Criminal Justice System

Baroness Kennedy of Shaws Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, for initiating this debate. I had the great good fortune of being led by him in the Brighton bombing trial back in 1986, when he was the most glamorous of silks sweeping through the Old Bailey and I was a mere junior. I should emphasise immediately that age has not reduced his elegance or his glamour. I learnt much from him then. I learnt that the legal system has to remain stalwart and principled in the face of provocations, particularly terrorism but also other serious crime. I have continued to learn from him ever since, particularly through debates in this House.

The criminal justice system can never rest on its laurels. It must constantly review its workings to ensure that justice is done. What was right at one time is no longer right when society changes. Things that were once acceptable become recognised as unacceptable. Marital rape is a perfect example; the old law on homosexuality is another. Law must adjust to altered times and to different mores but, at the same time, it must not become susceptible to the whim of the day. Reform of the law has to be rooted in principles—the great principles that have made our legal system admired throughout the world.

Changing law in response to public clamour, newspaper campaigns or police demands is a folly unworthy of good government. However, there is always a pressure on politicians to do precisely that. Governments become sorely tempted to legislate after every catastrophe, every shooting, every child’s death and every terrorist atrocity. The political instinct is to reach for yet more legislation when anything goes wrong in an endeavour to show that something is being done and, of course, to win popular support. However, criminal justice should not be the subject of a Dutch auction—as we have seen in a way that is new—where, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, described, parties compete to see who is being tougher on crime.

We are living through a period of high anxiety, with people fearful about their jobs, their pensions, their security and their future. When there is a high degree of fear, people often become more punitive and more demanding of law and order. They say that they want tougher responses to crime and more imprisonment. Government can very easily read this as a blank cheque for repressive action, which I am afraid we have seen in recent years. Yet when we have more reflective discussion with the public about crime, it has always been my experience that people recognise that there is very little purpose in simply jailing a person who has a drug problem, a mother who has young children or a young person who really just needs a job. When you have a proper discussion with the public about crime, you see that they recognise that alternatives to prison are often a better way.

It was a source of great regret to me that we saw such a considerable erosion of liberty under successive Home Secretaries, law officers and Lord Chancellors. I was deeply depressed at the ratcheting-up of prison sentences and the doubling of prison numbers in the past 20 years, so it is with relief that I hear that there is to be a restoration of many of the eroded liberties and a review of short prison sentences.

I have been fortunate over the years to have been involved in different penal reform organisations, from the Howard League to Nacro. I have led inquiries; I have written articles in books on criminal justice; and I have made television and radio programmes on the subject. I am the patron of a great charity, Make Justice Work, led by a wonderful woman, Roma Hooper, which looks closely at alternatives to prison. It has become clear to me that forever increasing the prison population makes impossible the rehabilitation of those who really are in need of serious work, because of overcrowding. Prison governors will tell you that they cannot conduct those rehab programmes effectively because they cannot move prisoners to workshops. In other cases, they cannot make available the programmes in the first place, because the numbers make it impossible.

We ought to be addressing crime at the lower end of the scale, or crime—sometimes it may even be violent crime—where the offender is new to the courts and can be diverted. The alternatives to short-term sentences are particularly important when we are dealing with young people. As we know, most crime is committed by people between the ages of 14 and 25. Once you have lost them to the prison system, it is very hard to retrieve them.

The second group is of those who seem hardened but who, when something happens in their life that takes them to the cusp of change, with the right kind of support can resist the old pressures to offend. I refer to people who, for example, suddenly meet someone whom they want to marry and live with—or perhaps they have a child, or a job comes on offer. What they need is real help to make something of those opportunities.

The third category is women. It is important to recognise that 68 per cent of women in prison are there for non-violent offences. Half the women in prison have suffered domestic violence; one-third have been sexually abused. Most women in prison have a dependency of some kind or a mental illness. Half of all self-harming that takes place in prison is done by the women, wretched about their circumstances, yet they represent only 5 per cent of the prison population. The majority of women in prison are mothers and one-third of them are lone parents. It is important for us to realise that very few of those women are ever supported on the outside by men; only 9 per cent of the children of imprisoned mothers are cared for by fathers. Men often do not stay the course in the way that women do when their partner ends up in jail. Eighty-five per cent of mothers in prison are separated for the first time from their children and the trauma to children is immeasurable. Sixty-five per cent of mothers in prison are receiving their first custodial sentence. Just think of the impact on those children—on their mental health, their behaviour and their chances in education, and the anger that it creates in them to lose their caring parent. Think of the cost to them and then the cost to society.

I shall mention three alternatives to prison. One is the intensive alternative to custody order, which has been piloted in seven places around the country and aims to reduce offending. It is about having close monitoring of an offender, which brings better outcomes. That means that the offender manager—we used to call them the probation officer—must have really close contact and that all offenders must be involved in meaningful activity, such as study, training, apprenticeships or work. Offenders must have support to run their lives, which so many have had little help in doing, getting rhythms of work established to help them into good habits of getting up in the morning. Sometimes it is just a matter of acquiring an alarm clock. It is important to work with families so that they support the person who is trying to change their ways; without that, they are likely to fall back into old practices. There is victim awareness and there are programmes and workshops to introduce people to what their wrongdoing does to others. That often produces interesting accountability letters from offenders as well as voluntary restitution—wanting to give something back. It is about taking responsibility for offences that have just been committed but also ones from the past.

One problem is that alternatives to prison sometimes do not operate at weekends. The offices close on a Friday afternoon, but you need outreach officers available to contact at weekends, too, when people are most tempted. There should be a coming together of the multiple skills of the probation service with the police and people who can work on therapy for some of these offenders. In Greater Manchester, only four orders have been revoked out of 70 in the past two years. The subject of one of them, a man called John Hankey, has even written about how gaining the qualification and licence to become a fork-lift driver has changed his life. However, it is not always so easy, so we must really address some of those problems. I could mention other programmes, but all of them deserve our examination.

I want to deal with what has been said about the importance of looking at the views of victims. It is wrong to turn the system into an adversarial contest between offenders and victims. Rebalancing should not be an excuse for more inappropriate punishment. We should have the effects of crime on victims clearly within our sights, of course, but victims are better served by our seeking methods for turning people away from their offending behaviour.

I shall make three quick, radical proposals. First, we should look at the abolition of imprisonment for all minor offences. It is difficult to find a definition, but we could do that. We should make it clear to the courts that minor offences should not involve imprisonment. Secondly, we should have women’s courts. It has been recognised that most women coming before the courts have multiple social problems. If we could have a one-stop shop in major conurbations for women offending at the lower level so that their offending and social issues were addressed, we would divert many of them from crime. Thirdly, I suggest that we re-examine, and have a serious debate about, the issue of drugs. Much reoffending is due to people having addiction problems, which we should address as health rather than penal issues. These may be radical suggestions, but I hope that noble Lords consider them sensible.

I applaud any government effort to reduce prison populations. I therefore hope that any suggestions coming from the Government will have the support of my Benches, too.