Literacy and Drugs (Custodial Sentences)

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan.

Prison works. It locks people up effectively so that they cannot then commit a specific crime. Yet for many years, prison has failed to change prisoners’ behaviour. Despite multiple new laws and increasingly tougher sentences laid down by ever more robust politicians, prisoners throughout the 1990s and the Blair and Brown Governments have still reoffended in the tens of thousands upon release. It cannot be a satisfactory Government investment when 70% of offenders reoffend on release.

Some 50% of prisoners have a drug problem, and 50% lack basic literacy and maths. Although we can bring much change within prisons to combat drug use and illiteracy rates—I support what the Government are trying to do, although we cannot discuss that today—we can and should start the reform process at the point of sentencing, before offenders even enter prison.

I argue that when passing sentence, a judge should be able to prescribe, as part of the sentence, compulsory completion of a literacy course when the offender is illiterate and of a drug testing and rehabilitation course when they have a drug problem. I would go further: I do not believe that we are sufficiently addressing the incentive to the prisoner. I seek a change to the process for release on licence and, possibly, a change whereby deductions are offered for specific success at passing either literacy or drug rehabilitation courses.

Before I get into the nuts and bolts of my speech, I should make a declaration that I have written a book on the issue, the worthy “Doing Time”, all proceeds from which go to charity. There is no personal benefit to myself. My ideas, which I talk about today, are more fully expressed in the book. I am a former criminal and legal aid barrister. I conducted nine murder trials on both sides of the fence and between 150 and 180 Crown court and magistrates court trials. As most criminal barristers will know, I am still owed money by the state, even though I have not practised at the bar for two years and seven months. I am grateful to all those who assisted me in the creation of the ideas in the book and to all the prisoners, governors and charities who helped and suggested the ideas that we are trying to expand on today.

The principle today is that we require prisoners to do something to qualify for the privilege of early release, thereby benefiting the wider community by being better able to cope with the outside world on release. At present, if a prisoner does not start a fire in the prison or does not commit some tremendous offence, release on licence is effectively automatic, the consequence being that the persons released are, by and large, ill equipped to deal with the outside world that they have to face. How do we know this? There is copious evidence from august bodies, such as the Centre for Social Justice, showing that 82% of all prisoners have writing abilities less than an 11-year-old’s, approximately 50% were excluded from school and have no qualifications and only one in five could complete a job application form. And we wonder why those people fail to become law-abiding members of society after release.

Prison numbers have doubled from 43,000 to 87,000 over the past 20 years and literacy and drug problems are often worse than before. In the prison in Durham, 300 out of 1,000 prisoners are on methadone or Subutex and 20% in most prisons will be taking illegal drugs. Many prisoners combine both. It is not surprising that we are struggling, if we are releasing people who are drug addicted into the community.

Many of the clients I represented as an advocate were incapable of giving meaningful written instructions or even reading the prosecution papers. Too often, they would say, for example, “My letters aren’t so good”, and they too frequently signed their names with an X. Reading and writing are the fundamental precursors to any job. Someone cannot even be a builder’s labourer in this day and age without the ability to read and write. There should be, where possible, a compulsory requirement for a prisoner to learn.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I declare an interest. I, too, was a barrister and prosecuted and defended. I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and pay tribute to him for his excellent book, “Doing Time,” which contains a comment from Lord Justice Maurice Kay, saying what a wonderful book it is. It is a good book.

I agree with my hon. Friend about literacy: defendants often go into and come out of prison illiterate. Does he agree that when an individual goes into prison their skills should be assessed? For example, they may suffer from dyslexia or other issues. At the moment, everything else is assessed, but dyslexia is not. As my hon. Friend knows, dyslexia affects communication.

[Guy Opperman]

I endorse my hon. Friend’s point. One could go further on dyslexia. Dyslexia, like total illiteracy, is hidden by many prisoners in prison, because it is effectively a crime for them to admit that they cannot read or write or are dyslexic or dyspraxic. Unless that is tested for on arrival, there will be no awareness in the prisons of what kind of person they are dealing with.

