Offender Management and Treatment

Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames Excerpts

Thursday 3rd October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a serious but, in many ways, profoundly depressing debate—secured and introduced so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, whom so many of us have thanked not only for this debate and his contribution to it but for his consistent campaigning on these issues over many years.

This year’s reports of the Chief Inspectors of Prisons and Probation are as depressing as any. Peter Clarke reports on prisons:

“Far too many of our jails have been plagued by drugs, violence, appalling living conditions and a lack of access to meaningful rehabilitative activity”.


On self-harm, he reports:

“Overall, levels of self‑harm were disturbingly high and self-inflicted deaths tragically increased by nearly one-fifth on the previous year”.


On prison conditions, he reports:

“As we have said in the past on many occasions, broken windows, unscreened lavatories … vermin and filth should not feature in 21st century jails”.


On rehabilitation, he reports:

“In only a third of the adult male prisons that we inspected was purposeful activity, which includes … education, work and training, judged to be good or reasonably good”.


Discouragingly, he also reported a poor response to his recommendations, with the level of those achieved falling below those not achieved for each of the last three years.

In her annual report on the probation service in March, Dame Glenys Stacey described the provision of probation by the community rehabilitation companies as “sub-standard, and … demonstrably poor”. She described a,

“deplorable diminution of the probation profession and a widespread move away from good probation practice”.

She said the model was “irredeemably flawed”. As pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, the model has been largely abandoned, but without an effective substitute in place.

The first challenge is to cut prison numbers. As is well known, we imprison more of our population than any other country in western Europe, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and just reinforced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf. We also have very high reoffending rates following prison sentences. That is particularly true of short sentences. The reoffending rate for sentences of 12 months or less has climbed to 64%.

On IPP sentences, we fully support the call of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood—and before him we remember Lord Lloyd of Berwick—to end the continuing injustice to IPP prisoners who have served well beyond their tariffs and to reverse the burden of proof that they currently have to discharge to secure their release.

We have opposed proposals, now enacted, for mandatory custodial sentences for the possession of knives and corrosive substances. Unlike the Government, we trust the judges, so judges must have discretion in sentencing, particularly for young people. We cannot cut prison numbers without putting an end to sentence inflation, legislative or otherwise, which costs large sums of money, as my noble friend Lord Beith and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, have said. On all the evidence, sentence inflation gives a nil return in reducing reoffending.

We were achieving some cut-through in this area before Mr Johnson’s election as Prime Minister. The Government were starting to listen to the evidence on prison numbers as well as on rehabilitation, prison conditions and the failure of the probation services. But back then we had David Lidington and then David Gauke as Justice Secretary and Rory Stewart as Prisons Minister, and we know what happened to them.

This Prime Minister says he will build more prisons and lock more people up and for longer, pressing for longer sentences and cutting early release, as the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, described and, rightly, decried. The Prime Minister’s response is a populist one for his party conference and the Daily Mail but it completely ignores the evidence. His plans would increase crime, not reduce it.

We are rightly ashamed of the degrading conditions of our prisons, well described by the noble Lord, Lord Judd: overcrowded and still understaffed, pervaded by extreme violence and widespread drug abuse, with inadequate care for mental health and drug addiction issues and limited training and purposeful activity. Prisoners, including women and young offenders, spend far too long locked in their cells—often as much as 22 hours a day, as the noble Baroness, Lady Masham, mentioned—with no regard for their well-being. It is a system where prisoners are discharged with £46, often on a Friday and often miles from home with no accommodation, services or source of help, and a system where the absurd denial of access to any form of IT prevents them applying for universal credit before release and pursuing training courses or seeking housing or employment online. In our community sentences, as Dame Glenys pointed out, the Government have negligently allowed probation services to collapse, with CRCs’ contracts terminated early but with no realistic plan to overhaul an underresourced and dysfunctional system, as my noble friend Lord Beith said.

My noble friend Lord German, who sadly cannot be here, and I, ably assisted by many, including my noble friend Lady Burt, after taking extensive evidence, including from some who have spoken today, have produced a paper on rehabilitation called Turning Lives Around, which became party policy at our conference. On cutting prison numbers, we propose a presumption against sentences of 12 months or less, replacing them with effective and tough but sympathetic community sentences. I regret that I am unable to agree with the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, that indeterminate detention holds a solution. The solution lies in working community sentences that incorporate the rehabilitative help that he talked about.

More generally, we propose a co-ordinated approach to arranging for prison and probation, as well as all the other services that offenders need if they are to escape from a cycle of repeated criminal behaviour. These include health—particularly mental health, as discussed by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard—and welfare services; treatment for drug abuse and addiction; the provision of housing, training and employment; and involving the voluntary sector and private and public sector employers. My noble friend Lord Dholakia dwelled on the important contribution that the voluntary sector is keen to make but which has been underutilised to date.

Local co-ordinating bodies would be established, funded by the Ministry of Justice but administered locally, working from existing offices with small staffs, with a brief to consider the needs of each offender individually and commission all the services they need while in custody, in preparation for release, on release from custody and in the course of community sentences. The phrase “assertive outreach” used by the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, describes well what is needed. Our reforms would help people leaving custody who are currently at high risk of returning to prison.

We address the particular needs of women in the criminal justice system, which are often increased by past trauma, as pointed out by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester and the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, in line with the 2007 report of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, as recognised in the female offender strategy and discussed by the noble Baronesses, Lady Armstrong and Lady Healy, and my noble friend Lady Burt. We also address the needs of young offenders, seeking full implementation of the recommendations made in the 2016 review by Charlie Taylor, who gave us impressive evidence and now heads up the Youth Justice Board, following my noble friend Lord McNally, whose understanding, gleaned during his successful and important work to help young offenders, shone through his speech today.

We need a fresh approach to penal policy. We must shrink prison numbers and humanise our prisons. We must concentrate on providing all the services that offenders need to support them in their rehabilitation in a comprehensive and co-ordinated way during custodial sentences, on release from custody and throughout well-resourced and carefully implemented effective community sentences.