Criminal Justice System

Baroness Hamwee Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, I too welcome the debate, the sharing of thoughts and a trail, perhaps for the future, by the Secretary of State for Justice. It is no surprise, given how much in tune it is with the thinking of my colleagues, that there have been such splendid speeches from these Benches, particularly of course by the two maiden speakers. Kenneth Clarke will not be surprised about being attacked by the press for his thoughts. I wrote down the Daily Mail this morning, but immediately one should say the Daily Telegraph, and the attack by Stephen Pollard. I do not know whether Mr Clarke was surprised to read of the attack not just on him, but on the Thatcher and Major Governments, which were described as a “penal liberal’s dream”. That is not an analysis that I could easily come to.

Imprisonment has a place, but one thing that I am both instinctively and, I hope, logically opposed to is building more and larger prisons for containment. It is obvious that crime prevention is desirable, and shortly we will have a debate on the funding of the police in which their role in prevention will be discussed. It is also obvious that a thoughtful approach does not mean going soft. I declare an interest as a past chair of Refuge, the domestic violence charity. It has talked to me about the need for education and early intervention through appropriate training as key to preventing domestic violence happening in the first place. It states that it knows that,

“rigorous arresting, charging and sentencing, in accordance with the crime, acts as an effective deterrent … and sends a strong public message”,

because domestic violence is of course a crime. The charity,

“has found that encouraging clients to write a Victim Impact Statement has in some cases resulted in more appropriate sentences”,

and urges the Government to,

“collate and evaluate data on the types of sentence”.

It goes on to say that the probation service does,

“not seem to have integrated this data to produce any meaningful outcome measures”.

I could have talked at greater length about the work of Refuge, but I am sure that there will be other occasions to do so.

I have no doubt that the need for savings was one of the prompts for the remarks of the Lord Chancellor and it is one of the prompts for the Government’s work. Not only does the cost of imprisonment exceed that of an Eton education, it provides an excellent education in all the wrong things. Reference has been made to the voluntary and private sectors which do such good work, and I was delighted to see that this has been acknowledged by Kenneth Clarke. He has said that they will be crucial to success and that the Government want to make far better use of their enthusiasm and expertise to get offenders away from the revolving door of crime and prison, which has already been mentioned.

I want to applaud the work of one of the organisations, conscious that it is almost invidious to single out just one, but I will do so. I refer to the St Giles Trust which,

“aims to break the cycle of re-offending. It creates safer communities by turning lives around and preventing the children of offenders becoming the next generation involved in the criminal justice system. It puts offenders at the centre of the solution and believes they have the power and will to change, given the right support”.

A recent piece of work by the charity, Through the Gates, was funded for one year by London Probation and offered intensive one-on-one support for people leaving prison to help them settle back into the community and stay away from crime. It worked with individuals returning to 14 London boroughs—that is almost half of the London boroughs—from prisons across the UK. During the 16 months it was running, it worked with more than 1,500 people, housed more than 1,000 and assisted many more with other issues such as sorting finances and accessing other services. The work of helping the difficult transition from custody to community was largely carried out by case workers—many of them trained—who were reformed ex-prisoners. In the crucial early days they helped, as I have said, with accommodation, finances, employment support— all factors which affect the likelihood of someone reoffending—training and education, access to support to deal with drugs and alcohol, meeting licence restrictions and reintegration into the community. Ex-offenders were credible to those leaving custody and were trusted by them.

Clearly this was of huge importance to the many individuals concerned, but its impact was far wider. Through the Gate was assessed by Pro Bono Economics, working with Frontier Economics. Pro Bono Economics encourages economists to work pro bono, as one would expect, in the charity sector, helping charities, for instance, to measure performance and results in a way which ensures that resources are allocated efficiently and to secure funding by demonstrating effectiveness. The CBI has estimated that crime committed by ex-prisoners costs the economy at least £11 billion a year. So the maths are that reducing the reoffending rate by 10 per cent could save more than £1 billion for the UK economy.

There is not time to go through the report in detail but, as well as describing the services rendered to reduce reoffending and assessing the reduction in the reoffending rates of Through the Gate clients—40 per cent lower—the report gives a rigorous analysis of value for money. I recommend it to my noble friend on the Front Bench. Meeting clients at the prison gates and, as it were, holding their hand through the first few days to ease the transition—literally sticking with them for the first 24 hours if necessary—not leaving anyone homeless or unsupported and keeping them away from old associates and negative influences should, as well as satisfying the bleeding hearts—which is by the by—also satisfy the hard heads.