Let us be in no doubt. No hon. Member in this Chamber, and no one in my party, has any difficulty sending people to prison, because they clearly should go there for the appropriate offence. That is not an issue. What is at issue is what we do with them when they are in prison, because that is when the redemption and rehabilitation should take place. Once the prisoner is captive, we need to teach them the basic skills that their parents, their school and their society have failed to provide them with.

There are many areas in which we can work to correct the issue. Notably, there could be a better approach from the Ministry of Justice, although doubtless we will hear many of the great things that it is trying to do. I am a massive supporter of peer mentoring, both outside prison—I welcome what the Secretary of State is doing—and inside. I will try to address that. Staff training needs to be improved. I welcome the improvements that I gather are taking place at prison officer training courses. There has to be a change in the attitude of, and constraints on, governors. It is scandalous that for too long, the 47 key performance indicators that determined how a prison governor was operating were all fundamentally to do with security and not about rehabilitation. That is patently wrong and I am glad that we are changing it.

[Rehman Chishti]

On rehabilitation, does my hon. Friend agree and understand that there is a problem in respect of prisoners on short sentences, because proper continuity of treatment cannot be provided if they are transferred between prisons?

[Guy Opperman]

There is no question but that the problem with short sentences is the most difficult task that the Minister who holds the portfolio at the present stage has to deal with. It is much easier dealing with a longer term prisoner, because there are all the benefits of time and, hopefully, security of tenure in a particular prison. I deprecate our moving prisoners around all the time and that there is no specific locality. I accept that it is difficult, but it is not impossible. The mentoring schemes and the work that we are trying to do must be the answer, and the basis on which we are trying to deal with the short sentence problem.

There is take-up, and we have discussed it briefly, and doubtless I will be told that there are programmes to teach basic literacy skills. However, participation in such programmes is highly limited. Prisoners are, without question, unenthusiastic to volunteer for such programmes, swallowing their pride about their failure in respect of literacy. There are also issues to do with whether they could earn more money doing work, rather than learning a skill. There is lack of incentive.

The National Audit Office recently summed up the current system with a damning statistic:

“Only one fifth of prisoners, with serious literacy or numeracy needs, enrol on a course that would help them.”

The consequence is that even if there were all the classes in the world and money was poured on to the problem, if there is only 20% take-up, the ability to transform such individuals will be seriously compromised.

I have no doubt that the Minister will tell me that the offenders’ learning and skills service phase 4 programme and the prisoner sentence plans are good ways forward, and to a degree they are; but prisoner sentence plans are, with no disrespect to the Opposition and the former Government, a classic, old-style Labour, tick-box Ministry of Justice approach, which, however worthy, has little positive effect. During the preparation of the book, I spoke to prisoners and I am clear that there is lack of incentive. The incentive is the key.

There is a solution from the courts. We can identify the problem at an early stage, on a relatively cost-neutral basis, and the judge can then pass a sentence imposing a literacy course as part of that sentence. Instead of the prison choosing to do that, the judge makes the order, which is part of the sentence. If it is left to a prison governor’s choice, depending on where an individual is sent, it will be a struggle. It would make the efficacy of prison so much better, because that prisoner could then be sent to a place that specifically deals with literacy or drugs courses, in the context of all our prisons.

Sentence deductions for completing such courses is the way forward. Such an approach is radical and, I accept, needs some piloting—it will not happen straightaway —but professionals at organisations such as the Shannon Trust, which I urge the Minister to hold close to him as the leader in this particular field, are enthusiastic about the idea. They make the point that unless the inmate is willingly engaged, we will struggle to deal with the problem. To make progress, therefore, we have to incentivise. The individual prisoner’s knowledge that the acquisition of literacy and other skills could secure him an early release date is a proper incentive, producing the manifest benefit of a cheaper prison system, which is of less cost to the taxpayer and allows us to spend our money on all the other things that we wish to spend it on. Furthermore, the people who emerge at the end of the process will be far better able to deal with their difficulties.

In short, at present the judges lack such a power; it is held only post-licence. In other words, the judge has the power to order those conditions for release on licence but, frankly, the horse has bolted and is gone. The moment that people are released on licence, their fundamental behaviour cannot be changed—we have to change it while they are captive. The power already exists on licence, so it is a short step for it to be acted on in prison. We need to teach prisoners to read and write, which is a proper part of their sentence, in addition to simple captivity.

