Prisons: Young People

Baroness Young of Hornsey Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Hornsey (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to raise some of the important issues covered by the excellent review of the noble Lord, Lord Harris. I am grateful to Jessica Mullen from Clinks which is an organisation working in partnership with the Young review, and Katharine Sacks-Jones, who is director of AGENDA, the alliance for girls and women at risk. I am grateful to them for their comments and contributions. I am currently chair of the steering group for AGENDA and I have chaired the Young review since October 2013.

Supported by the Black Training and Enterprise Group and Clinks, the Young review set out to examine how existing knowledge and experience could be harnessed to improve outcomes for young black and/or Muslim men in the criminal justice system. Our report was published last year. I hope the Minister and indeed other noble Lords have had the opportunity to read at least the executive summary of the report, and I would be happy to brief anyone who would like to know more about our current programme of work.

The Young review is now into a second, three-year phase funded by charitable trusts and is embarking on the challenging task of implementation. The initial review was born out of a sense of frustration about a lack of progress and the low priority given to disproportionality, race and ethnicity in the criminal justice system. We were also mindful of the changes that were about to take place through the Transforming Rehabilitation agenda. For too long, many of us have been aware that young black men are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, and at every stage, young black and minority ethnic men report the least positive perceptions of that process and of prison life compared with all other groups. Contrary to popular belief, only approximately 1% of Muslim offenders are in prison for terrorism-related offences, but it is of concern that the percentage of young Muslim men in the criminal justice system has almost doubled since 2002.

The Young review was pleased to be able to submit evidence in writing and in person to the Harris review into self-inflicted deaths in custody. We support the noble Lord’s position that all young people in custody are vulnerable in one way or another. We would also describe black and/or young Muslim men in prison as vulnerable, particularly because of the impact of racism and discrimination on their experiences of ethnicity, faith and culture.

It can be difficult for the public to identify young offenders as vulnerable, but front-line professionals know all too well that the same person can be both victim and perpetrator. We often find with these young men that they have very poor experiences, which many noble Lords have pointed out in the debate. They have been picked up by the police over and again, they have been preyed on by adults, or they have been in the care system. The noble Baroness, Lady Healy, and my noble friend Lord Adebowale reminded us that care leavers are overrepresented in the criminal justice system, and it is an issue which has been examined by my noble friend Lord Laming and the Prison Reform Trust. This is not intended to be an excuse for such behaviour, but if we are serious about reducing the number of young people going to prison, we need to develop a much more informed understanding of their experiences and the ways in which they shape their perceptions and world view. Only then can we challenge offending behaviour and give them the support they need, helping them to build resilience and to desist from criminal activity.

At the same time, we have to demonstrate seriousness about tackling the systems which produce racism, stereotyping, discrimination and stigmatisation, as well as the lack of opportunities that so many in these communities face. I will cite one striking example. A young man I spoke to during the course of the review, one of whose parents had died when he was a small child and the other with serious mental health issues, had been sent away to a state boarding school from where he would run away as he was desperate to see his one remaining parent and his younger brother, for whom he felt responsible. He got involved in criminal activity and was in and out of prison for several years. A local community-based organisation that works with offenders and their families helped him to sort his life out, and he left prison with some hope of turning it around. He applied for approximately 50 jobs and could not get an interview, not even for basic manual labour. He decided to become a self-employed builder and decorator. He bought a car and called to fix insurance for the vehicle. When he admitted to having a criminal record, he was quoted a cost of £12,000 a year. Of course that was completely out of his reach, and indeed it would be even for some of us. Sadly, that young man returned to prison. Aspiration needs hope, and without that, it is hard to see how we can change people’s outlook.

It is difficult for all former offenders to find work, and it is an issue that the Government urgently need to address, but research demonstrates that those applicants whose names appear to indicate a candidate of black or minority ethnic origin will have to submit more than twice as many applications for a job even to get shortlisted. The levels of prejudice and stigmatisation faced by Muslims are bad and getting worse. How can it be that we have reached a position where lawyers feel it necessary to advise their male Muslim clients to cut off their beards so that they do not look too much like extremists when they are facing trial? While for many of the Muslim offenders and former offenders that we met their faith was a source of strength, they were acutely aware of the stereotypes and stigma attached to being an offender and being a Muslim in prison. The current view of Islam perpetuated in sections of the media and elsewhere can shape the ways in which adherents are regarded and consequently treated. Training and professional development for those who engage with Muslim offenders is urgently needed, and this is an area where former service users can make a useful contribution to better understanding.

Drawing conclusions from the data around self-inflicted harm and death is challenging and complex. For one thing, information on faith is not uniformly collected across the criminal justice system, which makes comparisons difficult. We would also want to draw attention to the challenges of using the data on self-harm as proxy measures for vulnerability in the group on which we focused. The data appear to show that overall, black and minority ethnic prisoners—incidentally, they are not disaggregated in the data available—are less likely to take their own lives than their white counterparts. However, the data also show that those in the 18-24 age group are more likely to take their own lives than older prisoners in the same group, so we cannot say with confidence whether young BAME men are less or more likely to commit suicide than young white men of a similar age.

