Prisons: Violence

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

There is a prison service instruction in relation to the care and management of transsexual offenders, which is being reviewed. People with particular experience of these issues are involved in the review, including Peter Dawson of the Prison Reform Trust and Jay Stewart of Gendered Intelligence respectively. We are concerned of course to tackle this very delicate issue, so that those who are on the journey, very often to change gender, are properly looked after and their considerations taken into account, so that prison can be adapted in a way that most suits their requirements.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, in the light of the welcome announcement last autumn that a number of the old, unsuitable prisons were going to be replaced with purpose-built ones, will the Minister assure the House that the specifications for those new-builds will take very careful account of mental health issues, consulting with the charities that are dealing with this particular area and producing excellent educational, medical and spiritual facilities, so that we can minimise the level of mental health problems and maximise rehabilitation?

[Lord Faulks]

The right reverend Prelate makes an important point. He will have been reassured by what the Prime Minister said in his speech on 8 February—namely, that the design of these new prisons should be particularly directed towards helping mental health treatment. If necessary, that should allow individual governors to have appropriate control, with co-commissioning with NHS England to ensure that the significant numbers of inmates in prisons with mental health problems are adequately treated.

Criminal Justice System: Autism

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness for this debate. As has already been said, Faruk Ali comes from Luton, a town in my own diocese. Quite a number of people have raised that case with me and have been concerned about what happened, so I am glad to be able to involve myself in this debate. However, I will leave it to other noble Lords to comment on the specifics of the debate—I, too, have read the media on this—as clearly it raises a number of wider problems. At an early stage I pay tribute to all those people, both professional and volunteers, who work in the statutory services and in the charitable sector, who are doing a very good job at huge personal cost and with great expertise. We need to acknowledge what they are doing and affirm it before looking at some of the problems.

Between 500 and 800 people have been victims of disability hate crime in each of the last five years. Some of those will almost definitely have been people with ASD, although it is widely accepted, as has already been pointed out, that generally they are more likely to be victims than offenders. Indeed, one of the characteristics of ASD is that very often people give inordinate attention to obeying laws and rules, and find that the most comfortable context in which to operate.

Over the years I have known a number of people with ASD, and one family in particular whose son had Asperger’s syndrome. They are a deeply supportive family; I got to know the lad when he was in his 20s. On first meeting you would have no idea that he had been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, but when you got to know him you realised some of the problems it was creating. He found it difficult to relate to other people; being a young man in his 20s, he was very keen to make friends with the opposite sex, but he simply did not know how to relate to girls. He would often say things that could be taken as totally inappropriate and easily misunderstood. He was very distressed by that, but simply did not have the ability to know how to relate in any other way.

In a more extreme way, on occasion he would lose his temper, which meant that, being a full grown man, he could appear frightening. I was a neighbour of his family, and sometimes he would run out of his house in a fury and knock on my front door. I learnt over the years how to simply give him a place to sit down and calm him down. In fact he was fine, but just needed some help at that point. I am telling your Lordships this account simply to illustrate that this is an immensely complex issue, particularly for people who are meeting someone, perhaps in extreme circumstances, for the first time. It is not easy for police or other health professionals always to recognise immediately who they are dealing with.

The National Autistic Society recommends that,

“the child or adult with ASD carries an identity card”,

as Faruk Ali was,

“stating their personal details, emergency contacts and an explanation of their condition”.

However, for someone with Asperger’s syndrome, who longs to integrate into society—and his family were trying to help him to do that; he had moved into a flat to live by himself—that can be quite humiliating, because it marks you out as different. That was precisely what he did not want to do.

I will raise three areas of concern. The first is on police training, which has already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. I know, because I have talked to people involved with training the police, that they are already expected to cover a huge amount of different areas of training—they do not sit around with nothing to do. Having said that, it is important that part of that training is on how to recognise when you may be dealing with someone with particular needs, especially ASD. The Prison Reform Trust recommends that:

“Legal professionals and practitioners who undertake criminal work, members of the judiciary and liaison and diversion staff should be required to participate in awareness training in mental health problems, learning disabilities and other learning, developmental and behavioural disorders such as autism, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, communication difficulties and dyslexia”.

Does the Minister agree that that should equally apply to the police?

Secondly, we need to ensure that there are sufficient police interview advisers. Each police service has some of those, but again it is crucial that there are sufficient resources and that they are trained.

Thirdly, I will say a word about registered intermediaries. At the other end of the criminal justice system, we also need to ensure that people with ASD are given the right support. Back in 2012 the Prison Reform Trust published Fair Access to Justice?, which recommended that support should be made available for vulnerable defendants by registered intermediaries on the same basis as witnesses:

“The Advocacy Training Council … recognises that the handling and questioning of vulnerable people in court, in order to achieve best evidence, is a specialist skill; however, there is a lack of clarity concerning the provision and availability of intermediaries for defendants. While intermediaries appointed to support vulnerable witnesses are registered and subject to a stringent selection, training and accreditation process, and quality assurance, regulation and monitoring procedures, intermediaries for defendants are neither registered nor regulated. The practice of ‘registered’ and ‘non-registered’ intermediaries—potentially in the same trial and paid different fees—is anomalous. Intermediaries should be introduced into the statutory provision of special measures for vulnerable defendants”.

Finally, does the Minister agree that this recommendation is not only important but needs to be implemented?

