Support for Prisoners’ Families

Mel Stride Excerpts

Friday 12th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to raise the important issue of prisoners’ families. I thank my hon. Friend the prisons Minister for agreeing to answer on behalf of the Government and for his help and the time he has given me on this issue over a long period, including meeting my constituent, Mary Stephenson, and the String of Pearls project some weeks ago.

There are around 3.7 million recorded crimes in this country every year. For each of those crimes there is at least one direct victim, and in many cases many direct victims. However, that should not mean that we overlook what many refer to as the hidden victims: prisoners’ families. Approximately 160,000 children in this country currently have one or both parents inside prison. That is approximately twice the number of children in care and more than the number who suffer as a consequence of the divorce of their parents in any one year. Those children are three times as likely to suffer from mental health problems as other children in society. More than 60% of young boys who have one parent incarcerated are likely to go on to offend and go into prison later in their lives as a consequence.

Families on the outside often suffer the social stigma of the communities in which they live. It is often assumed that families have brought these problems on themselves. Children at school might suffer bullying and many of these families might find more solace in the local criminal fraternity than they do among their neighbours and the communities in which they live. Many families suffer emotional problems, stresses and financial problems, particularly where the individual in prison has previously been the breadwinner. Families also suffer problems in visiting their loved ones in prisons, especially when many of the prisons are a long way from home. The Minister may be able to provide some more recent information in a few moments, but I know that in 2003 some 11,000 prisoners were incarcerated at a distance greater than 100 miles from where their family lived.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my book, which covers some of the issues on this subject, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he recall that in 2007 a large number of charities, led by the Prison Reform Trust, reported to the inter-ministerial group on reducing reoffending, and that the findings were that

“prisoners who received visits from their family were twice as likely to gain employment on release and three times as likely to have accommodation arranged as those who did not receive any visits”?

Is not the heart of the point that it underlines the lack of reoffending, which is what we also seek?

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and congratulate him on the deep and detailed research he carried out for the production of his book. I very much take his point: it is essential that families are connected to prisoners for, among other reasons, the reason he has just elaborated. It is not just the ability of families to connect with their loved ones in prisons that matters, as the quality of the experience when they do is also important, as I shall explain in a few moments.

The issue is not just about the suffering of families, because it is the value of the families in the rehabilitation process that really matters. It is a fact that where a prisoner comes out of prison into a family environment—gaining the support identified by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman)—they are 40% less likely to reoffend than if there were no family there to support them. The economic costs to our criminal justice system of reoffending are, of course, absolutely immense, running in excess of £10 billion a year. The beneficial effects are felt not only by those being released but by their children, and we can see demonstrable reductions in inter-generational crime resulting from the presence of families and their support for prisoners on release.

The support from families comes while the prisoners are inside prison, and I think one of the most important aspects of prison visits and connections between families and prisoners is that they are there to remind those inside what is happening outside so that when prisoners leave they will have very real personal responsibilities and it will be for them to tackle them. It is also known that where family visits and contacts with prisoners are facilitated, the likelihood of self-harming among prisoners is reduced, as indeed is the likelihood of suicide.

Outside prison, family contact helps, as my hon. Friend indicated, in the provision of jobs and appropriate housing. It also leads to what some describe as prisoners having “a stake in conformity”, meaning that they have social pressure from the family network to ensure that they do not reoffend, that they go straight and avoid lapsing back into drug use or the misuse of alcohol.

I am very heartened by the direction of travel that Ministers have mapped out for us on the criminal justice side. I believe that payment by results, when it comes to involving voluntary or private organisations, is a good way to help ensure rehabilitation, leading to an unleashing of innovation, of entrepreneurial spirit, of creativity and to solutions being suggested that are appropriate to local circumstances. I also believe it is important that the Government have announced 70 resettlement prisons. Prisoners in the final three months of their sentence will be closer to their families than would otherwise be the case, with all the benefits I have identified.

As a general point, it is extremely important that we ensure that the level of contact I am describing exists throughout the criminal justice process, from as close as possible to the point of arrest and charge and certainly right the way through to prison and post-release. The nature of that contact should be weighted towards mentoring for families by individuals who have gone through the difficulties associated with having a loved one in prison and who can therefore share their experience, compassion and insight.

