Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Baroness Linklater of Butterstone Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating and important debate and I am honoured to be part of it. This is an enormous Bill, not only in its size but also its scope and aspirations. Of particular interest to me are the relative roles of prison and community sentencing in the future and how this will be managed. I agree with everything that my noble friend Lord Dholakia has said on specific aspects of sentencing policy and so will not repeat those arguments. I shall concentrate on Part 3.

The Lord Chancellor came into office to find our criminal justice system in a mess. There are soaring costs. The NOMS resource budget alone for 2011-12 is £3.679 billion—I thought they might have got the “b”s and “m”s muddled up, but apparently not; prison numbers are soaring and are currently around 85,000; and reoffending rates are soaring. Of those serving short sentences of a year or less, nearly two thirds will reoffend. Where children are concerned, the figure for reoffending rises to more than 71 per cent. This is the headline indicator of the failure to deal effectively with offenders in ways which help them to stop committing crimes. The whole country's needs, particularly those of victims, are not being met. The challenge is to cut costs and to try to make the system work better.

The Lord Chancellor's initial response in the Green Paper, Breaking the Cycle, recognised that short custodial sentences do not work, and he proposed instead the development of effective, tougher, targeted community penalties, which are much more successful at reducing reoffending, thus making society a safer place. He proposed making prisons work better by reducing the impossible overcrowding created by those serving short terms and allowing them to do what they do best, which is to deal with the violent, dangerous, prolific offenders, who are serving long sentences, from whom we need to be protected. He talked about a rehabilitation revolution and presented a coherent programme of legislative reform, which was very welcome and made many of us cheer.

Since then, there has been a move back from the clear, constructive focus on prevention, rehabilitation and the reduction of reoffending to giving punishment a more central focus. Hence the change to the last part of the name of this Bill from “the Prevention of Reoffending” to “the Punishment of Offenders” after it was first published and the Bill had to be reissued. I regret this because it injected an unhelpful, retributive and negative tone. From my earliest days of working in prisons, I have been told that not only was imprisonment the sanction of very last resort and for as short a time as possible, but that those who were sent to prison went as a punishment, not for punishment.

Despite this, I believe that the Bill could usher in a shift of focus, or emphasis, so that much of what is being proposed is constructive and could succeed in the core aim of reducing the number of short-term prison sentences, and thus reoffending, save money and protect the public. However, that will depend crucially on the work that will have to be done with sentencers in both magistrates’ courts and Crown Courts to generate understanding and, more importantly, confidence in the proposed community sentences and the quality and availability of these new tough sentences in the community. The decision on whether to use these alternatives remains with the sentencers. However, there is nothing in the Bill about the nature, range or expectations of the community sentences, which are to be alternatives to short sentences and on which the reduction of reoffending is predicated.

At a meeting with the Minister, Crispin Blunt, he was emphatic that there is no government money for this provision, but rather an expectation that payment by results will provide the answer. My noble friend Lord McNally did indeed refer to that in his opening remarks, but I have yet to find any detail in the Bill. Perhaps this is because this is an approach which is still only being trialled at the moment and that the success or otherwise is as yet unknown and unproved. The result will take at least two years to demonstrate, so the country will have to wait several years. This means we are indeed putting on hold the kind of revolution we hope to see. There is one much-heralded project at Peterborough prison, run by the prison, the private sector and voluntary sector partners. However, it has yet to demonstrate any definite outcomes, and is also based in the prison and focuses on finding prisoners jobs. I understand that at least 14 other prisons have plans of some kind in place. Mostly, however, the work—if it is to work—must be done in the community, on release, where the capacity to keep a job and sustain it will be the critical result.

I have the honour to be the patron of an excellent medium-sized, voluntary sector organisation called SOVA, which is also attempting to make such a PBR scheme work. It is very well placed to do so in terms of its knowledge and experience of working with offenders in the community. The problem is that for the first two years at least there is no return on its investment, which, as an organisation, is extremely expensive, because the payment only comes after two years, based on the result of reduced reoffending; this is of course a major gamble. There are in fact only a few agencies in the voluntary sector able to afford such up-front commitment. The voluntary sector has been the bedrock of community-based work with offenders and consists mainly of SOVA-sized organisations which will struggle and have to take on huge risks to deliver results. The field is left mainly to the few large voluntary organisations or the private sector who can afford to become players if and when they choose. These are the ones who have come into the criminal justice world through providing STCs—our child prisons—YOIs, some adult prisons, and escort services such as Serco or G4S. Meanwhile, the Probation Service, which provides the basic, statutory work with offenders in the community, is itself facing cuts and is very limited in its ability to participate—although I understand that there is a project on which it is working with NOMs.

How is it that on this very important and key element of policy, on which the reduction of the prison population is predicated, and which we all want to succeed, there so little explanation of how it will work, be managed, structured, co-ordinated, staffed, or delivered? I have searched the Bill without success. Perhaps the Minister can help me.

I welcome the Bill's aspirations in Part 3 as a positive first step in the approach to reforming our sentencing system and making it more fit for purpose, particularly in relation to community penalties including PBR, and the reduction of short-term prison sentences. Much will hinge on the nature and effectiveness of how these penalties are devised, how they command confidence—regarding sentences in particular—and show themselves to be truly effective. I sincerely hope that these aspirations will be realised.