Cutting Crime (Justice Reinvestment)

Claire Perry Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Alun Michael (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to sit under your supervision today, Mrs Main, and I hope that I do not strain your patience too far.

I join the Chairman of the Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), in paying tribute to all our colleagues across the four parties who were members of the Committee. I say four parties as an MP for the Co-operative party, which is the fourth-largest party in Parliament. We do have to remind everyone that we are here, some of the time. The partnership we are in is an open and honest pre-election one, which has lasted for many decades, and so it is worth drawing it to the attention of the House. I also join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the staff of the Committee—Fergus Reid and his team—and particularly to Gemma Buckland who gave enormous good service to the Committee by being good not only at producing evidence and thoughtful contributions, but at challenging members when we got a bit carried away, as we did on occasion.

I thoroughly enjoyed—if that is the right word—my three years on the Committee, and I pay tribute to the consensual way in which the Chairman sought to tackle some major issues. I have now gone on to try different pastures on the Home Affairs Committee, but the complementary nature of the agendas of those two Committees is something that we overlook at our peril. I am certain that the Justice Committee is safe in the hands of the right hon. Gentleman.

The point about justice reinvestment is that it is not an academic concept but a deeply practical one. It is not about being soft on crime—I underline the Committee Chairman’s comments in that regard—but about being effective. It was interesting to discover the clinical approach in the USA, to which the right hon. Gentleman referred, which rather goes against the general image of how justice is dispensed on that continent.

There are two exemplary initiatives that the previous Government pursued—not without some challenges—and the right hon. Gentleman referred to them both. One was the previous Government’s success in reducing youth offending at the same time as reducing youth custody, and the second was dealing with women in the criminal justice system. The numbers involved in those two groups are lower than the overall prison population, but we should take very much to heart the lessons about what worked.

In his conclusion, the right hon. Gentleman offered three challenges to Ministers, including whether Ministers are ready openly to take on the “prison works” agenda. We could ask a wider question: is Parliament ready to take on the “prison works” agenda? To my mind, it is only if the consensus on the way forward that developed in the Select Committee is reflected across the Chamber that Ministers will have the authority to do that. I hope that we will provide that sort of supportive opposition in the coming years. Secondly, the right hon. Gentleman was certainly right to say that there is a big challenge to ensure that the alternatives are available, and I shall come back to that in a moment. Thirdly, the really big challenge is ensuring that the cuts do not put a roadblock in the way of applying common sense to how we deal with criminal activity.

I want to focus on a small number of points. The first is the use of methodology in analysing crime, to find ways to prevent it. Crime mapping and the methodology of analysing crime has not been applied with the consistency that we might desire. Crime reduction partnerships have been a success, but the methodology has not been driven consistently at every level. The right hon. Gentleman referred to Jonathan Shepherd, who made the point that

“more imaginative use could be made of existing local data without extra cost, if it is collated by the partner agency electronically, anonymised”—

as has happened with health information in Cardiff—

“and passed on to someone with the capacity to analyse it.”

Since that was stated in the report, an appointment has been made jointly by the police and the health authority, so that data could be analysed properly and productively, without having to be transferred. It is striking that not only did the initial work of analysing data lead to steps that helped to reduce crime, but progressively it has been possible to drive crime down further and further.

The implication of some of the evidence that we received was that the skills of mapping and analysing crime are bedded in within the police, but not within other agencies. I rather suspect that there is a difference in methodology, in that local authorities are probably better at doing the longer-term mapping and projections and the police are rather better at taking the incident and asking, “What does this tell us that we ought to be doing today or tomorrow?” Ideally, the combination of that immediacy and that longer-term mapping ought to be a virtuous one, but I rather suspect that some of the time they rub up against each other and that that is one reason why the approach is not as effective as it should be. The approaches should complement each other, and it seems that they do in places such as Manchester and Liverpool. Where the partnership works it is immensely powerful, as the Home Affairs Committee heard from representatives speaking on behalf of the Local Government Association on Tuesday, primarily in relation to Liverpool and Merseyside.

The right hon. Gentleman rightly suggested that I might refer to Jonathan Shepherd’s work, and I want to say why I think that that work is so important. Professor Shepherd came to see me at a surgery about 15 years ago. He said that, as a surgeon, he had discovered that he had, in effect, two in-trays. One was for those who had been injured in car accidents and the other was for those who had been injured in violent offences. He was struck by the fact that the in-tray for car accidents was getting smaller year on year, while the in-tray for incidents of violence was getting bigger, and he wondered why that was. Could it be that science and engineering skills are being applied to understanding motoring injuries, leading to developments such as air bags, seat belts and improved tyres and brakes, but that we are not applying the same skills of analysis to crimes of violence and driving policy forward logically?