To move on to the matter of drugs, the Government are doing good work following the CSJ, Huseyin Djemil and Blakely reports—all of which I endorse—to address progress in rehabilitation. The failure to test prisoners on entry to and release from prison, however, is bizarre. We end up with a form of Russian roulette. Fifty per cent of people in prison are drug addicted in some shape or form, but when they arrive they are only asked a voluntary question, “Are you drug addicted?” Patently, many lie. Some even bring drugs in with them when they enter prison, but we do not test them. Five in 10 going into prison are drug addicted, but we do not know who they are. How on earth can the governor properly deal with such matters and how on earth can the Government money that we are spending on such expensive institutions properly be targeted on those individuals? It is all very well teaching inmates to read and write—literacy—and all manner of skills, but if they are drug addicted when they emerge, whether to substitutes such as methadone or still to heroin, the drug of choice in prisons, it will be of no benefit.

I want compulsory testing, because it is surely better to know the problems before people enter the system. I stress the need to test at prison, although it might be considered for courthouses, because the problem is fundamentally obvious when one enters a Crown court. All Members present in the Chamber were lawyers in their former lives. In my time I represented a man who stole more than 150 times over 150 days, at £25 a pop, breaking into cars to get money for a heroin fix. The police would very much like the information that such a person was heroin addicted upon his release. We do not know what we are dealing with, but we can do something about it.

If a judge was able to order drug treatment and testing as part of a sentence, and it was properly enforced—there are plenty of schemes in prison, the best known and most successful being the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust or RAPt programme—the prison, and the authorities on an inmate’s release, would know whether it had been successful. As well as simple incarceration, surely the object of the custody exercise is to change the behaviour of the individuals; if we are not detoxing them to become non-addicted to drugs, what on earth are we trying to do by sending people to prison? We should bear in mind, too, that 20% of all people who take drugs say that they tried them for the first time in prison. That is a sobering statistic.

I want incentives and deductions applied for automatic release, and release on licence must also be addressed in that way. If a prisoner is proposed for release on licence and has a drug condition as part of their sentence, but is not shown to be clean at its end, why on earth should we release that individual on licence? Release is a massive incentive for them. I would go further and ask the Ministry of Justice to consider whether, if we wish to incentivise, we should tie the two fundamental conditions that are key to changing prisoner behaviour to possible further sentence deductions. Hypothetically, on a two-year custodial sentence, one might be looking at a one to three-month deduction for successful completion of a literacy or drugs course. Surely that must be the way forward.

To conclude, if we simply ignore prisoners, lock them up and then discharge them with no skills, we will continue to have a repetition of the appalling statistics of 60% to 70% reoffending, in spite of all the best efforts of governors and Government. What I suggest is a potential way forward.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

It is a great pleasure to respond to the debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) on securing it.

The debate is not only important but timely, because the Government will soon be publishing our plans to make a radical change in how we support the rehabilitation of offenders. My hon. Friend is rightly concerned with that new focus on rehabilitation both in this debate and in his excellent book “Doing Time: Prisons in the 21st Century”—no doubt available in all good booksellers and an excellent stocking filler. I congratulate him. He has eloquently set out today the issues that face us in tackling offenders’ problems with literacy and substance misuse. Both are significant causes of offending and reoffending.

I agree with much of what my hon. Friend suggests, but let me respond in detail to some of the specific issues that he and others have raised in this debate and elsewhere. Let me start with his suggestion that the courts should mandate participation in literacy programmes and drug treatment. The courts already play an important role in framing the content of community orders and suspended sentences. Informed by pre-sentence reports and medical evidence, the courts can use treatment requirements to address drug addiction. They can also impose programme or activity requirements that might involve literacy courses. My hon. Friend suggests that offenders sentenced to custody should be compelled into education, that early release could provide an incentive for completing courses and that offenders entering custody with drug problems should be compelled to receive treatment.

