Prisons: Staff Safety

Debate between Lord Dholakia and Lord Faulks

Monday 11th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his thorough criticism and the questions that he raises about the state of our prisons and the safety of staff and indeed of other prisoners. We freely acknowledge that there is a problem and that we have to do something about it. It is not a problem that is easily solved and, as the Statement indicated, there are a number of factors. There is an increase in the number of violent offenders in our prisons. Substantial problems have been caused as a result of the use of psychoactive substances. It is clearly far less than desirable that prisoners should be locked in their cells for long periods and not engaged in purposeful activity. The Secretary of State clearly wants to involve as many people as possible and as many organisations as possible in trying to improve the situation. That was why he invited the BBC into Wormwood Scrubs to see the conditions there.

There has been new funding of £10 million for prison safety, allocated as appropriate, and that will be supplemented by £2.9 million from existing budgets so that a significant number of governors—those facing the greatest challenges—will have an opportunity to improve safety levels. There is also £1.3 billion, which the Secretary of State secured from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to modernise the prison estate. That will be a long-term project, but one which the Secretary of State is most anxious to help with.

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, our prisons are overcrowded and understaffed, with the result that prisons are now less safe and less secure than ever before. Does the Minister accept that the root cause of the problem, as has just been mentioned, is the unacceptably high level of the prison population? This makes some of our prisons almost unmanageable. Now that Mr Gove has fewer things on his mind, could we have clarity about how he intends to reduce the numbers so that the prisons’ objective of rehabilitation is met?

[Lord Faulks]

The noble Lord, whose interest in these matters is well understood and appreciated by the House, points to the prison population. Of course, the number of people in prison is a result of decisions by judges, passing sentences that they consider appropriate for those particular offences. In my experience, judges do not send an offender to prison unless no other appropriate means of dealing with the offender can be found.

The number of people in prison clearly presents challenges to the staff. But there are other factors, as I have already indicated, which can cause this escalation of violence. We have a widespread strategy under the violence reduction project to deal with this, including the use of body-worn cameras, a violence diagnostic tool and a number of other different efforts to try to identify where pressure points are in terms of violence and how best to combat them.

Prisons: Violence

Debate between Lord Dholakia and Lord Faulks

Monday 9th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, of course, any outbreak of violence, wherever it takes place, is concerning. The noble Lord referred particularly to Medway and Rainsbrook. On Medway, I hope to be able to update the House shortly, following the inquiry into how Medway Secure Training Centre had been run in the wake of the “Panorama” programme.

In the Statement, I said that there was no single solution. It is significant that there is violence in all sorts and types of prisons, so one must beware of thinking that there is one particular solution. I take the noble Lord’s point about the very useful and seminal report prepared by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, following the Strangeways riots in Manchester, which provided a lot of guidance to prison management in future. We will learn from that and from all these events. As the noble Lord will be aware, reports are shortly to be published on education and mental health in prisons. All that will help to inform the substantial reform that I mentioned, and we hope that that will contribute to stamping out the violence.

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, there are two aspects that are matters of concern. One was mentioned in the Statement: the use of psychoactive drugs and the extent to which that could destabilise the control of discipline in prisons. The Minister has not mentioned the other one, though, so I wonder if he could throw some light on the extensive use of severe and harsh sentences. They are one of the causes of overcrowding, which ultimately results in the type of violence that we saw in Wormwood Scrubs.

[Lord Faulks]

The question of sentences is difficult. As the noble Lord will know, the choice of sentence is a matter for the judge in the individual case and generally will reflect the severity of the offences that have been committed. From time to time Parliament will intervene—notoriously, for example, with IPP prisoners—and set certain parameters within which judges have to sentence certain offenders. The fact is that there is currently a higher cohort of violent offenders in prison than there has been for some considerable time. Together with the substantial difficulty caused by psychoactive substances, that contributes to the problem of violence in prisons. It is important not to generalise too much about sentences. A sentence should be long enough to reflect the seriousness of the offence but short enough to give the offender a chance to rehabilitate and give them some hope. In due course, through the work that we are doing on rehabilitation, we hope to ensure that when people leave prison they do not return, because of course the biggest increase in prison sentences is for those coming back again through the prison door.

Prisons: Violence

Debate between Lord Dholakia and Lord Faulks

Thursday 3rd March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

On the positive side, the female prison population is now under 4,000—the lowest it has ever been. In the speech I referred to earlier, the Prime Minister made a particular point of the importance of finding alternative ways of dealing with women offenders, preferably avoiding sending them to prison altogether, which has been very much the trend with sentencing. Of course, there will be an irreducible number who have to be sent to prison. Although the noble Baroness is quite right that any suicide in prison is a matter of complete regret, and self-harm is equally concerning, we are in the process of modernising the prison estate to ensure that there are the best regimes and that women are held in environments that better meet their gender-specific needs.

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister must have read the report in 2015 by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons—a devastating report that talks about violence and poor conditions in our prisons. The most disturbing aspect of the report and the allegation made by the then Chief Inspector, Nick Hardwick was that the Secretary of State tried to influence his report. Will the Minister make sure that that sort of thing does not happen in future? Public confidence will be eroded if independent reports by prison inspectors are interfered with by Ministers.

[Lord Faulks]

The noble Lord is right to suggest that the report by Mr Hardwick was unfavourable in a number of respects. The Government will learn lessons from what he said. It is important that we should take on board an objective analysis of that. It is perhaps an indication of the Secretary of State’s willingness to embrace criticism that he has appointed Mr Hardwick to have continued involvement in the criminal justice system, by his appointment as chair of the Parole Board. I hope that the noble Lord will accept that that is a real sign of somebody getting to grips with a critical friend of the system.

Criminal Justice: Secure College

Debate between Lord Dholakia and Lord Faulks

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulks]

I am happy to convey the good wishes of your Lordships’ House to the Secretary of State. As to the spend, it will not be recovered. The pathfinder designs could be used or adapted to other forms of youth or adult custody in the future, and alternative provision could be developed on the prepared site at Glen Parva. However, the noble Lord and the House may be relieved to know that we will not be spending £85 million on the secure college.

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister agree that the purpose of the secure colleges, as against secure training centres, was to double the time available for education in these prison establishments, thus leading to better job opportunities for inmates on release? Now that this option is not available, and bearing in mind the shocking report produced by the prison inspector about the lack of staffing in prisons, how will these objectives be met, and what will be the future role of the Youth Justice Board in providing the type of education required?

[Lord Faulks]

The noble Lord is right that the secure college had at its heart the ambition of improving the provision of education for young offenders. As he will know from his experience in this area, a large majority of them have either been expelled from school or not attended school, and many of them are barely literate or numerate. The Government intend to focus very much on the education of young people. Since March 2015 a greater focus on education has followed, and the number of hours of education available to young people has more than doubled. However, we are not complacent.