Probation Reform

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

That is a very interesting point and certainly something that I am keen to explore. The Chairman of the Justice Committee has hit the nail on the head: sentencer confidence is key. It is well known that there is support across the House for trying to move away from short custodial sentences that appear to be ineffective when it comes to rehabilitation. If we are to move away from that, we need to ensure that we have robust alternatives—robust community sentences—available, and we need to build the confidence for that and this plays a part in achieving exactly that.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

I welcome the statement today. Dame Glenys Stacey’s annual report was absolutely damning in relation to the state of our probation services as a result of failed privatisation. I am glad that the Secretary of State has conceded that this does not work and that payment by results does not work in probation. I have long called for a holistic probation service that centres on the needs of individuals. What support will the Secretary of State give to the national probation service to ensure that we move away from this tick-box exercise that exists at present and instead have a tailored support model that delivers meaningful and long-lasting results?

Prisons and Probation

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis).

It is no secret that our prison system is in a state of turmoil, with an outdated Victorian-era system that sees countless prisons inspected and issued with reports that reveal dilapidated conditions, overcrowding, violence, self-harm, drug abuse, low staff confidence and poor support. A decent prison system should deliver meaningful rehabilitation and provide offenders with purposeful activity. It is clear that this is lacking across the board.

The urgent notification issued to HMP Birmingham last August by the chief inspector of prisons was damning in its assessment of a failed prison run by G4S. This was followed by the unprecedented decision taken by the MOJ to bring it back under public control, reinforcing the argument that the privatisation of our prisons has failed. Following an inspection in February 2017, the prison operator at Birmingham was given 70 recommendations and targets. By the time of the inspection that triggered the urgent notification 18 months later, only 14 of the 70 targets had been met. Safety was deemed by the inspector to have been a colossal failure. In a survey of prisoners, 71% responded that they had felt unsafe at some point in their stay at Birmingham.

I visited HMP Birmingham, along with other members of the Justice Committee, in October—shortly after it had been issued with the urgent notification and as the new governor was getting to grips with what he had inherited—and it was clear that the system had failed at multiple levels. As the chief inspector noted, we found the prison to be in a state of disrepair, conditions that were unfit to be lived in and staff morale at crippling levels. While these issues are by no means limited to privately run prisons alone, the case of HMP Birmingham has highlighted the dangers and costs faced because of the distinct lack of accountability in its operation.

As well as ensuring that rehabilitation is provided inside prison, it is vital that our justice system has the means by which to monitor and assist offenders throughout their transition back to society. Nowhere has the failed privatisation of our justice system been so apparent as in that of our probation services. The transforming rehabilitation reforms pushed through at the end of the coalition Government were preceded by stark warnings that splitting the workload between a publicly run national probation service and privately tendered community rehabilitation companies, with payment by results, would have damaging consequences for the management of offenders. The recent reports on transforming rehabilitation by both the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee are deeply critical and prove that these previous cautions were fully warranted.

Last year, I held a Westminster Hall debate on the role of privatised community rehabilitation companies. Data had consistently shown that CRCs had met an average of just eight of the 24 targets set under their contracts, with the worst-performing organisation meeting only four. These reforms have turned probation into a tick-box exercise, rather than something that should be holistic and tailored to individual and specific needs. Since my debate, rather than improve, the situation has stagnated and in some cases has got even worse. It is worth noting that HMIP found that the quality of probation work was noticeably better across the national probation service by comparison with the privatised CRCs.

The role of a probation officer is not just a job, but a vocation. Yet a Unison staff survey of its 3,500 CRC workers has revealed that 25% of staff in CRCs have only occasionally had the equipment, resources or systems they needed to do their jobs properly, while 41 % said they had never experienced a manageable case load, 25% said that their CRC never or only occasionally completed community orders within the required time, and 43% said they never felt valued by their CRC. This fragmented, broken system is having serious consequences for the delivery of meaningful results.