In his book, my hon. Friend acknowledges—I agree with him—that using sentencing in that way is “admittedly difficult”. It is important to remember that drug treatment ordered by a court would be lawful, or effective, only if it happened with the offender’s consent. That is how drug rehabilitation requirements work at present.

Equally, we need a release framework that operates fairly for all offenders, whether or not they are literate on arrival in prison. That said, I want to ensure that prisoners have incentives to engage in positive and constructive activity during their time in custody. For example, I am reviewing privileges in prison and the rules that currently apply to them. In this and other areas of policy, I want to ensure that we have a system that encourages offenders to engage with the support we offer, as my hon. Friend said.

On literacy, my hon. Friend mentioned his experience as a barrister dealing in criminal law—an experience I share, so I ought to declare my interest as everyone else in the debate has, although the last time I received any legal aid fees was even longer ago than he did. From my experience, I am aware, as he is, of the difficulties that many prisoners have with basic reading and writing. Many prisoners also experience a range of other barriers to learning, whether they be mental illness, poor thinking skills, communication difficulties, sight and hearing problems or previous negative experiences.

We are placing a strong focus on assessing prisoners’ learning needs and when a literacy need is identified, it will be addressed as a matter of priority. My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) mentioned other learning difficulties, dyslexia among them, and was right to identify that as a significant issue among the prison population. We make every effort to identify that as early as possible, and learning providers in particular have a responsibility to do so.

Other things are being done to target prisoners with literacy problems, and to incentivise them to address those issues. We are working with education providers to develop engaging and motivating courses to target resistant learners particularly. Those courses will be marketed by prison staff as part of the prison induction process.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham talked about the Shannon Trust, and he is right to recognise its significant contribution. I fully support its work, and have met its staff for discussions, and I am sure I will do so again. We are committed to the use of peer mentors to support reading schemes such as its Toe by Toe project, and my officials are looking at how prison staff can better support its work. My hon. Friend is right to identify peer mentors as a significant step forward in dealing with prisoners who do not, as he said, want to admit their literacy problems.

[Guy Opperman]

Does the Minister accept that there is a potential role for long-term prison inmates—prisoners in prison—to be peer mentors to other prisoners who have just arrived and need literacy or other courses? Clearly, the people prisoners trust most are other prisoners, and that is no disrespect to individual staff.

[Jeremy Wright]

Yes, I agree. That is absolutely right, and it is very much what happens now, although we would like it to happen a lot more. The Toe by Toe project particularly is a good example, but there is considerable scope for more peer mentoring, and for more established prisoners helping those who are newly arrived—not only with reading and literacy, but across a whole range of other things. I have seen very good examples of that, and I want to see more. Prisoners often find that working with carefully selected and trained peer mentors—they must be that—can be much less threatening than the classroom environment.

There is a problem, as my hon. Friend said, with shorter sentences, and the difficulty of addressing such problems over a short time frame. That is why we are piloting intensive maths and English courses in prisons, similar to those used by the Army, particularly to address the needs of prisoners serving short sentences.

We have also focused on vocational training and preparing prisoners for employment during their final year in prison. Those courses are closely linked to developing the skills needed by employers in the areas in which offenders will be released.

[Guy Opperman]

May I take the Minister back to consent? He said that it would be difficult to impose conditions on a judicial sentence attached to custody without consent. Indeterminate sentences for public protection were introduced in that way, and it is also the case with community orders, so there is no fundamental principle between a community sentence and a sentence on licence, both of which exist with a condition attached, and a sentence of custody with an imposition of a requirement to carry out these matters. Does he accept that?

[Jeremy Wright]

The issue is practical rather than legal. My hon. Friend will recognise that to get an offender to engage properly, whether they have a drug addiction or literacy problems, they must do so voluntarily, because a compulsory arrangement will not deliver the results that we all want. That is very much the message that I have heard from the Shannon Trust, as he has.

I recognise that there are always opportunities to impose restrictions on offenders, whether in the context of community sentences or licence conditions, but we must seek to incentivise prisoners to do what we know they need to do to minimise their risk of reoffending. That will be partly by persuasion, and partly by ensuring that they are prepared to engage with the provision so that they get out of it what they need. I understand my hon. Friend’s point.