Female Genital Mutilation

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Rendell, for highlighting this important area and giving us yet another opportunity to air some of these complex but vitally important matters. I pay tribute to her determination in trying to keep this issue in the public domain. I also thank Her Majesty’s Government for the splendid, recently published action plan. It is encouraging that many people want to make an impact on this problem, across all the parties. That is the secret. We need to get cross-party support and expand it much more widely.

Yesterday marked the end of a 16-day campaign, the origins of which lie with the Women’s Global Leadership Institute. The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence campaign began on 25 November—the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women—and ended yesterday, 10 December, which was Human Rights Day. A specific part of this campaign is to target the ending of FGM.

Within my own sphere of operation within the Anglican Communion, the Mothers’ Union, which has more than 4 million members worldwide, has participated in this campaign. Indeed, in my own diocese of St Albans we have recently had a debate on gender-based violence, including the horror of FGM. In response to that, we have committed ourselves as a diocese to campaign on this issue and to try to raise it across all sorts of different bodies and groups. As a direct result of that and other initiatives, in the last few days I have tabled a number of Questions to Her Majesty’s Government on the subject of FGM.

This debate is specifically about encouraging prosecutions under the 2003 Act—something which, as we have already heard, has not so far been accomplished, although I understand that that may change shortly. I also note that under the Serious Crime Bill, which is now having its Second Reading in the other place, we have been beefing up the legislation in several areas relating to this. For example, the scope for prosecuting someone for assisting an offence of FGM overseas is being extended to all residents of the UK, not just permanent residents. There will be a guarantee of lifelong anonymity for anyone who is alleged to have been the victim of FGM, which is more likely to make victims feel willing to come forward. There will be a new offence of failing to protect a girl from risk of FGM on the part of someone with parental responsibility for her, and female genital mutilation protection orders will be introduced. Those are all things which I warmly welcome. It is intended that they will help to prevent vacation cutting, while allowing the child to stay with her family and not be taken into care.

I know that a number of your Lordships will share my regret that one amendment was lost earlier in the passage of that legislation. It sought to add to FGM protection orders the words:

“For the purpose of determining whether an operation is necessary for the mental health of a girl or woman, it is immaterial whether she or any other person believes that the operation is required as a matter of custom or ritual”.

I did not take part in the debate at that stage but I understand that the amendment was rejected because some people believe that it is already covered in the 2003 Act. However, in my mind it highlights that, while we are busy trying to pass more legislation, somehow we are not getting convictions under the existing legislation. We have already heard that there have been a number of prosecutions in France, and I think that just last month there was a successful prosecution in Uganda. I found myself wondering whether what we need is not more legislation but to work out where the blocks are. In particular, for example, do we need to get people from the CPS to go to France to discover what the problems have been in working through this? Are there other blockages? If Uganda is achieving prosecution, surely it cannot be beyond our wit to do the same. If this is going on, it is clearly established, because the evidence is there in some cases. I hope that we can take a close look at why we do not seem to make more progress.

However, I want to underline that, as well as hoping to get prosecutions, we need to work really hard on changing culture. Law is a blunt instrument. We have loads of laws on drugs and substance abuse and we try to enforce them, but, in that and other areas, we need to keep trying to get behind the issue which is causing the problem in the first place. We need to look at how we can help those very often traditional societies. I hear the point being made by my noble friends about sending out signals, but in some of these communities very few people are able to speak English, some of them do not listen to any radio stations that we listen to, and some of them are not able to read what we would call a usual English newspaper. The question is whether some of these signals are being heard. I spent some years working in Walsall in the West Midlands in an area with a large number of people of other cultures. In many ways, they were quite separate from what we accepted as the norm. As well as making a push on convictions, which will send out a strong signal, I hope that we can find ways of engaging much more with the leaders of these communities.

It is very often, I am told—I have no direct experience of this—the older women in the communities who push for this as the norm; it is not just men who see this as an issue. In particular, we need community leaders who are willing to say publicly that they not only do not agree with it, but that they would be willing to marry someone who has not had FGM. There have been one or two such statements and these will dig right into the culture and help us move forward. So, as well as making a push on the legal opportunities, the prosecutions, I hope that we will not lose sight of some very useful material in the national action plan about dealing with cultural issues at the same time.

Public Protection Sentences

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

The Answer I gave to the first Question was that the Secretary of State has committed the additional funding necessary to remove the current backlog for this programme. The noble Lord’s interpretation of the judgment of Mr Justice Dingemans, which he has in front of him, is one which he might arrive at. The judge decided that the Secretary of State should have provided these courses. It has to be said that all those individuals had already been on a core offending course. The noble Lord will have read the history of these offenders and will realise that the Parole Board would have been extremely concerned before releasing any of them.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that since the abolition of IPP sentences nearly three years ago Her Majesty’s Government have a particular responsibility to these prisoners, especially when their tariff is now well past, in order to reduce the risk of reoffending? Can Her Majesty’s Government assure us that there are sufficient specialist resources for prisoners who are not necessarily able to go on some of the courses because of particular needs, such as learning difficulties or perhaps because they have English as a second language? Will these people be given the help that they need so that they can be released and returned to society to make a contribution for the general good?

[Lord Faulks]

We are aware of our obligation. NOMS has invested a considerable amount in a number of interventions. We are doing our best to provide a variety of courses in order to ensure that they have the opportunity of showing that they are ready for release.