The Public Account Committee report notes that, in 2018 alone, CRCs failed to provide nearly 3,000 prisoners with through-the-gate services. Additionally, there are numerous examples of single phone calls being deemed sufficient when monitoring offenders in the months following release, because that, rather than face-to-face meetings, is the simplest way for understaffed CRCs to meet their targets. The Public Accounts Committee report goes on to conclude that the transforming rehabilitation reforms have failed to reduce reoffending by as much as expected, with the average number of reoffences committed by each reoffender actually increasing. The Justice Committee’s “Transforming Rehabilitation” report has also called for a review of the long-term future of delivering probation services, including how performance might be compared with an alternative system for delivering probation—namely, a community-based approach.

One method to address reoffending rates is to look at abolishing short sentences. This is something that my Justice Committee colleagues and I have been calling for for some time, and I welcome the MOJ’s latest efforts to move to a presumption against their use and towards more of a community sentencing model. However, for a community sentencing model to be effective and for it to get public trust and support, it must ensure that probation services are able to monitor and support offenders in their rehabilitation. On the enforcement of community orders, HM inspectorate of probation found that the publicly run national probation service was reaching levels of good-quality assessment 83% of the time, compared with just 37% among the privatised CRCs.

The privatised approach to rehabilitation has left a system in disarray, and it will ultimately end up costing the Government £467 million more than originally planned, following bail-outs and cancelled contracts. This money could have been put towards better prison conditions and improved community sentencing or, better still, spent on a fully funded, publicly owned and accountable probation service.

In her final annual report, the current chief inspector of probation, Dame Glenys Stacey, concludes that the current model left by the transforming rehabilitation reforms has left us with a probation service that is “irredeemably flawed”. She goes further by saying that the profession as a whole has been diminished with an unhealthy reliance on unqualified staff, a service that has been changed by the impact of commerce and contracts that treat probation as a transactional business. She even says that terminating CRC contracts early and wishing to move to an improved tender process will not solve the issue. In short, her conclusions point to privatisation as the fundamental issue that is failing our justice system. Surely, it is now time to say that the privatisation of our justice system has failed. It is time to bring prisons and the probation service back under public control.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

In the end, it comes down to the decisions made by the Parole Board, which has to make its decisions based on public protection. In some cases— regrettable though it may be—if someone is not safe to be released, the Parole Board must make that decision. We need to ensure that we do everything we can to progress these cases as best we can. As I have said, we have made progress in recent years.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

The latest figures show that there are still nearly 2,500 prisoners serving IPP sentences. These sentences often have punitive recall conditions, which means that people might be returned to prison for fairly minor breaches of their licence conditions, resulting in many prisoners serving well beyond their original tariffs. It was previously a target of the Parole Board to reduce IPP prisoner numbers to 1,500 by 2020, so what steps will the Secretary of State take to ensure that this happens?

Disclosure of Youth Criminal Records

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Thursday 28th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker.

As a fellow member of the Justice Committee, I congratulate the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), on securing this incredibly important debate. I will speak briefly about the employment prospects of those with youth criminal records.

Over 11 million people in the UK have a criminal record. As we have heard, many of their convictions are disclosed through the Disclosure and Barring Service checks when people seek certain types of employment. In 2014-15—the year that the statistics on which the Committee’s report is based were drawn from—around a quarter of all the standard and enhanced DBS checks that flagged up a previous conviction related to people who were under 18 when they had committed an offence.

As my Committee colleagues and I have discussed in recent debates about short sentencing and rehabilitation, a progressive and modem justice system must ensure that those who have committed crimes previously are not unnecessarily punished time and time again, particularly as a result of the disproportionate impact that a conviction can have on their ability to secure employment.

