Prisons: Young People

Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome today’s debate and thank my noble friend Lord Harris for producing his excellent and ground-breaking report Changing Prisons, Saving Lives.

The issue of self-inflicted deaths in custody of 18 to 24 year-olds must be addressed, the rate of which increased in 2013 for this group, who make up 21% of the prison population. As the report states,

“all young adults in custody are potentially vulnerable”;

and it goes on to ask,

“why were so many of these young adults in custody in the first place?”.

The case studies are heart-rending to read. The statistics are damning. As of 31 December 2014, 101 people under 24 have died in our prisons since April 2007. As the report makes clear,

“some radical changes are needed if we are to bring about a reduction in the number of deaths of young people in our prisons”.

The powerful recommendations that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, sets out must be seen in the context expressed by his review that young adults in custody, and indeed those under 18 who share similar characteristics, are young, vulnerable and still developing individuals who need to be nurtured and supported safely to navigate through the complexities of their lives into purposeful, mature adulthood.

But why are so many young people sent to prison? There must be better ways to divert them earlier in their lives. I very much hope that the liaison and diversion services are fully rolled out across England by 2017. I ask the Minister to reassure me on this point. These services identify those with mental health problems, learning disabilities, autism, substance misuse problems and other vulnerabilities as early as possible as they come into contact with youth and criminal justice services and can lead to more community sentences and fewer custodial ones.

If fewer young people were sent to prison, there would be more resources devoted to keeping those unavoidably detained more secure and safe and enabling them to receive appropriate therapeutic or rehabilitative interventions. As the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has said:

“Some of the young people had had chaotic lives and complex histories. Some had been subject to child abuse, been exposed to violence or suffered high levels of bereavement. Others had been in foster and residential care”.

The review states:

“Each of those deaths represents a failure by the State to protect the young people concerned”.

It points out that lessons have not been learned and not enough has been done to bring about substantive change and calls on the Government to make a number of key policy changes to help these vulnerable young people to become productive citizens, desist from crime and be kept safe while in custody. I welcome its call for,

“an inherent shift in the philosophy of prison”.

My noble friend Lord Harris has already set out the key recommendations and I support the call for the new custody and rehabilitation officer who would replace the personal officer and be a specialist, suitably trained professional, with a small enough case load so that enough time can be given to each vulnerable adult. It is especially important that one of the roles of the CARO should be to ensure that better links are maintained with the families of young adults, ensuring that they are involved in the management of vulnerability.

The review also recommends that young adults should be,

“able to spend a reasonable part of the day (8 hours or more) outside their cells, engaged in purposeful activity of a varied nature”,

and that never again should access to books be denied as a punishment or used as a “perk and privilege”. The review is concerned that the IEP—incentives and earned privileges—scheme does not take into account the impact of what may seem like small privileges on mental well-being in the austere prison environment, and that fatal incidents occurred disproportionately among prisoners on the lowest level of privileges, which reduced protective factors such as association, activities and access to television. In evidence, the Criminal Justice Alliance said that,

“restricting books, television and artistic materials also limits the activities of prisoners who face being locked up for longer due to staff shortages. All of these factors may in the future be shown to increase prisoner vulnerability and a propensity to self-harm”.

Imprisonment should be the last option, not the first. Another shocking statistic is that between 1978 and March 2014, 26% of all the deaths of young adults aged 18 to 24 were within the first week of their arrival in prison; 46% died within the first month and 86% died within the first six months. The National Offender Management Service—NOMS—must urgently identify and keep a record of the number of certified “safer cells” both in use and available for use across the prison estate. Tragically, all the children and 78 of the 83 young adults whom the review looked at died as a result of hanging through utilisation of a ligature point, such as a window, light fitting or upturned bed, within their cells. Proper use of safer cells must be an immediate and achievable priority.

Other noble Lords will, I am sure, highlight the plight of certain groups within the young adults in custody—women, BAMEs and those leaving care, all of whom have particular vulnerabilities that I would like to raise but time does not permit me to. I will just point out that 27% of the adult prison population are care leavers, despite the fact that less than 1% of under-18s enter local authority care annually.

Finally, I ask the Minister to look at the findings of a report published last week by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mindfulness. Mindful Nation points out that:

“Nearly half the prison population have depression or anxiety … suicide rates are considerably higher than in the general population”,

and that in the year after release prisoners who have these conditions are more likely to be reconvicted. Given the evidence of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy—MBCT—preventing recurrent depression, it could be very useful for helping those in prison, especially the young adults this debate is concerned about.

It would be far better for young people to be diverted away from imprisonment at a much earlier stage, but if this cannot always be the case, greater efforts must be made by prisons and the politicians who dictate policies to ensure that the young are kept safe and are successfully rehabilitated.