Love Matters (Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households Report)

Lord Bishop of Gloucester Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, I will try to do even better than 10 minutes. I am grateful to my most reverend friend the Archbishop of Canterbury for putting forward this Motion. I should like to focus my remarks on families and children in relation to the criminal justice system, and particularly imprisonment, and I declare an interest as Anglican Bishop for Prisons in England and Wales.

Jesus Christ once placed a child front and centre as he taught his listeners. I want to use that image simply to pose the idea that we would navigate things differently, we would see different sorts of manifestos committed to the long-term and make better policies if the child were always the central focus and starting point for all our policy-making. It seems that so much of government policy is focused on short-term fixing for the now or a few years’ time. What would it look like if policy and legislation were shaped in response to the child born today into a network of relationships, and then their life as an adult in 20 or 30 years’ time?

This means investing more intentionally in the early years and family life. I say that as someone who was once a paediatrics speech and language therapist with training in family therapy. We need a systemic approach with a long-term view. Data published by the Ministry of Justice shows that 57% of adult prisoners have literacy levels below that of an 11-year-old, and we know that 42% of prisoners were expelled or excluded from school. What is going wrong upstream, not least in families, that leads to these statistics? Although not linear, research has shown how important it is to be aware of adverse childhood experiences when considering the causes of offending. As you have heard me say many times, prison costs between £50,000 and £60,000 per person, per year. Then add to that the social and economic cost of reoffending, estimated at £18 billion per annum. Much of this could be spent upstream, focusing on the multiple layers underlying the causes of crime, not least with a focus on early years, the child and the family.

Looking at those who are in prison, we should be focusing on rehabilitation, with relationship at its heart. At present, over 50% of those serving a sentence of under a year go on to reoffend. This is not good for offenders, victims, families or communities. Focusing resources on addressing homelessness, addiction and purposeful work is vital to reducing reoffending, and front and centre is the importance of stable and affirming relationships. I found it very interesting to discover that people in Dutch prisons work on their reintegration from day one of their sentence, which includes having to focus on their social networks. This connects to the significant reviews of the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, on family ties. Prisoners visited by family or a partner are 39% less likely to commit another crime.

If sentencing focused on the child and the family, we would make stronger use of community sentencing and other options for non-violent offenders. That would include ways of strengthening social networks and healthy family ties. It would also mean, I believe, that we would change our policy on sending pregnant women to prison, not least given the stats on stillbirth, premature birth and even death. Where is the focus on the child? Then there are all those children in households which are impacted by parental imprisonment. It is estimated that more than 300,000 children have a parent in prison, but we do not know the exact number because there is no statutory way of recording these children or even knowing where they are.

As the prison population continues to rise, so does the number of children and families impacted, and parental imprisonment is recognised as one of those adverse childhood experiences which contributes to long-term health and social problems. There is an excellent recent film produced by the charity, Children Heard and Seen. It highlights horrifically the impact on a child when their parent is in prison. It ranges from reduced educational achievement and mental and physical well-being, through to losing their home and their school. Perhaps it is good to be reminded that almost 25% of the adult prison population have previously been in care. Nearly half of under 21 year-olds in contact with the criminal justice system have spent time in care. No child should be punished as a result of their parent’s offending. Early interventions by charities such as Children Heard and Seen need to be mainstreamed, and we need statutory provision to identify these children to ensure appropriate support for the long-term good—for everyone.

I was very pleased to hear the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, talk about the importance of listening to children in order to stop those intergenerational cycles of offending and reoffending. What we are doing is not good for families, for communities, for victims and offenders who are part of those families and communities. Unsurprisingly, recent research by the Prison Advice and Care Trust found that prisoners’ families are affected emotionally and financially. This might include losing a household income, as well as the cost of simply visiting someone in prison. Of course, the bigger picture, as I said, includes the children, young people, families and communities impacted by crime. All of this makes for more fractures in communities and conveys a subconscious message that love and relationships do not really matter.

The public narrative shaped by media headlines is that we need to be tougher on crime, and that equates to locking more people up and for longer to make our streets safer and our communities stronger. It is not true, and it is not supported by data or evidence. Actually, what we are doing is a soft option, particularly when there is no focus on rehabilitation and meaningful relationships when people are in prison. How often do we even hear the word love when it comes to criminal justice?

Let me say again: we are not serving offenders, victims, families or communities well. The tough option would be to look systemically at what we are doing, to ask what prisons are for, to put the child—one day to be an adult—front and centre and ask what we hope our interventions are really going to achieve long term. And to name love. If we agree with the Archbishops’ commission that loving families are central to the well-being of adults and children living in all types of households, then I believe we need to be asking what this means for reform in our criminal justice system.