As noted by the charity Unlock, a criminal record acquired by a young person can continue to impact them for the rest of their life. That is not an exaggeration. In the past five years, over 1 million criminal records that related to offences from more than 30 years ago were disclosed through DBS checks. Although a criminal conviction does not necessarily act as a bar to employment, that is still potentially 1 million people unable to pursue the career path of their choice. Of course, those individuals who have committed serious offences need to face restrictions on the jobs that they are able to undertake, but we should consider the implications of the current system for the vast majority of individuals with historical minor offences on their record.

The case studies used in the Committee’s report underline that. There was the teacher who had committed two offences 38 years earlier: the first was petty theft, which was described as a silly prank and for which they received a conditional discharge; the second was actual bodily harm after they had got into a scrape and pushed someone to the ground, and for which they had been fined £10. That individual explained that

“since then I’ve become a teacher. I was a Deputy Head for some 20 years, but now I’ve started supply teaching, I have to explain these as if I am now a criminal.”

Moreover, the statistics that we have reflect only those people with criminal records who have applied for DBS-compliant jobs. There could be countless other people who have been put off from applying for jobs because of embarrassment or a reluctance to reveal previous convictions.

I fully endorse the Justice Committee’s recommendation in the report that suggests that Ban the Box should be extended to all public sector vacancies, and that the Government should consider making it mandatory for all employers. Previously advocated by the Work and Pensions Committee in 2015, the Ban the Box campaign seeks to remove the criminal record tick box from job application forms, and instead candidates would be asked about criminal convictions later. That might seem like a small move and, as others have said, it is not perfect, but it would open up job application opportunities to those who might not otherwise consider making such an application.

Meaningful rehabilitation must be precisely that. It must be holistic, both inside and outside prison environments, and enable people who have offended in their youth to be fully able to pursue careers, rather than leaving them blighted by criminal convictions from decades earlier. The Government’s response to the Committee’s report acknowledges that, on release from custody, people are six to nine percentage points less likely to reoffend if they enter employment, and I welcome the steps taken in recent years to roll out Ban the Box across civil service vacancies.

On Tuesday, the Committee took evidence from my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who I see is no longer in his place, following his review of the treatment of and outcomes for black, Asian and minority ethnic individuals in the criminal justice system, and he made a very powerful argument here today. The Ministry of Justice’s employment and education plan from 2018 notes that criminal record checks may cause additional stigma for those in the BAME community, and we must do more to address that.

As my fellow Committee members have already referred to, it is often some of the most vulnerable people who have been affected by the rules around the disclosure of criminal convictions. Take the case of Sammy Woodhouse, a woman who was the victim of childhood sexual exploitation but was given a criminal record, and who has painfully had to relive her trauma following the disclosure of her convictions. Sammy has been a tireless campaigner and has undertaken a huge array of admirable work since waiving her anonymity, but the fact remains that no matter how much people such as Sammy want to use their experiences to help others in vulnerable situations, the barriers to employment in those areas still exist for them, because they have that criminal record against their name. But it is precisely people like Sammy whose experiences, no matter how horrifying, could help others in similar situations. By treating people like Sammy as victims rather than criminals, we would give them the opportunities that they rightly deserve.

I agree with the Select Committee report’s conclusion that the principles of youth rehabilitation are undermined by the system for disclosure of youth criminal records. We are capable of making significant progress on that issue: the Ban the Box initiative should be rolled out fully across the public and private sectors, combined with an appropriate DBS system that ensures records are disclosed only when the conviction is relevant to the job being applied for and proportionate to the offence. We all need to be able to have faith in a holistic, empathetic, rehabilitative justice system that gives young offenders a chance to move on from past mistakes.

I again thank the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst, for his work on this issue. I look forward to working with him and other Committee colleagues to further our efforts in this important area.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the shadow Minister for once again highlighting an important and distressing situation. I am reassured that my hon. and learned Friend the Under-Secretary of State continues to look carefully at the matter. I appreciate that the shadow Minister will want rapid progress, but it is important that we get this right, so my hon. and learned Friend is examining the issue and will report back in due course.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

2. If he will make it his policy to return probation services to the public sector.

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)]

We have been clear that probation needs to improve, and we have taken decisive action to end current community rehabilitation company contracts and develop more robust arrangements to protect the public and tackle reoffending. I am determined to learn lessons from the first generation of contracts in developing future arrangements. I believe that public, private and voluntary providers all have a role to play. We want to improve integration under new arrangements so that providers are able to work together effectively to protect the public and tackle reoffending.

