Better Prisons: Less Crime (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and to be part of a debate where we have five maiden speeches, three of which have taken place and were very impressive. I add my welcome to the five new noble Lords. I look forward to the remaining two speeches.

I welcome this report, which focuses on what happens in prison. Its statistic that reoffending accounts for 80% of the costs of offending is shocking, because it strongly suggests that prison is not working to rehabilitate people. Preventing reoffending requires prison to tackle criminogenic needs—the changeable factors in a prisoner’s life that directly influence their risk of reoffending. Lack of healthy, pro-social relationships is female prisoners’ greatest criminogenic need and men’s second-highest, exceeded only by the closely related lifestyle and associates need. We will never see the much-needed step change in rehabilitation unless we harness the power of good relationships throughout the system.

Better Prisons: Less Crime mentions this 10 times and emphasises the difference that good staff-to-staff, as well as staff-to-prisoner, relationships can make. It mentions HMP Woodhill, and I attended the inspection where it was given an urgent notification. One response to this has been staff better supporting staff. The Minister and I and other noble Lords visited HMP Belmarsh recently and talked to the exceptional governor there about her successful buddy system, where more experienced officers come alongside new recruits, which is helping greatly with retention. Better Prisons: Less Crime gives education more than 100 mentions and employment more than 30. Yet my first report to government on the importance of strengthening family and other relational ties to prevent reoffending and intergenerational crimes said:

“Supportive relationships with family members and significant others give meaning and all-important motivation to other strands of rehabilitation and resettlement activity”.


Ensuring that prisoners have good relationships should top the hierarchy of goals. The Government’s own starting point for commissioning my two reviews was that those who receive family visits are 39% less likely to reoffend than those who do not, making this the most successful rehabilitation pathway. I have had much pushback on this, especially criticism that this focus is being soft on crime. My response to this is that if we lower reoffending by helping prisoners cultivate good relationships, with all that this entails—lower court costs, less crime, fewer victims, more children growing up with reformed parents in work—we are actually being hard on crime. Can the Minister advise how prisons are emphasising the need for good relationships?

I still work with HMPPS and the MoJ on this agenda, and this policy area has some very vocational civil servants dedicated to bringing about system and culture change. My review’s implementation treats relationships as the golden thread running through all processes in prison and probation, influencing how staff, from governors to newly recruited officers, treat prisoners, support each other and engage with the wider community. An extrovert prison purposefully builds relationships with the outside world. Some prisons now run community days for the 50% or so of prisoners who do not receive social visits. People come in from local organisations as living reminders of what life is like outside. They help prepare prisoners ahead of release, pointing them away from criminal associates by providing alternatives. Some are prison-experienced themselves and are a powerful encouragement that change is possible.

Focus has now widened to the role that good peer-to-peer support plays in rehabilitation. Prisons lack in many areas, but what they have in abundance is prisoners—and prisoners can be an asset. I sat in a peer support project in HMP Bullingdon alongside the area executive director, who said that one of the mentors had form as the major troublemaker in other local prisons. That mentor testified to how much his role had changed him:

“For years, I would respond to all authority with violence, and where did it get me? I tell mentees, I was just as angry and frustrated as them, but sharing that built good friendships that helped us both change and stay out of trouble”.


This project had support from the very top and a senior and highly skilled supervisor who could identify prisoners likely to be good mentors.

Every wing in every prison needs these programmes. Before HMP Dartmoor shut down, a similar programme, Peaceful Solutions, significantly changed it into a calmer prison, one result being that officer recruitment became much easier despite the remote location. So can the Minister outline how approaches with the potential to change prison culture by harnessing the power of pro -social prisoner-to-prisoner relationships are progressing?