. It was not—it was the letting off of the adolescent steam which is a normal part of growing up. Locking up youngsters who come from a dysfunctional family, living in a small number of rooms, surrounded by others, for 16 hours a day for a year, is not a civilised way of coping with the problem. It is punishment, punishment, punishment, to the exclusion of civilisation.

The present system, which has a 12-hour curfew lasting six months, is in many ways causing the problems which the National Audit Office has commented on. Therefore, an extension would make things worse. As the noble Baroness said, we are setting these people up to breach the curfew, and then all we will do is make the problem worse. So I beg the Minister seriously to consider this extension and preferably to omit these clauses from the Bill.

[Baroness Stern]

I support the proposal that the clauses should not stand part of the Bill and the comments of the previous two speakers. Liberty has sent me a very helpful brief which I will be using. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Civil Liberties Trust.

Liberty points out in its brief that the Green Paper which led to this Bill envisaged that if there were tougher community sentences, prison would be used less because those sentences would be used instead. This is indeed a worthy idea, but I point out to the Minister that it is supported by absolutely no evidence whatever. Making community sentences tougher instead of making them more positive, rehabilitative and socially useful, simply adds to the number of such sentences and leads to more failure and imprisonment.

On the extension of curfews, it is hard to envisage a beneficial effect on the normal life of a curfewed person. How can a curfewed person become interested in going to work or jobseeking? How can they become involved in caring for a relative or in some activity which will take them away from crime? A curfew is a very blunt instrument with very little penal value. Has thought been given to the effect on the rest of the family? What will the effect be on the other siblings who may be on the straight and narrow and have to spend all their time in the house with the one member of the family who has been deemed not to be on the straight and narrow? What will be the effect on the family if it is the father who has to stay at home for 16 hours for 12 months? That person may spend his time at home drinking, so what happens to his wife and children? These points apply especially to the impact of curfews on children. Surely this measure will be a real hindrance to normal teenage development. It is hard to envisage anything else.

What is the objective of these clauses in terms of ensuring a more effective criminal justice system? In the other place, the Minister said that they would give courts more flexibility. But the flexibility to increase a curfew from 12 hours to 16 or six months to 12 seems more like punitiveness. If it is to give an impression of toughness, I would counsel the Minister against this. The public will not register the difference between 12 and 16 hours and six and 12 months. As a result, more people will fail and the public will then say, “There you are—he should have gone to prison. These non-custodial sentences never work”.

Finally, it might also be worth bearing in mind the cost. These proposals come with a price tag. In terms of change, rehabilitation, giving up drugs and alcohol and developing a social conscience, they add nothing. There are many better ways of spending money.

[Lord Beecham]

My Lords, I strongly endorse the proposal of the noble Baroness that both clauses should be deleted from the Bill and the criticisms of the clauses that she and other noble Lords have made. The noble Baroness, Lady Stern, has just referred to a statement made by the Prisons and Probation Minister in the House of Commons, in which he argued that this 33.3 per cent increase in the hours of the curfew and the 100 per cent increase in the maximum period over which such a curfew might be imposed—from six to 12 months—would enable the court to use curfews “creatively and flexibly”. However, there is potential for flexibility in the present system. That is not to say that one is entirely convinced by the present system but even it makes it clear that the 12 hours do not have to be a single period; they do not have to be consecutive. They can be in two or more blocks if the court thinks that is right. The curfew can be for a longer period at weekends than during the week. An element of flexibility is currently available.

I have yet to hear of an evidence base for this proposed change. What has persuaded the Government that a change of this kind will be effective? For that matter, what leads the Government to think that the present system is all that effective? We have heard from my noble friend Lord Ponsonby—no doubt rightly—that he spends much of his time dealing with breaches of community orders, of which this would be one, and sending people to prison for short sentences. It seems that the effect of these amendments would be to place a larger number of people on a conveyor belt to his court and other courts, and thence to prison, with consequences that have hardly been calculated.

A 12-hour curfew is difficult enough. It would be very difficult for anyone with a job, voluntary work or training to fit them in with a 16-hour curfew. It would make it virtually impossible for anyone to travel any kind of distance to work or some other establishment. That cannot be consistent with the aim of getting people—in this case mainly adults—into employment, which is one of the principal ways of avoiding reoffending.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, has pointed out, the curfew is effectively a negative form of community sentence. For community sentencing to be effective it ought to be positive, for example through community pay-back and restorative justice, which we will come to on later amendments. This is simply temporary containment. Indeed, one wonders what the effect will be of children being cooped up in the dysfunctional homes from which too many unfortunately come, and which are probably at the root of their problems in the first place.

I do not know whether the Government propose any assessment of the impact of the current system, let alone—if these clauses stand part and the Bill goes unamended—of the lengthened periods that these two clauses would impose. A proper evaluation should be made before proceeding with any change in either direction, but I am not aware that any such evaluation has taken place or is being planned. Perhaps the Minister could enlighten us. The figure for the number of breaches that the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, cited at the beginning hardly suggests that the system is all that effective, particularly for children.

This is very much a retrograde change. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, referred to Dickens earlier. I feel that this is almost a Dickensian proposal and one that we should not be developing in the bicentenary of that great writer. I think he would have had some pointed things to say about this type of legislation, and rightly so. I hope that the Government will think again and not press the changes that have been so effectively criticised by Members of the Committee and those outside.