[Ellie Reeves]

The recently published National Audit Office report on probation services highlighted not only the staggering additional costs of privatisation but the fact that CRCs are failing to provide even the most basic rehabilitation services. With nearly £0.5 billion-worth of bail-outs and only six out of 21 CRCs achieving significant reductions in reoffending, is it not now time to put probation back where it belongs, under public ownership and control?

[Mr Gauke]

The hon. Lady talks about costs and bail-outs. We have to remember that we are spending considerably less on CRCs than was anticipated when the contracts were entered into—some £700 million less—but it is right that we learn the lessons from the first generation of contracts. I am not satisfied with where we are, and the NAO has raised its concerns. We have also heard concerns from the inspectorate of probation, and we need to learn the lessons. It is important that this continues to be a mixed market. There is a place for the private sector and the voluntary sector, as well as for the public sector, in probation.

Short Prison Sentences

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the cost and effectiveness of sentences under 12 months and consequences for the prison population.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this debate, which follows several others with a similar theme in the past few weeks, including a debate on the effectiveness of short sentences led by my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), and one on the recall of women prisoners led by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris). That shows the appetite across the House for discussing these important issues.

As a member of the Select Committee on Justice, I am proud of our “Transforming Rehabilitation” report, which was published last summer and included a recommendation that the Government should introduce a presumption against short sentences. I welcome the recent news that the Secretary of State wishes the emphasis to move away from the short sentencing model, but although the policy direction of the Ministry of Justice seems centred on sentences of six months or less, I believe we should consider the costs and consequences of sentences of up to 12 months, and enshrine a presumption against them in law.

In 2017, more than 37,000 people entered prison to serve a sentence of less than 12 months. The short time available often means there is little opportunity adequately to address the needs of that population, with limited access to offending behaviour programmes, education and work. Research by the Revolving Doors Agency showed that nearly half of all people sent to prison are sent there for less than six months, and that the overwhelming majority are imprisoned for non-violent offences.

I do not dispute that offenders who have committed serious or violent crimes, or those who pose a risk to society, should often be given a custodial sentence, but four out of every five people sent to prison last year had committed a non-violent crime. Most reasonable people expect jail terms to deliver rehabilitation for offenders and a clear means to reduce reoffending, as well as punishment.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this significant debate and making such a powerful speech. I have information that replacing custodial sentences of less than six months for theft and non-violent drug offences with effective community sentences could save the public millions of pounds.

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. She is absolutely right that handing out short sentences is a false economy. I will say more about that later, but as she rightly identifies, it is clear that the current system of short sentences is failing with respect to rehabilitation and reoffending.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. One thing that troubles me is the use of short custodial sentences after a pattern of repeat offending, where people go from fines straight to custody, with little evidence that community penalties, and particularly supervision orders, have been tried along the way. Does she agree that it would be useful if the Government had a particularly careful look at why that is happening and whether there is a lack of confidence in community penalties among sentencers?

[Ellie Reeves]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about escalation to prison sentences instead of increased use of community sentences. Community sentences have halved in the past decade. Again, I will talk a little more about that, because it is really important that we have robust and effective community sentences, and that sentencers have the confidence to hand those sentences out.

The Secretary of State has admitted that shorter sentences do not work. The Ministry’s data shows that adults released from custodial sentences of less than 12 months had a proven reoffending rate of 64%, compared with the overall rate of 29%, yet it has been shown that offenders serving a community sentence typically have a reoffending rate seven percentage points lower than similar people serving prison sentences of less than a year. Those with suspended sentence orders have a reoffending rate nine percentage points lower. The emphasis needs to be on better rehabilitation in the community.

