Prison Reform and Safety

Chris Leslie Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

First, I apologise to the House and to the Minister if I cannot be here for the wind-ups. I also commend the diligence of the Justice Committee for bringing this debate forward, as it is incredibly important that the House has a chance to focus on this issue of safety and reform. Lots of organisations in the wider community are also campaigning on these areas, and I particularly want to draw the House’s attention to the work of the Community trade union, the largest trade union in the private prisons sector. It has a strong set of recommendations and campaigns for a safer justice sector. I urge the Minister to look at the work Community is doing and its important recommendations. That would add to this issue.

I simply want to talk about Her Majesty’s prison Nottingham, which is in my constituency, where recently we have sadly seen very difficult pressures starting to grow. We have had five deaths in custody since the summer, some of which have been suicide and on some of which we have not yet had the coroner’s report and recommendations. It is therefore still early days in terms of knowing whether there is a common pattern of events in these cases. I have met the governor, Tom Wheatley, and spoken with the diligent independent monitoring board—these are volunteers who go in every week to check out things such as safety in the prison.

The biggest problem in the prison is the cycle of drugs and smuggling, be it of Spice or mamba, to which many hon. Members have alluded. How these drugs are getting into the prison has to get national attention. Sometimes they are thrown over prison walls, but more often than not—it is difficult to be fully certain—there is a smuggling process whereby prisoners secrete drugs upon their person to bring them into jail. Some inmates are finding themselves affected by those psychoactive substances, but in a way it is just as bad that gang operations are going on within the prisons, as they are putting pressures on some offenders who go out on licence, halfway through their sentence. Incredibly, people are almost driven to reoffend, deliberately to break their licence, so that they can go back into prison in order to smuggle more drugs back in. It is an astonishing idea that in the 21st century there is reoffending as a way of making a living, but some prisoners are in that cycle.

I urge the Minister to think creatively about how to break that problem. There is a question of resources involved. A ridiculous number of experienced officers have been taken out in recent years. I know that things are stabilising now and that new officers are being recruited, but that experienced officer set is what we need to retain to ensure the situation does not get any worse.

I encourage the Minister to think about ways of breaking that cycle of people reoffending on licence, perhaps by getting the courts to randomise which prisons reoffenders are returned to. That might stop this notion that the prisoner breaking their licence knows they will be going back into a certain prison, such as Nottingham. If we can break that, we might be able to deal with this issue. I know that there are networks across other prisons, which are difficult to break, but we need creative solutions. It is important that the designated keyworker programme that has started in Nottingham is extended so that officers can get to know inmates a little more effectively. It is not just those on vulnerable watch who, sadly, we have seen taking their own lives. That is an important programme to be continued.

Also on communications, we need to make sure we regularise access to telephone calls for prisoners, because there is a smuggling problem in respect of mobile phones, too. If we got into a situation where we had regularised phone calls and access to approved family members, some of the pressures and strains on inmates could be lessened. We need creative solutions. Resources are part of this, but it is not just about them, which is why I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Chair of the Committee, for securing this important debate for the House to pay attention to today.