The disproportionately negative outcomes that BAME offenders experience in a range of areas will almost inevitably affect their well-being. The other point to note is that BAME covers an extremely diverse group and it is possible, although it is not able to be proven, that young men in some of these sub-categories, as it were, may be disguising outcomes for others. We simply do not know, and therefore we need the data to be broken down and cross-referenced within the system in order for us to fully understand who is vulnerable and what the risk factors are within this broad group.

During a constructive meeting with Andrew Selous, the Minister responsible for prisons, he expressed his desire to support the aims of our review and made several useful suggestions. Will the Minister take back to the MoJ this issue of data as it continues to cause unnecessary complications in our analysis? Another point is that it has been suggested that boys and men find different ways to self-harm than girls and women. Again, that is something that people are exploring through various pieces of research.

I want to say something about women and girls by referring to AGENDA, which is an alliance for women and girls at risk. It is concerned with the most vulnerable women in society—particularly but not exclusively, those who have survived domestic abuse, child sexual abuse and the mental health issues arising from such experiences. Many of these women are ending up in our prisons. Female prisoners account for a disproportionate amount of self-harm on the prison estate. In 2014, 26% of all self-harm incidents in prisons in England and Wales were attributed to women, despite them representing only 5% of the prison population. It is true that rates of self-harm have been falling among women prisoners, but as the previous levels were so high, this is not really a cause for celebration. The figures remain shocking and unacceptable.

Many of us would agree that an awful lot of women in prison should not be there. Sometimes they are arrested, or put in prison when other people have committed crimes against them, and they seem to be taking the blame. This was made clear to me by a number of women who shared their experience of domestic abuse. When they called the police because they were being attacked by their partners, the women got arrested while their partners were not necessarily arrested. This is not good enough. Some very vulnerable women are ending up in prison when it is obviously not the right place.

With regard to the voluntary sector, it is true that it has played an enormous and substantial role in developing and driving forward local intervention strategies and solutions to some of these issues. But, as noble Lords will be aware, the voluntary sector is in quite a perilous state. As it anticipates more cuts to services, and not quite reaping the rewards that it thought it might through the transforming rehabilitation agenda, we are in for quite a difficult time. There needs to be a sense that the Government are on top of this and have a strategy for dealing with it. If we do not support the voluntary sector we will be in a whole heap of trouble. As noble Lords have said, many women and young adults could be diverted from prison in the first place, thus saving the justice system significant costs and preventing so many lives being blighted.

Public Disorder: Restorative Justice

Baroness Young of Hornsey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord McNally]

No. The Marylebone Road building is a very fine building and will be a great credit to the system, but I presume that we will be redeveloping the Horseferry Road site to the benefit of the taxpayer.

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

My Lords, will the Minister inform the House about the extent to which restorative justice has been used in sentencing young people under the age of 18 as a result of the riots in August?

[Lord McNally]

I will have to write to the noble Baroness with the specific details but I know that it has been used much more in recent times, and with good reason. It is interesting that Resolution, the magazine of the restorative justice system, reported an ICM poll after the riots that said 88 per cent of victims thought that restorative justice should be used and 94 per cent said that offenders should be held responsible for the repair and harm caused to victims. Restorative justice, when it is effectively used both as a punishment and as a rehabilitation measure has been shown to be much more effective in securing non-reoffending than sending to secure accommodation. I will write to the noble Baroness with the facts that bear out that assertion.

Defamation Bill [HL]

Baroness Young of Hornsey Excerpts

Friday 9th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

My Lords, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, suggested that there were advantages in coming so late in the debate. There are advantages, but there are also some disadvantages, particularly in trying to find further superlatives to describe the very good maiden speeches made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, and the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough. All that I can do is reiterate what other noble Lords have said and say how much I look forward to their future contributions.

It is also true that many tributes have been paid to the noble Lord, Lord Lester. I will reiterate them, but I hope that it will not go to his head—I am sure that it will not. I should like to thank him for suggesting that I speak today because I would not otherwise have thought that this was something to which I could make a contribution. It has been quite gratifying that a sprinkling of non-lawyers have spoken, so I do not feel as intimidated as I might have done otherwise. It has also been gratifying to hear other Peers who are involved in the arts and the creative industries speak about the impact of the Bill. Recent examples have alluded to science, but the arts have always been in the forefront of contesting and trying to push the boundaries of the oppressive nature of some of the laws that are still on the books.

Like other noble Lords, I have been helped in what I am going to say by briefings from a range of organisations and individuals, many of which have already been mentioned, such as Mumsnet, Which?, JUSTICE, Liberty, English PEN and the Index on Censorship. However, I do not think that anyone else has referred to the National Campaign for the Arts. Just to clarify, it is the UK’s only independent campaigning organisation that represents all the arts, providing a voice for the arts world in all its diversity. Because of my own professional interest, I was particularly keen to hear its views, so I have drawn quite substantially on some of the comments it has made.