It is clear from the issuing of four urgent notifications on squalid prisons and countless news reports about falling standards that the prison system is failing offenders and the public. It is uncomfortably apparent that committing offenders to custody can cause further issues, which may arise only during an offender’s stay in prison. Her Majesty’s chief inspector of prisons recently published a report on standards at HMP Durham. Nearly a third of prisoners surveyed said they had developed a drug problem while in prison, 66% of prisoners said they had mental health problems, and many more said they felt depressed or suicidal on arrival in custody. Some 70% of prisoners at HMP Durham were in custody on remand or following recall, and three quarters of the population had been at the prison for less than six months. Those are precisely the kinds of prisoner so disproportionately and negatively impacted by the current model of short sentencing.

Like a lot of the prison estate, HMP Durham is a Victorian building in need of repair, where prisoners are kept in rooms that are falling apart, and often unclean, and are provided with little stimulating activity or purposeful rehabilitation. Sadly, HMP Durham is not alone. A year ago, I visited HMP Rochester with the Justice Committee. That Victorian prison is not fit for purpose, so it was issued with a closure notice, which was later rescinded due to MOJ cuts. When we visited, we were told that lessons had to be cancelled when it rained because there was a leak in the classroom roof, and the drug rehab programme had stopped because the prison thought it was closing down.

More recently, we visited HMP Birmingham—a prison so bad that the private contractor, G4S, had to hand back control to Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service. The recent inspections at HMPs Nottingham, Wormwood Scrubs, Wandsworth and Bedford all showed that problems with safety and overcrowding are particularly acute at local prisons, where large numbers of people are often held for short periods. A reduction in the use of short prison sentences could significantly reduce overcrowding, particularly in local prisons, which in turn might help restore the standards of decency that the Minister has called for.

In monetary terms, it costs nearly £40,000 a year to keep someone in prison. The point at which prisoners enter the prison system is often the most costly and labour intensive and, given recent falls in prison officer numbers, it can often divert resources from where they might be needed elsewhere on the prison estate.

On the day before International Women’s Day, it is important to recognise that restricting the use of short custodial sentences is particularly important to achieve a reduction in the female prison population. In 2017, some 7,185 women in England and Wales were sentenced to immediate custody. Of those women, 68% were sentenced to less than six months and 26% to less than one month. Women’s offending is often linked to underlying mental health needs, drug and alcohol addiction, and domestic abuse. Many have caring responsibilities, and at least 17,000 children are affected by maternal imprisonment each year. Despite those children having committed no crime, their lives are often uprooted. They end up in care, having to lose their home, their school and their family. The human and emotional cost is immeasurable.

[Kate Green]

Will my hon. Friend therefore join me in welcoming the inquiry being undertaken by the Joint Committee on Human Rights? The Committee is looking specifically at the impact on children of their mother’s imprisonment, whether the law should be changed or strengthened to protect children, and whether sentencers should have a different presumption in those circumstances.

[Ellie Reeves]

I absolutely agree. We know that parental imprisonment is considered an adverse childhood experience, which we hear so much about at the moment. That inquiry is really timely. It is important that we look at this issue very carefully and question whether prison is the right place for women to be much of the time. Women released from prison are likely to reoffend, and reoffend more quickly, than those serving community sentences. Some 48% of women are reconvicted within one year of leaving prison, which rises to 61% for sentences of less than 12 months.

Reducing reoffending has a clear cost benefit not only to Ministry of Justice budgets, but to police budgets, local services and beyond. The failures in our prison system, not least due to the 40% real-terms cut forced on the Ministry’s budgets and the profound problems with the privatisation of the probation service, have left that system in disarray.