The answer came when Cardiff’s new crime reduction partnership tried an experiment. Professor Shepherd supplied a nurse scientist, the local authority supplied a victim support worker and the police supplied a police officer. All the incidents that resulted in people going into hospital were properly analysed. Two things came out of that. First, we thought that the statistics would be pushed up, because many offences were not being reported. In fact, that did not happen. The gain was fairly immediate. Secondly, we thought that the experiment would confirm what we already knew, which was that offending was by and large random across the city centre, but it did not. Instead, it proved that a couple of small locations and one large one accounted for a totally disproportionate number of the injuries that led to people putting a burden of cost, time and effort on the national health service. The benefits of the partnership’s work were enormous in terms of reducing victimisation and the number of people who needed to be taken to court, with the consequences that that has for prison numbers.

We need to return to the methodology put in place in the crime reduction partnerships in the first instance. If that methodology is applied consistently, with requirements being centrally driven, but actions and decision making being local, we will have the best of both worlds. The methodology involved analysing crime and disorder; including the public’s view, as well as police statistics, in analysis; setting priorities; developing a joint strategy that is clinically precise in targeting identified problems—there are a few words there that need unpacking fairly carefully if we are to understand their true significance; setting targets that are jointly measured; undertaking annual evaluation and recalibration; and returning after three years to renew the audit and the strategy so that the link between the facts, the community and the strategy is renewed.

The benefits are local targets and clear understanding. In that way, we have success at a local level driving national success, instead of targets being set under a more top-down system. Generally, the approach that I have described has been a success story, but immense benefits could be gained if the methodology were emphasised more clinically.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

As a new member of the Justice Committee, may I say what an absolute pleasure it is to listen to former members, who did so much incredibly good work in the report, revisiting these issues and making an impassioned case for similar pieces of analysis to be carried out in the future? I wholeheartedly support that view. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree, however, that the one piece missing from the list of valuable items that he gave us is accountability? Before the election, I was lucky enough to be involved in work on the Conservative party policy on the rehabilitation revolution. One thing that really struck me—

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. May I ask the hon. Lady to keep her intervention brief?

[Claire Perry]

Yes, I am coming to my point. One thing that really struck me was the lack of accountability in the system and the fact that one person should be responsible. I would be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman commented on that.

[Alun Michael]

It is not an individual who needs to be accountable, but the system. The way to ensure that that happens is to have the facts out in the open. It is tragic that, 12 years on, I still cannot get proper local analysis and information on trends in wards in my constituency. I know that the police are analysing the information they get and using it to inform their activity, and I know that the local authority and the police are working in partnership and sharing information, but it is not out there for individual members of the community. This is not about one individual—it does not matter whether they are an elected mayor, the chief executive of a local authority, a chief constable or whatever. Anything that depends on just one individual is doomed to failure; indeed, if I may say so, anything that depends even on one Minister is of limited value. It is a question of having transparency so that there can be proper accountability. To that extent, I agree with the hon. Lady. I am very much describing a system that allows proper accountability and transparency.

I referred to the work of Professor Shepherd in Cardiff because many lessons have been learned from it, but the real lessons—about applying a proper methodology and having transparency—have not been learned adequately or transferred to other bodies. Targeted policing has reduced licensed premises and street violence, as well as reducing violence-related A and E attendance in Cardiff by 40% since 2002. That is a 40% reduction in the number of people going over the A and E threshold for treatment. That is a much more effective measure than any of the general police or criminal justice measurements. That endorses some of the evidence from the British crime survey.

There is a second big point that I want to make. One reason why there is a muddle is that we are still not totally clear about the purpose of the criminal justice system. We need to be much clearer that it has a single purpose, which is consistent with what the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice said in recent evidence to the Home Affairs Committee and with what Sir Robert Peel said when he gave his reasons for establishing the police service: the criminal justice system is meant to prevent offending and reoffending. If every agency focused on its contribution to that objective, rather than intermediate objectives, we would reach the point we all want to reach, with fewer people becoming victims.

I mention victims because we keep talking about their interests, and it is right to do so, but let us be clear about what we mean by that. I have been enormously struck by the clarity that has been offered on more than one occasion by Victim Support, which has said that what victims want, other than not to become victims of an offence in the first place, is to know that they will not become victims again. They want to know that something has been done about the activity that led to their becoming victims so that such things are less likely to happen in future.