As I see it and as many other noble Lords have already said, the Bill attempts a difficult balancing act. On the one hand, there is the need to protect the right to freedom of speech and on the other there is the need to protect individuals from defamation. On one level that sounds simple, but of course it is not, otherwise we would not be debating it today. In relation to this Bill, many noble Lords have mentioned the recent case of Dr Simon Singh and the consequences of his critique of chiropractors and their claims about the ability of their practitioners to alleviate some distressing illnesses. If ever a case invoked the real meaning of what I understand is meant by the term “public interest”, this was it. I do not need to rehearse the case again because, as I say, it has already been referred to several times. Suffice it to say that exposing highly questionable health claims unsupported by rigorous scientific evidence is clearly in the public interest. However, this is sometimes used by press and media outlets as a defence on other slightly more spurious grounds.

For that matter, it can be quite a tricky area to define and to make clear to the general public what was actually meant. Although the print media have not always been successful in these cases, there have been a number of high-profile instances when such a defence has been habitually invoked by newspapers. I think particularly of the libel case involving the private life of Formula One boss Max Mosley as well as countless examples of the indiscretions of Premier League footballers. These instances have provoked public interest of an altogether different kind.

The Defamation Bill attempts to drags the libel laws into the digital age—again, this has been mentioned by several other noble Lords—although there are still concerns about where an organisation like Mumsnet stands as a site that hosts opinions and critiques from a very wide range of people over which the organisation exercises no form of editorial control. Will Mumsnet be held responsible for the content on its site? The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, referred to this, and I do not think that the position is as clear as might be thought. Indeed, Mumsnet has raised the issue because it does not feel that it is. I guess that this is covered by the clause that spells out the difference between a “facilitator” and a “primary publisher”. That distinction could be crucial and I would welcome some clarity on which category Mumsnet and other similar organisations might fall into.

In general, the National Campaign for the Arts welcomes the Bill inasmuch as it represents a continuing commitment to protecting freedom of speech. It believes, as I do, that it could go some way to ensure the continued protection of these freedoms. The introduction of a single publication rule overturned the 1849 case of Duke of Brunswick v Harmer. I must say that I was quite pleased with myself for being able to mention a bit of case law, but it has been deconstructed far more ably by my noble friend Lord Pannick. That case brought the ruling that refers to the number of publications. Here, again, the Bill seeks to take account of our contemporary world where many different forms of communication and distribution mean that there are often, effectively, numerous new publications over time and across boundaries. If the Bill, or something like it, becomes law, reports of academic conferences will be protected and claimants will no longer be able to rely on that age-old case to bring proceedings when stories are downloaded from web archives many years after first publication.

The Bill also extends absolute privilege to cover fair and accurate reports of proceedings in Parliament; anything published by or on the authority of Parliament; and a fair and accurate copy of, extract from or summary of anything published by or on the authority of Parliament. Again, that is welcome.

The change from the defence of “fair comment” to a defence of “honest opinion” will be welcomed by many people, and particularly by critics and reviewers of art, books, theatre and other art forms, as well as by restaurant and food critics, who increasingly come under pressure not to make adverse criticisms of what they have sampled for fear of being prosecuted. The four conditions required for a defence of “honest opinion” seem reasonable, although I am sure that in the future there will be many struggles over the meaning of the term should it become law.

The NCA is particularly concerned about the need to establish serious damage to reputation. Clause 11 potentially makes proceedings more difficult for the claimant when it stipulates that a body corporate must show that the publication,

“has caused, or is likely to cause, substantial financial loss”.

It is noteworthy that, in contrast to the position in other jurisdictions, no exception is made for small corporations or non-trading corporations. This could have an adverse impact on arts and third-sector organisations, for some of which reputational damage is considered to be a substantial risk on a par with financial loss. It could be argued that the reputation of such bodies is being treated as nothing more than a financial matter when in fact it is a considerable part of their cultural and social capital. This could be problematic for charitable bodies and NGOs, and I would be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Lester, would clarify that point.

Another point that might affect smaller, non-media organisations is that the Bill explicitly states that the extent to which the media have complied with codes of conduct, such as that of the Press Complaints Commission, is one of the factors that the court should consider for a responsible publication defence. However, bloggers and NGOs—who are also involved in investigative reporting—do not have the same editorial codes of conduct, or sometimes even any at all. This has prompted a question about the intended target of the Bill. In the absence of codes of conduct, further clarity around what constitutes a responsible publication defence is advisable for the benefit of bloggers and NGOs. There is a need to clarify these points in order to alleviate concerns about the practical implications of some of the changes that have been mooted, particularly for organisations that do not fall into obvious categories such as the mainstream media and so on.

I support some of the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, who said that it was essential to distinguish between journalists—whether citizen journalists or otherwise—who act with integrity and honesty in their investigations, comments and criticisms, and those who are simply set on sensationalising and traumatising vulnerable ordinary citizens in order to sell more products. In this respect, I have some sympathy with the slightly contrary position that has been adopted.

Like many others, I see the Bill as a welcome step towards legislation that is much more fit for purpose than the legislation that it is intended to amend or supersede. Like the NCA, I welcome the introduction of the Bill as it stands, with some of these interventions and comments taken on board. It is a timely intervention that goes a considerable way towards enabling legitimate and honest comment and opinion.