Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Madeleine Moon Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling]

I refer to what Labour said in 2010—that it could not do that. The hon. Lady and her colleagues said very clearly that they could not afford to proceed with custody plus—the scheme that they brought forward that would enable the probation service to provide supervision for these offenders. We have come up with a way of doing that. Labour said that in 2010—just before the last election. That is the reality of what we are dealing with. We are talking about people who go on and on and on committing crimes, unsupervised. I see that as the real public safety scandal; it is a flaw in our system that I want to solve and Labour Members seem not to want to solve.

Sadly, it is no surprise that reoffending rates for this group are so high. The average time served in custody for that group is only nine weeks—not nearly long enough to tackle these issues while in prison. After that, they are released at the halfway point with £46 in their pocket and little or no support. Some engage with voluntary rehabilitation programmes after their release, but at the moment there is no mandatory period of supervision in the community. That is what this Bill changes. The core of the change in this Bill is the delivery of 12 months of supervision for those people.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

The 35 probation trusts across England and Wales have been judged either good or excellent. Why is it not right that they cover serious and persistent offenders who have served short sentences? The right hon. Gentleman feels that this change can be done within the current £8 billion decade budget for the probation service, but how can there be no cuts to probation and such an extension into short-term sentences unless the task remained with the probation service? Otherwise, probation services would have to be cut.

[Chris Grayling]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady has not understood what we are seeking to achieve. The Select Committee observed, in a good piece of work, that the present system was far too bureaucratic, and that only a minority of probation time was spent on working with offenders. We are seeking to create a simpler system in which we give much more professional freedom to those on the front line. We want to deliver an environment in which we can mentor and support people, and we want to bring together the best of the public, private and voluntary sectors, not only to make the system more efficient but to deliver high-quality mentoring.

The hon. Lady raised the question of performance. The probation trusts are currently hitting many targets, but there is one simple reality at the heart of all this: reoffending is currently increasing, and I do not think that that is good enough.

Let me explain some of what the Bill will actually do. Clause 2 provides for this group of offenders to spend the second half of their sentences subject to licence conditions in the community, like all other prisoners. Clause 3 creates an innovative period of additional supervision, which is added to the licence to make a total of 12 months' mandatory rehabilitation and support after release. I think that that is the least that we should have in our system; it is extraordinary that we do not have it already.

The supervision period is there not to punish offenders, but to help them to move away from crime. We want those who work with offenders to try new, innovative approaches to rehabilitation. I look forward to seeing the voluntary sector, for example, playing a much larger role. We all see good work done in that sector, and I want to see more of it being done in our formal systems.

A range of flexible requirements can be imposed during the supervision period. They are set out in schedule 1, and include participating in rehabilitative activities including restorative justice, being tested for drugs, and attending appointments to address drug misuse. Those requirements are designed to give those who work with offenders the ability to steer them during the months after their release from prison. The freedom to innovate will be critical to the driving down of reoffending rates in this group.

We are focusing particularly on drug use, which is common among offenders who are serving custodial sentences. Two thirds of those who are serving sentences of less than 12 months have used class A drugs, while three quarters have used class B or class C drugs. Drug use among prisoners is also strongly associated with reconviction on release. The rate of reconviction among prisoners who report having used drugs in the four weeks before custody is more than double the rate among those who have never used drugs. That applies to drugs in class A, class B and class C.

Clause 12 expands the current power to test offenders for drugs while they are on licence to include class B as well as class A drugs. Schedule 1 creates an equivalent testing condition for the supervision period that will follow the licence period. All that is an essential part of trying to ensure that when people come out of prison, we do all that we can to move them off drugs as quickly as possible, in a regime in which they are obliged to take part.

Let me now explain what will happen if an offender does not engage with supervision. Breach of any of the supervision requirements will be dealt with by the magistrates courts, and there will be an important new role for lay justices and district judges. Clause 4 provides a flexible set of sanctions that magistrates may—not must—impose if a breach is proved. They can impose a fine, between 20 and 60 hours of community payback, a curfew with an electronic tag, or committal back to custody. There is no “escalator” approach requiring a more onerous sanction to be used if a lighter-touch one has been imposed before.

The Bill also makes reforms to the two types of sentence that are served in the community—suspended sentence orders and community orders. Reoffending rates following those sentences are less stark than those following short prison sentences, but it is no less important for us to address them. Nearly everyone who ends up in our prisons has previously served a community sentence, and many of those people experience problems similar to those experienced by short-sentence offenders: problems involving mental health, alcohol consumption and drug misuse. Clause 15 creates a new rehabilitation activity requirement to mirror the new supervision condition that will be available for offenders who are released from short prison sentences. As with the top-up supervision period created by clause 3, that will provide maximum flexibility for those working with offenders, enabling them to instruct them to attend appointments or participate in activities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Grayling]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The sad thing is that a partnership of the private sector and the voluntary sector and the state has been proven to work in many cases. In Peterborough it is working really well. When the Labour Government passed the Offender Management Act in 2007, they talked extensively about the benefits to be gained from such a partnership. It is sad that they are now seeking to block such a partnership in other debates, and today they are using that as an excuse to try to block a measure that they themselves say they support. Frankly, they are all over the place.

The other part of what we are looking to do involves the creation of a proper through-the-gate system. It is a key part of a wider programme to transform how we rehabilitate offenders. The providers that we will bring into the system will offer a resettlement service for all offenders in custody before their release of the kind that is being provided in Peterborough. It is important that we align the prison system and the geographic areas for release afterwards to make sure these reforms can be as geographically synchronised as possible. The changes we are making to our prison system to create a network of resettlement prisons will ensure that, where possible, the same offender manager will work with offenders in custody and continue their rehabilitation work in the community. I believe that can make a significant difference and can help reinforce the measures in this Bill.

[Mrs Moon]

There are no prisons for women in Wales. All women offenders sentenced to a prison term serve their sentence outside Wales. How will that be managed if we are looking at offender managers working from prisons and back in the communities? The majority of offenders are men, and the probation service has a proven track record of working well with women. How will the Justice Secretary ensure that the private sector does not just look at offenders as male, but has programmes designed specifically for women returning to Wales?

[Chris Grayling]

Clearly, we will see the same level of support provided for women and men. The hon. Lady will, of course, have seen in the document we published recently on women offenders that our direction of travel is clearly towards creating smaller units close to where women live, so that we can maintain the family ties. We are trialling a new approach at HMP Styal in Cheshire, whereby we will have a hostel under the wing of the Prison Service, but outside a prison institution, with open conditions. We are looking to see whether we can deliver a different kind of model for the detention of women offenders that can make a genuine difference to them. Successive Governments have wanted to achieve support through the gate for short-sentence offenders, and we will seek to achieve it for men and women alike.