One positive development in recent months has been the establishment of the Sentencing Council, which I welcome. I sat on the Committee that dealt with the legislation that introduced it. We should go a stage further by being much more precise about the council’s purpose, and I tabled amendments at the time that I would have liked to make to the legislation. The council’s purpose should be to analyse what works so that when sentencers take their decisions, they are fully cognisant of the likely impact on lessening the likelihood of further offences.

The report specifically refers to these issues. The Committee says:

“We believe that the role of the Sentencing Council should be to ensure that sentencing practice succeeds in reducing offending and re-offending.”

We talk about the need for the council to be

“well-resourced to enable it to perform its research function.”

We mention the time that it has taken for data to be adequate to inform decision making. We ask for the council to be told to

“consider how sentencers can be given a better understanding of what works in terms of reducing offending and re-offending”.

Ensuring that judges and magistrates understand the implications and likely effects of their sentences would help the whole criminal justice system and be very much in Ministers’ interests. I could develop that point, but it is fairly clear and simple, and the report’s recommendations are clearly set out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this timely debate, bearing in mind not only yesterday’s announcement but the ongoing nature of the debate on an important area of public policy.

The judiciary have had strong views about this area of public policy for a number of months, if not years. It is no secret that for some time prison governors had expressed their concerns about what they regarded as the overuse of short-term prison sentences, namely those of 12 months or less, because they are ineffective in managing offenders in the prison estate and at dealing with the all-important statistic of reoffending within six months of release from sentence. That is where the public interest lies, which is what I was delighted to hear other speakers, such as the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), Chair of the Committee on which I now serve, emphasising. The public rightly demand protection, certainty and reassurance that the system is doing everything that it can to manage out reoffending.

We are moving away from talking about targets and more towards talking about outcomes, but no matter which word is used, the reoffending figures are where it is at. The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) got it almost right with his reference to the Diamond project—he was with me at an interesting session a couple of weeks ago. The preliminary evidence from the Diamond project is dramatic—“preliminary” was stressed, because the work is ongoing, with the pilot due to end in March next year. Figures of 28% reoffending are extraordinary, bearing in mind the depressing litany of statistics with which we all are familiar. We owe a great debt of gratitude to the Lord Chancellor for having brought into the full glare of publicity the concerns of the judiciary, prison governors and everyone—such as me until my election—who is heavily involved in the criminal justice system.

The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth is absolutely right: there needs to be a consensus, even at the risk of that being dull. I would go further than him and say that the old debates about toughness and softness, which have plagued the issue since about the mid-1990s, have really had their day. Instead we should be talking about whether we are being smart on crime or stupid—dumb, if preferred—on crime. That is where the debate should be, where the battle lines should be drawn and what we need to be focusing on.

I was not a member of the previous Committee, which produced the report, but I have read its recommendations and the Government response carefully. The Government response, although I accept that the current Minister is not responsible for those utterances—I am sure he is glad that I remind the Chamber of that—represented a missed opportunity. The report was from a Committee of the House that included senior Members and former Ministers, such as the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth, who could use not only their experience in office but their experience of many years in the House and in their constituencies.

However, I am delighted that Cardiff was mentioned, because I practised for many years as a member of the Bar in that city, in the Crown court, and know intimately the problems and challenges facing the constituents of the right hon. Gentleman and others.

I was disappointed that, instead of a frank owning up to some of the deficiencies in the system, we had an over-defensive approach in the Government response.

[Claire Perry]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend, whose constituency of South Swindon is next door to mine, for giving way.

There is so much evidence of interesting, innovative programmes, which we have discussed in Committee. Is my hon. Friend aware of the Vision Housing project in London, which aims to house ex-offenders and which is delivering the most extraordinary reduction in reoffending by providing one of the very things mentioned by the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael)—stable housing upon release for ex-offenders? What is the opinion of my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon as to why, with all this evidence for and cross-party commitment to making changes in the system, we still seem to be stuck in an old model with the National Offender Management Service and the Prison Service? We are not prepared to embrace the innovation that we all see out there every day.

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend hit on an important point about NOMS. While we welcome the dedicated and hard work of members of NOMS, some of us wonder whether the synthesis between dealing with offenders in the prison estate and offenders in the community was ever achieved by NOMS. That was one of its purposes. It was to look in an overarching way at the whole system, and to provide some synthesis which, frankly, has not happened.

Tempting as it is to lament the rise and fall of various quangos—some speakers referred to this but, with respect to them, that misses the point—their best point, which the right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth mentioned, is that we must not lose the expertise and knowledge of the people who worked so hard within those bodies. The Minister, I am sure, has taken that point very much on board in the case of the Youth Justice Board.