I have a series of points and questions for the Minister, on which I ask for his comments. The first question is how he and his colleagues see the Government encouraging organisations that are involved in the rehabilitation process, particularly the smaller and perhaps more innovative ones. I think particularly of String of Pearls, the project that Mary Stephenson and her colleagues have been operating in HMP Channings Wood. We need to ensure that such projects are not crowded out by the likes of G4S and Serco, about which we have heard less than flattering news recently.

[Guy Opperman]

I pay tribute to the organisations that my hon. Friend cites in support of his argument. Does he agree that there is potential in the years to come for one of those organisations, or a group of them together, to take over a resettlement prison, so that instead of having a state-run or privately run prison, we have a community or charity-run prison that will work for the benefit of the community?

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend for that interesting idea. That is the exciting part of the Government’s direction of travel—all sorts of innovation, partnership arrangements and possibilities may occur in the future, because we are not being too prescriptive from the centre. We are allowing best practice to thrive in a pluralistic market, allowing competition to drive up standards and so on.

Might the Minister consider additional funding for some small providers, such as String of Pearls, so that they are not crowded out by the bigger players and so that, further down the line, we can have a more pluralistic marketplace of providers and encourage the innovation and nimble-footedness that we associate with smaller organisations in particular?

I also ask the Minister how we can ensure that prisoners’ families are a major focus of rehabilitation organisations. I wonder whether the fee mechanism might be a way of achieving that. I know that there are three strands to the way in which providers will be paid. There is payment by results, but there is also the fee-for-service strand, which I understand is for providers meeting certain set criteria. I wonder whether we may have a sharp focus in those criteria on the involvement of families, so that organisations that are strong in that respect are rewarded for it. As I understand it, the third strand of the payment structure will be penalties for failure. I would like providers who ignore the importance of families to be penalised in some form.

The other thought I would like to share with the Minister is that the justice data lab, which we have set up to allow rehabilitation providers to benchmark their performance against other providers and against the norm, is also there to share best practice. I would like to see a strong focus on family involvement as an element of best practice in that data lab.

I wish to ask the Minister about prison visits. As I suggested, I think they are extremely important, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham shares that view. How can we increase the frequency of visits? At present only about 50% of prisoners receive their full statutory entitlement of visits, and I would like us to consider how we might increase that.

[Guy Opperman]

The evidence overwhelmingly supports my hon. Friend’s argument that prisons are at their most peaceful shortly before visits. That is because the anticipation of those visits serves to calm the whole prison down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important observation, and it is therefore important that visits are conducted in the most positive spirit possible. Frequently there are rub-downs or strip searches, and those subjected to such actions often feel a deep sense of shame. I accept that they are necessary in certain circumstances, but I would like us to consider minimising them in future.

Drug misuse and drugs coming into prisons is a serious problem that we need to tackle, but I do not want us to put up glass partitions between visitors and prisoners unless it is absolutely essential, as that dehumanises the whole experience, and reduces the benefits that may flow from this kind of contact.

Where it is difficult for families to visit prisoners, perhaps because of the distances involved, phone contact is often the only contact that is available. Much of that contact is on a telephone in a prison corridor under warder supervision. I do not think that is the best, or most appropriate, environment. I would like prisoners to have phones in cells. By that I do not mean we should go soft on prisoners by allowing them to phone whoever they want, but they should be allowed some element of privacy when they are making the call. I know there has been a move towards that in private prisons, on the basis that it is cheaper because there is less warder involvement.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response and I thank him again for all the support he has given me, not least in responding to the numerous questions I have had for him, and for the support he has given Mary Stephenson and the String of Pearls project and the interest he has shown in that. I am deeply grateful for that, and I hope that in some small and modest way this debate may help to push families a little closer to the heart of the criminal justice system, just as we as a party believe families should be at the heart of strong and decent societies.

Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Mel Stride Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ms Harman]

No, because there is no statute that says, “We are setting up a system and we are passing a law to make all the newspapers be in it.” The newspapers have a choice as to whether or not they enter the system. However, the point is that we are incentivising them to enter it and disincentivising them from staying outside. They could make a judgment that they want to stay outside. They could decide that they do not want to go to arbitration and that they will take their chances with the court. They might decide that they will be so careful that they will never commit a media tort, and even if they did, that they would never get anywhere near the “outrageous” behaviour that would justify exemplary damages and so would not need to worry about that. I hope that they will not take the view. I hope they will think that, even if they are not behaving outrageously, they would want to shelter themselves from the prospect of exemplary damages. I hope that they will go into the system willingly. Exemplary damages will still be available to the courts to award against people who are in the regulator, but it is more or less a presumption that those people will not be in it. That is a major disincentive.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

There is clearly a very strong disincentive to go into the scheme for those who might qualify, but there is a grey area about which publications should fall within the scope of the scheme. Would it be possible under these arrangements for those publications that might not be sure to establish whether they should or could qualify for the scheme?

[Ms Harman]

Any publication could apply to be a member of a regulator. It would find out whether it came within the purview of that regulator, as the regulator might reply saying, “Sorry, we don’t regulate you.”

Exemplary damages simply give newspapers another incentive to join the regulator. The court is left with the opportunity to award exemplary damages, only in much narrower circumstances. I hope that all the newspapers—including those that did not agree with the setting up of the Leveson inquiry, with how Lord Leveson took evidence or with his report—will propose regulators and join them now that the report has been published and all parties have agreed that we should have the royal charter and the accompanying bits of statute. I am sure that the Secretary of State, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister will want to do everything they can to say to the press, as the Prime Minister said in today’s debate, that it is impossible for the newspapers to hold the powerful to account if they are abusing their own power. A good complaints system, which is respected and has public confidence, is a good thing in principle, so it is important that the newspapers step forward and join the regulator.

After Leveson reported, he said that the ball was now in the politicians’ court. He asked us all to work together to agree and we did. Now, the ball is in the press’s court and I hope that they will rise to that challenge.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mel Stride Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

1. What progress he has made on his review of the prison regime.

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

We are reviewing what is called the incentives and earned privileges scheme to ensure the public can be confident that any privileges earned in prison are gained through hard work and good behaviour. We want this to be a comprehensive review and its findings will be available in due course. I can tell my hon. Friend that, for example, the situation whereby some prisoners have access to Sky subscription TV channels, which many of our constituents cannot afford, will not be allowed to continue.

[Mel Stride]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on placing mentoring at the centre of prisoner rehabilitation. My constituent Mary Stephenson is running a scheme called “belief in change”, which is currently under threat from the withdrawal of EU funding. Would my hon. Friend meet me and Mary Stephenson to see whether there is anything we can do to help assist that project?

[Jeremy Wright]

I am happy to meet my hon. Friend and his constituent. He will be pleased to learn that the system we have in mind for dealing with the rehabilitation of offenders will reward those who have good ideas—ideas that work—in driving down the reoffending rate. He is right that we want to see more mentoring, as we believe it is very effective. Many other things will be affected, too, and we look forward to hearing about them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mel Stride Excerpts

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

We have been in touch with the Department for Work and Pensions to make sure that we have a better, more seamless system between the two Departments. We have also been dealing with the increase in tribunal hearings, which the hon. Lady rightly brings up, and have increased the number of judges and the number of medical staff. I am pleased to say that it is now within our sights to end the backlog.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

13. What plans he has for community sentences.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

We want non-custodial sentences to reflect more clearly and closely the principles of sentencing. Community payback will be a more definitively punitive disposal—more immediate and more intensive. Restoration to victims will also have a higher priority, with compensation orders to victims becoming the first consideration for sentencers. Public protection will be delivered through curfews and reporting requirements and more flexibility for offender managers to deliver rehabilitation through interventions tailored to the individual circumstances of each offender.

[Mel Stride]

Community sentences are often seen by the public as a bit of a soft option. Can my hon. Friend provide some specific examples of how he will ensure that they are tough enough?

[Mr Blunt]

The Green Paper sets out our intention to make community payback more intensive, more immediate and better enforced. We also intend to provide tougher punishment and better public protection by increasing the duration of electronically monitored curfews. The maximum hours might be increased from 12 to 16 each day and the maximum length of a curfew from six months to a year.