Offender Rehabilitation Bill [HL]

Baroness Linklater of Butterstone Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

2: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Provision of services for voluntary rehabilitation of prisoners
The Secretary of State may make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the provision of services for the voluntary rehabilitation of prisoners serving sentences which are for terms of less than 12 months.”

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

My amendment is for a proposed new clause to the Bill. The Minister will be aware of the generally very warm welcome expressed for the Government’s move to include rehabilitative support for offenders in the community who have served short sentences. This group of prisoners has hitherto had no supervision. These sentences may range from a few days to less than 12 months, for which no support has been available. Support is desirable and very necessary, as this group of ex-offenders has, as the Minister said, the highest reoffending rates: rates that are greater than for almost any other group in the prison system.

The issue is how the support is best to be delivered. What is practical, desirable and most likely to succeed with this particular group of offenders is what matters. The typical profile of such people is that they have chaotic lives, often have drug, alcohol or mental health issues, have poor or virtually no education after the age of 14 and were probably jobless before coming into prison. Everything else being equal, they would probably have been better served with a community sentence, although I accept that is for another debate. They will not be a danger to society and are in need of basic support to help turn their lives around. Their prison experience will have done nothing to prepare them for a law-abiding life because it is not required to do so. Typically, these people will sleep their way through their sentence.

It is important that what is offered to them on release is relevant, proportionate and, above all, flexible if it is to succeed. It requires skill on the part of the mentor or deliverer of probation services, and flexibility is the key. If it is tailored to the individual needs of the ex-prisoner, it will have a chance of success. However, if there is an additional statutory fixed period of one year’s supervision as well as the licence period, it will be perceived as disproportionate and unfair, and the risk of breach and recall to custody becomes very real. It would be a terrible irony if a provision that is intended to turn people’s lives around were to produce a rise in the prison population, which is something we want to avoid and completely negates the power and potential that the supervisory period offers. An extreme example to prove—in the sense of “to demonstrate”—this rule could be that someone given a few days in custody for, say, a road traffic offence could then find himself with an additional statutory 12 months’ supervision in the community, which is way out of kilter with the nature of the offence. If he defaults and is recalled to prison for 14 days, that would be much longer than the original sentence.

Instead, the Government should follow the example of successful mentoring schemes that already exist around the country, such as the pilot in Peterborough that I have visited, where the scheme is voluntary and service providers can exercise their own discretion in the management of the offender. Custody is a very last resort. These mentoring schemes are delivering very promising results, and I hope that the Government will look closely at what they are doing because I believe they show the way forward, which is an improvement on the rigid year’s supervision currently proposed. Rigid rules of one year’s supervision might have a simple appeal, but what matters is what works, given the nature of the offences and the needs of the offenders, and here we have an example of what works. This means that we do not have to try to reinvent the wheel.

Desistence—a favourite word of criminologists, which just means stopping reoffending, which is the subject of a great deal of research, debate and everything else—will occur only if the individual wants to stop offending, and the risk of breach is always high with this group. Already, 6% are in prison for breach following the lengthening of licence periods. A voluntary relationship based on trust is what will succeed with this very low-level group rather than long, fixed periods of supervision, however well intentioned.

My second, probing, amendment relates to juvenile and young adult offenders and their post-release supervision. The Minister will be aware that there is real concern among the key agencies that work with this group of offenders, notably the Youth Justice Board, that those who are under 18 when they start a sentence set by the youth court should continue to be managed under the auspices of the YJB until they have completed their sentence. This means that the YOTs—youth offending teams—continue with the management of the young offenders rather than transferring them to different, adult supervision by the new probation providers.

Adolescence and the transition to adulthood is well known for being testing both for young people and those responsible for their management. We have all been through it, and I for one am grateful that I will never have to go through being a teenager again. Life can be particularly difficult for young people who are in trouble with the law, and it is not rocket science to understand that it requires people with particular skills and experience to deal with those issues. The YJB is the pre-eminent body to oversee their arrangements. Many noble Lords will remember the battle that we had to explain the YJB’s role exactly and to protect it from going on to the bonfire of the quangos, precisely because its work is so valuable and of such a high quality.