Last Friday, the National Audit Office published yet another critical report on the Government’s transforming rehabilitation programme. It stated that not only has the Ministry of Justice failed to achieve the wider objectives of its original reforms, but that those failures were leading to significant numbers of prisoner recalls and that through-the-gate was wholly ineffective. The NAO report suggests that the Ministry of Justice will pay at least £467 million more than was required under the original community rehabilitation company contracts in completely avoidable bailouts. Worryingly, the full costs will not be known until at least December 2020. It is clear that the current model does not work for taxpayers or offenders.

We need meaningful community sentences, far more robust than the CRC-monitored rehabilitation that we have at the moment where offenders too often just have supervision on the telephone rather than face to face, and missed appointments go unchecked. The Government make the right noises, but clear action is required. As the Prison Reform Trust’s latest Bromley briefing succinctly states:

“Short prison sentences are less effective than community sentences at reducing reoffending Yet, the use of community sentences has more than halved in only a decade”,

falling from 193,000 to 91,000 over a decade.

The Ministry of Justice’s own research has shown that community sentences are particularly effective for people who have committed a large number of previous offences and for those with mental health problems. For those with more than 50 previous offences, the odds of reoffending are more than a third higher when a short prison sentence is used rather than a community sentence. Another piece of research by the Ministry of Justice, published in 2017, found that providing treatment for drug and alcohol addictions in the community has also been shown to reduce reoffending. More than two fifths did not reoffend and there was a 33% reduction in the number of offences committed in the two years following treatment. As much as the instinct is to think that repeat offending must mean harsher sentences, that is not what the evidence suggests we should do. Policy must be evidence-led if we are to expect results, and the current approach is too costly and too ineffective to continue following the short sentencing model.

There is the question of the cost of the failures around short custodial sentences not only to prisons and wider Ministry of Justice budgets, but to other Departments and society as a whole. Short sentences can see prisoners lose their homes, their jobs and their family ties. Combined with the failure of the through-the-gate initiative, the impact and effect of prison last much longer than any original custodial sentence.

To be given a custodial sentence is one thing, but to have all the means to reduce the propensity to reoffend and to get back on with life removed in the short time that someone is in prison is quite another, and it has far longer and wider-ranging consequences than the original sentence. One of the most fundamental issues is that of housing. The link between rough sleeping and prison leavers is deeply concerning, and short sentencing does nothing but exacerbate the issue. The latest figures from the Combined Homelessness and Information Network show that 36% of rough sleepers in London have been in prison—up 3% on last year.

Colleagues have also repeatedly raised concerns and frustrations with Friday releases from prisons as prisoners are unable to contact housing providers until Monday morning or get a prescription to deal with an addiction. If someone does not have a place to stay, it is far harder to register with the council or a jobcentre, and offenders are more likely to end up sleeping rough. The most vulnerable might simply immediately return to crime.

The issue is summarised perfectly by a case study from the social justice charity, Nacro:

“C was released on a Friday after serving a 4 week sentence with a history of homelessness. Given the short amount of time spent in custody, it was not enough time for us to source stable housing for him on release. C had to present at the local authority to make a homelessness application and was told to come back the next week for an appointment. C slept rough that weekend.”

Short sentences do not work. They very often increase rather than decrease reoffending rates. They can tear families apart and put pressure on a crumbling prison system with very little benefit. They have failed. The Government have been making the right noises, but I hope they will now follow in the direction of Scotland and seek to enshrine in law a presumption against short sentences of 12 months or less, backed up with robust, effective and properly funded community sentences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Reeves]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for taking part in this important debate, particularly the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the Chair of the Justice Committee, who co-sponsored the application for the debate and has done a huge amount of work to push the issue up the agenda.

I echo what other hon. Members have said. A presumption against short sentences is not about being soft on crime, but about following the evidence. We have heard that evidence today, which is clear that community sentences are more effective in reducing reoffending than short prison sentences. Short prison sentences simply exacerbate the problem. It is clear from the debate that there is cross-party support for reducing the use of short sentences, which I hope we can continue to build on in future.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the cost and effectiveness of sentences under 12 months and consequences for the prison population.