I make the point now, I hope clearly, that we must remember that youth justice ought to be treated in a discrete, separate way. It is not appropriate to meld the system of youth justice in with that of adult justice. They are two different beasts, which require two different approaches, and we must not forget that. At the same time, the issue of transition between the youth justice system and the adult system can be difficult—practically, for sentences, in terms of the gymnastics that they have to go through in remembering which particular regime fits what. My point is that the public interest is best served, when it comes to young offenders, by the sort of focused, early-intervention approach that I know everyone in the Chamber and in the wider community supports.

My point is about the public interest and how it is best served. I have talked about reoffending rates, but will now look in some detail at the part of the report that dealt with confidence in community sentences. That has been the issue about which politicians have danced for many years. They have worried about weak community sentences being poorly monitored and implemented, resulting in higher rates of reoffending.

The question of confidence is key here, but how do we achieve that? We have already been shown several important pointers, such as the Diamond project. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed referred to the issue, but it is important that we reiterate it. Community sentences will fail if they are not properly policed, and they will be ineffective if they are not adequately monitored. There are some good examples of community sentences that work. For example, the drug rehabilitation requirement sentence, which is a high-intensity sentence, involves a regular review—it can be monthly or it can be held at less frequent intervals—by a Crown court judge or magistrate. Under such regimes, judges will see defendants on a regular basis and open up a dialogue with them. They will challenge the defendant if the requirement is not being met and assist them if a particular issue needs to be addressed, such as non-compliance because of work restrictions or requirements or problems with a methadone prescription if the defendant has been convicted of possessing or supplying a controlled drug. Such sentences are having a really positive impact on not only the individuals themselves but the communities in which they live.

The power to review sentences regularly already exists in section 178 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. The Government, in their response to the Committee, referred to their piloting of the use of section 178 in a range of different orders. I am interested to know—I will forgive the Minister if he does not have an answer today—the results of that pilot. I want to know the extent of it and the different types of orders that were used. It seems that if we give judges more involvement in the policing of community sentences, it will have a greater impact on the offender and go a long way towards promoting confidence in our sentencing regime.

The Diamond project used a range of mechanisms to enforce compliance with the order. Police officers or community support officers regularly knock on the doors of the homes of offenders to ensure that they attend the community project. We were looking at unpaid work in Lambeth the other day. We discussed how the scheme worked and we met offenders and former offenders who were working in the project. The input of former offenders—the euphemism nowadays is service users, which is relevant in this context—was vital, because they had gone through the system, come out successfully and were not reoffending. They were, I suppose, setting an example to those on the current order who, at times, were having difficulties or issues. It was wonderful to see people of experience assisting those who were on the order.

We spoke to some of those on the unpaid work scheme. Most of them understood the purpose of the order. They knew that it was not just about them and their rehabilitation but about their punishment. One gentleman I spoke to—I will not quote him out of court—did not quite get that point. It is important to hold such conversations because it helps us to understand the nature of punishment in our society.

For many years, the role of punishment in the criminal justice system has been hotly debated. Many protagonists say that punishment has no role in the criminal justice system, but, with respect, they entirely misunderstand where we are with punishment now. Their view of punishment comes from the 19th century, and we have moved on a long way since then. Punishment encapsulates not just custody and loss of liberty but a range of approaches that can be taken within the community. The example I would give is the one alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed when he mentioned one of the witnesses who gave evidence before the Justice Select Committee last week. The witness talked about her wish to be challenged by probation officers. Challenging people’s behaviour and facing up to them is a modern form of punishment. I am talking not about having a cuddly cup of tea but about saying, “Look, what you are doing is wrong. The way you are behaving is inappropriate. What are you going to do about it?” That is challenging the individual to face up to what they have done, to understand why they did it and to move on to be a better citizen.

It is wholly artificial to divide punishment from rehabilitation and public protection. The truth is that they all elide to. In many ways, getting the punishment right will ensure that the offender is rehabilitated and the public are protected.

I come back now to the point that I made at the beginning of my address, which is that the public interest is best served by a system that results in a lower rate of reoffending. That is why justice reinvestment is common sense. It not only saves the Exchequer massive amounts of revenue and protects the public but makes better citizens of those people who end up in the system.

The right hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth made a vital point about access to information about local rates of offending, where the hotspots are and what the problems are. It is vital that sentencers—the judiciary and lay magistracy—have full access to the hard facts, because it will help them reflect local sentencing priorities. I am not saying that Cardiff has a particular problem. In fact, it is very well managed by Jonathan Shepherd, the University Hospital of Wales and the local police. There are other parts of the world in which crimes of violence are still a huge problem. The public of those particular towns or cities demand, quite rightly, that sentences be passed to reflect those problems.