While the YJB is the pre-eminent body to oversee the arrangements, the youth offending teams are the professionals on the ground to manage them. I therefore seek assurance from the Minister that the YOTs will be able to continue working with these young offenders until they are 21 if necessary, thereby not breaking off the crucial work that is being done with them. Account has to be taken of different levels of maturity, and it is a well-established principle in our justice system that people sentenced for offences committed as juveniles should not be subject to the same expectations and demands as adult offenders. The evidence of the excellent work of the T2A—transition to adulthood—programmes has shown that a young adult’s developmental maturity is at least as important as chronological age and that variations might be directly related to offending and the ability to comply with statutory requirements such as community sentences or licence conditions. This is supported by work commissioned by the Barrow Cadbury Trust at Birmingham University.

Impressively, the Sentencing Council and the CPS have produced some guidelines on the relevance of maturity in sentencing young people, and this has recently been extended to adults. The best practice in the area has been developed by the CPS, the Sentencing Council, HM Inspectorate of Probation, the probation service, the Riots Communities and Victims Panel and the YJB. This is surely a very powerful background to the approach of working with young people in this position. It is important, therefore, that the Government clarify that the probation service’s responsibilities under the Crime and Disorder Act will indeed continue for the management of this group, who can rightly be regarded as high risk.

I am pressing these questions because there is concern that children who turn 18 while in custody may still be treated as adults in terms of the length and type of support on release. Hence my secondary amendments, which I hope I can include at this moment because they are relevant, to delete Clauses 4 and 6, which come a little later on in the list. I would welcome clarity on this from the Minister. It is not clear whether this group will indeed still be regarded as young people for the purposes of their management. If not, how will it work? Will any discretion exist as to who will continue the supervision? If so, who will make that decision? This is very important, as it is well known that the levels of support and supervision drop dramatically in the adult system, so transitional arrangements and communication between agencies will always be critical.

Ultimately, we all want the best appropriate management of this challenging group. I am sure that all of us share in this wholeheartedly. This means that if they are able to desist, which means taking personal responsibility, their offending will drop. I look forward to the Minister’s reply and beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord McNally]

That is one of the things that I want to think about. I hope that the two bodies concerned would make a practical decision about the needs of the individual, but as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, if that was not available, who would be the judge? Would that have to go back to court? I will think about that, and if there is a gap we will fill it.

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for his very thoughtful and detailed response. I am particularly grateful to hear him say, as I understand it, that there will be real flexibility based on the needs of the young people and on whether they can actually continue with the YJB, YOTs and others while they serve out their time, as it were. That is a very welcome thing to have heard.

However, I must also say that while the Minister talks about flexibility within it, the year’s supervision is a fixed time. I have heard him say it. To have the long arm of the law wound around you for a year is a very long time for a minor offence. I was arguing essentially for flexibility there, not rigidity.

I also thank the other noble Lords who contributed. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for asking my question again, which is a very important question to hear the answer to, and the noble Lords, Lord Ponsonby and Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for their very helpful remarks.

I will, of course, now think about everything that I have heard and everything that has been said before we come to Report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Woolf]

My Lords, this is an important amendment, apart from the fact that we have to consider whether the Title of the Bill needs amending. I strongly support the very wise words of the noble Lords, Lord Bradley and Lord Ramsbotham, in support of the amendment. One of the most important tasks of a court is giving explanations to offenders to make sure that those who are subject to the orders of the state understand the requirements that are placed on them. If that is the responsibility of a court and of judges, it must surely also be the responsibility of a supervisor under this Bill. I like to think that we have all had a stage in life when, until it could proved that we had done something wrong, we were innocent of having done so. If that is right, “rehabilitation” is a pretty good word to cover what is being sought to be done. I rejoiced when I saw the Title of the Bill and knew that focus was, at last, being placed on an extremely important task of the criminal justice system: to protect the public by preventing people offending again. I emphasise the word “again”.

I hope that in due course the Minister will, following the powerful arguments advanced by others, look on this proposal with considerable sympathy. I should, like the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, disclose an interest: I am also involved with the Prison Reform Trust—not as a valuable member, as is true of the noble Lord, but as its chairman. I make that disclosure in relation to subsequent amendments that shall be advanced today.

[Baroness Linklater of Butterstone]

Perhaps I may add to the debate that the clutch of noble and noble and learned Lords started. Rehabilitation may indeed be one objective, but it may also be of interest that Rule 1 of the Prison Rules states that the people who are in such care should lead “good and useful” lives.