Recall of Women to Prisons

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Wednesday 20th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on securing this incredibly important debate. As a member of the Select Committee on Justice, I have visited a number of prisons, including Downview women’s prison. On every visit to a prison, I hear stories about punitive, arbitrary and often completely avoidable recalls to prison.

Recall appears to operate more harshly in relation to prisoners serving indeterminate sentences for public protection. Although IPP prisoners account for a small proportion of the female prison population, it is important to mention them in this debate. I acknowledge that there are prisoners who pose a genuine risk to society, but the opinion is widely held that IPP sentences are not the way to deal with them. Such sentences have now been abolished and the Parole Board has a priority target of reducing the IPP prison population significantly. Of the 440 women recalled to prison in the three months between July and September last year, four were IPP prisoners. Although there are substantially fewer women on IPP tariffs compared with men—I think there are 46 women on IPP tariffs—between 2010 and 2017, 40 women were recalled due to breach of their licence conditions.

At present, an IPP prisoner’s licence can be terminated only after the they have completed 10 years in the community following their release—an extremely lengthy period. I have significant concerns that the terms by which the licence and recall system operates are set at too low a threshold, with the result that prisoners flip between detention, parole boards and release on licence once more. I urge the Minister to look at the issue of removing the last of the IPP prisoners in the prison estate with some urgency.

In the year ending September 2018, there were 1,846 recalls of women to custody while on licence—a significant number, considering that the current female prison population stands at 3,809. The first set of data since the implementation of the Offender Rehabilitation Act shows that more than three times as many women were recalled to prison since the ORA changes.

As has been said extensively in this debate and others, short sentences have huge implications for women and their families. A recent report by the Prison Reform Trust show that 17,000 children in England and Wales are affected by maternal imprisonment. Those 17,000 children might have to be cared for by somebody else, be rehomed, leave school or drop out of education altogether. Sometimes recall is necessary, but a decent justice system is also a humane one. In the current system, licence conditions are often seen as a tick-box exercise, rather than a more holistic approach being taken. It is clear that it is not working. Those 17,000 children did not commit crimes, but recall can have a catastrophic impact on them.

We must not forget that, although women can be perpetrators of crime, more often than not they are victims of crime. The Prison Reform Trust data shows that, shockingly, nearly 60% of women prisoners have previously experienced domestic abuse. If we are to solve the issue of female prisoners, this debate must go well beyond recall and prisons, and delve into the wider issue of women in society. As the Prison Reform Trust succinctly states:

“women can become trapped in a vicious cycle of victimisation and criminal activity. Their situation is often worsened by poverty, substance dependency or poor mental health.”

Given that women are often the principal carers for children, it is obvious that the impact of recall and imprisonment is far-reaching.

Some 84% of sentenced women entering prison committed a non-violent offence. When I spoke to the women in Downview prison, I was struck by the fact that none of them was the ringleader in the crimes they had committed. All the women I spoke to were ancillary to the crimes and all the ringleaders were men, so the situation needs looking at holistically. At present, women are more likely than men to be given a prison sentence for a first offence, with one in four women sentenced to less than one month and 55% to less than three months. Women are also more likely to complete their community order or licence period supervision successfully, so there is a huge question about whether the vast majority of women prisoners ought to be in prison in the first place.

The 2007 Corston report called for a distinct, radically different, visibly led, strategic, proportionate, holistic and women-centred approach. Much of the report focused on community support, sentencing reform and alternatives to custody. I fear that, 12 years on, progress on women prisoners has fallen far short of Baroness Corston’s original recommendations. The Secretary of State for Justice has signalled an intention to move away from the model of short sentences, but in regard to women and short sentences, Baroness Corston remarked that short sentences

“do not successfully deflect from further offending and for many women make their lives and those of their children worse.”

Why has it taken 12 years to reconsider short sentences when their effects have been known for so long?

