Cutting Crime (Justice Reinvestment)

Debate between Anne Main and Elfyn Llwyd

Thursday 21st October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

We are sorry for the technical interruption. We are not allowed to add extra time, but Mr Alan Beith has kindly accepted a reduction in his response time. I shall now call the Front-Bench spokesmen at approximately 4.57 pm.

[Mr Llwyd]

According to a Ministry of Justice letter leaked last Friday, 14,000 MOJ jobs will be lost, 11,000 of them from the front line. If we are to believe the letter, 60% of those reductions must be made within the next two years. The cost of the redundancy drive will reportedly reach £230 million. Although 85% of that reduction is estimated to be voluntary, it will no doubt be as voluntary as walking the plank.

Meanwhile, 50% of the redundancies are expected to be achieved through natural wastage. Where exactly do we expect those workers to go? The National Offender Management Service will lose 9,940 jobs: 760 from its headquarters and the rest, presumably, from the prison and probation services. Delivery of restorative justice seems like pie in the sky when we consider the bleak road ahead. By March 2014, the justice budget will be cut by 23%, which seems to undermine once again the opportunity for justice reinvestment.

We hear that in the face of those cuts, the Ministry of Justice also wants to cut prison places. The Ministry’s aim is to reduce receptions into custody by 18,000 a year by 2014—indeed, the package of cuts is predicated on a reduction in the number of prisoners—but how can that be achieved? I am afraid that it is more likely that the cuts will lead to an increase in the number of prisoners, especially when slashes in staff numbers are combined with cuts to courts, prosecutors and clerks. The same number of prisoners will be held on remand, but probably for longer.

The premise of the cuts is therefore flawed, and the cuts may well undermine the worthy and proper notion of justice reinvestment. Equally, there are logistical problems with the time scale, as the cuts are expected to come into play by 2014. I spoke yesterday to Mr Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of the National Association of Probation Officers; I see a wry smile on the Minister’s face. I have no doubt that the Ministry of Justice expects that the new infrastructure will be put in place by 2014, but NAPO’s opinion is that it will take at least five years to be anywhere near ready. However, that is a matter of debate. The time scale for the cuts is not practicable and risks undermining and damaging our justice system.

We also hear that a large proportion of rehabilitation work will be outsourced to voluntary and private organisations on the basis of payment by results. Where exactly are those volunteers meant to come from? Magistrates courts committees have complained that court orders cannot be made out to private companies. I think that that is true. What would happen in the event of conflicts of interest? On Tuesday, I met Mr John Thornhill and other representatives of the Magistrates Association. If short-term prison sentences are to be avoided, they are concerned that personnel will not be found to oversee defendants.

Although I agree that the Lord Chancellor is right to attempt to avoid the overuse of short prison sentences, that cannot be done without a substantial direct investment in the probation service. When I first qualified as a lawyer in the early 1970s, the local town of Dolgellau had three probation officers. We now have one for half the county. Need I say more? Furthermore, as I said to the Lord Chancellor in a recent sitting of the Justice Committee, the private concerns that receive payment by results will inevitably be profit-driven. They will not want the awkward recidivist cases, that is for sure. That is where I believe probation officers’ skills should come into play.

I understand that many departmental settlements were finalised only a few hours before the announcement of the spending review yesterday. How can we discuss justice reinvestment properly, even in theory, when community reinvestment is being cut? We are expected to set up a private system that we do not agree with, which will take years, while cutting back on probation staff. I am afraid that those drastic cuts have not been properly thought through. As was said earlier, this might be an opportunity missed.

In its report, the Justice Committee presented the case for various essential reforms, which now seem further away than ever. The report tasked the Government with committing to a significant reduction in the prison population by 2015. That is the reduction on which the cuts are predicated, yet ironically, the cuts render such a reduction less practicable. Following on from the Corston report in 2007, the Committee report also tasked the Government with implementing Baroness Corston’s recommendations on reducing the number of female prisoners. A reduction in the number of prisoners whose crimes were driven by mental illness is also overdue. The CSR mentioned those goals, notably in pledging to introduce proposals to invest in mental health liaison services at police stations and courts in order to intervene at an early stage and divert those suffering from a mental illness into treatment. That is welcome, but will the Minister expand on it? Will related pledges to target the causes of female incarceration be honoured?

The Committee report warned that spending more on rehabilitation will not work while the prison estate is overcrowded. How timely that warning now seems. We cannot expect the criminal justice system simply to work out its problems by itself. Time and investment are needed to reform how the sector functions. As I have said, we cannot merely expect the number of prisoners to decrease as if by magic while cutting staff numbers across the piece.

The report noted that a coherent strategy must be developed by the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice and other Departments to target the allocation of resources and reduce crime. I agree, of course. Targeting the causes of crime is essential to reducing the number of people in prison. We must build on and improve the community sentencing structures already in place and seek the advice of probation staff who know the area thoroughly and professionally.

For too long, probation officers have been undermined and marginalised in the NOMS set-up. Instead of making cuts and outsourcing to voluntary organisations, we should focus on improving the probation service that we know and respect by reducing the paperwork that probation officers must do and increasing the time that they spend with offenders. Currently, probation officers spend an average of eight minutes a week speaking to people under their orders. That is ridiculous. What can be done in eight minutes a week? I have no idea.

I have a suggestion. It might be radical, but I have seen it in practice. A few weeks ago, I went to Buffalo, New York, which has a veterans court. Veterans who have offended are referred to the court and come under the watchful eye of Judge Russell. Typically, they have committed high-grade misdemeanours or low-grade felonies and are facing perhaps 18 months in prison. They are given the opportunity to attend the veterans court. If they take it, they are assigned a probation officer and, crucially, an ex-service mentor. For 18 months or less—it is sometimes 15 months or in very rare cases 12 months—they are expected to go to court every three weeks to explain how they are getting on. They are drug tested every fortnight and if they are clean and sober—to use the words they use in the States—at the completion of the course, they graduate. They are given a glowing character reference and any reference to the offences is scrapped. If they are not already in work, they are given work, and they are treated with respect for how they have handled themselves during those months.

I was absolutely struck by the whole thing. I went to the States thinking, as a lawyer, that everyone should be equal before the law and questioning why veterans should have a different course of action—although I have been campaigning for them and will continue to do so for those veterans who unfortunately are in prison, often for reasons beyond their control. The scheme is predicated on having a volunteer mentor who is an ex-serviceperson and a probation officer—or the American version of that—who can put in the necessary time to deal with the offender.

I have just mentioned the result of that scheme to hon. Members. May I tell them what the reoffending rate is? Courts at the federal level are looking at that district court because of its success. For the past three years, the reoffending rate has been 0%. If that is not something to consider, I do not know what is. I submit that the scheme could be adapted to what we are talking about today. It does not have to be a veterans court; it could be any other form of court. The scheme is labour intensive, but if we weigh up the savings to society, the taxpayer and everyone—and indeed to the individual who has his or her life turned around and is back in the mainstream—it is remarkable and worthy of study.