The Select Committee on Justice found, in our recent work on transforming rehabilitation and introducing a presumption against short sentences, which we recommended, that volatile short stays in prison can exacerbate the issues in play, rather than reduce reoffending. It has been shown that offenders serving a community sentence typically have a reoffending rate 7% lower than that for similar people serving prison sentences of less than a year, so surely that is where the emphasis should be—on delivering rehabilitation and reducing reoffending.

Women are only a small percentage of the overall prison population. Their distinct issues often go unnoticed or are not focused on in the context of the significantly greater number of men in the prison estate. I therefore welcome the message from the Ministry of Justice in relation to short custodial sentences, but I want to see legislation on that issue and more robust community sentencing, so that those who are passing sentences have confidence that no non-custodial sentence—

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. I have been generous with the hon. Lady, but she is a minute over her time and I have to call the first Front-Bench speaker: Stuart C. McDonald for the SNP.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gauke]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising a very serious incident. Such attacks are truly dreadful and have life-changing consequences, and anyone committing them must feel the full force of the law. That is why the Offensive Weapons Bill, which is currently being considered in the Lords, will change the law to stop the sale of acid to under-18s and to make it an offence to possess a corrosive substance in a public place. It is for the independent courts to determine sentences handed down in individual cases, but it is already the case that the use of a weapon, including acid, in any offence is treated as an aggravating factor meriting an increased sentence.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

Statistics show that 36% of rough sleepers in London have previously been in prison—the figure is up three percentage points on the year before—which is deeply concerning. Short sentences do nothing but exacerbate the issue and do not reduce reoffending. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is now time to introduce a presumption against prison sentences of less than 12 months?

Short Prison Sentences

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Tuesday 29th January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Chris Evans]

The hon. Gentleman makes a pertinent point, which I will elaborate on later. There are numerous examples of people in the system with substance abuse issues, who cannot get into substance abuse rehabilitation or overcome their problem, who then find themselves outside, and get back into the system. I will develop this argument more as I go on and I will be happy to take another intervention, if the hon. Gentleman so wishes.

To me, short sentences do not help to reduce reoffending and they can cause unnecessary disruption to the lives of those who could have been dealt with in ways that have seen better results.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend talks about the impact on people’s lives. A recent report published by the Prison Reform Trust showed that 17,000 children in England and Wales are affected by maternal imprisonment each year. One in four women are sentenced to less than one month. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is completely unsustainable for women and their children?

[Chris Evans]

In the case of non-violent crimes, especially those committed by women, there is a real argument to make about that. I cannot quote the figures off the top of my head, but I understand that a large number of women who are locked up have been victims of domestic violence. The courts need to accept that and think about it when they are sentencing women in the future. As I said, 95% of the prison population is male. How many of the 5% who are women have been convicted of non-violent crimes and sentenced to less than one month? Many women are in nurturing and caring roles, with children and also with elderly parents, and that would cause severe disruption as well.

Courts IT System

Ellie Reeves Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

As always, my hon. Friend the Chairman of the Justice Committee makes important points. I am pleased to clarify that the common platform is not affected—it is being trialled—and that in fact the reform programme in its totality is not affected by these issues. Our divorce and probate application systems are not affected. As I said, the point of reform is to ensure that these systems work in future—my hon. Friend referred to the need to ensure that our systems work—and we will be carrying out a rigorous evaluation of our court reform programme.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

Prisons being issued urgent notifications, private probation services needing bailouts, trials collapsing because of disclosure failures, MOJ staff on strike over the failure to pay them the London living wage—and now the court system is in disarray. When will the Minister finally understand that the 40% real-terms cut to the MOJ budget since 2010 has consequences, and that austerity has left the justice system at breaking point?

[Lucy Frazer]

As I identified at the start, this issue was caused by an infrastructure failure in our supplier’s data centre. It is not the result of cuts. My Department received some funding in relation to the building of a prison in the recent Budget, and it received investment into the courts service and into its estates. We are investing £1 billion in our courts service.