Prisons and Probation

Philip Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)]

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) said that some of the dire descriptions of the state of affairs in the prison system could have been given in the House several times in the past few decades. Twenty-five years ago, when I was Home Secretary, and responsible for the prison system, we had debates such as this one, and we have not made enough progress since then, I quite agree.

I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor has provided a new impetus with positive new ideas, and the tone of his speech—and the tone of his speeches since he began to address the issue after, as he said, studying the subject and propounding the way he meant to go on—has been extremely reassuring. The prison system is what we are all rightly concentrating on, as that is where the problems are. I agree with what has been said: the prison system serves two purposes. One is just retribution and punishment, both for serious crime where people have deliberately decided for personal advantage to defy the law, and for people who commit dangerous and violent acts when they lose, or fail to keep, self-control.

The second principal purpose of prison is to try to reform prisoners and to try to ensure that as many of them as possible are cured of their former behaviour when they leave prison so that they find a new purpose in life and do not offend again. Every prisoner reformed means fewer crimes and fewer victims in future. I am delighted that in his approach to his task the Lord Chancellor has put rehabilitation of offenders, where offenders are prepared to take advantage of the opportunities, at the forefront of his aims.

I made speeches in the last Parliament when I was Lord Chancellor covering much of this ground, but I will not repeat any of that. Those fascinated by my ancient views can go back and read them again. My right hon. Friend has spoken about raising the standard of education in prison. Far too many prisoners do not attain any basic standards of literacy or numeracy. Raising skills levels for outside employment is important, as far too many prisoners have never had a job in their life, and we should bring yet more businesses in to join the existing excellent businesses that give proper skills training to prisoners in prison.

We need to tackle drug abuse, which remains scandalously high in prison. We must deal with mental health problems, which are the biggest single issue in raising the healthcare standards of people in prison. I agree with all of that, and I support my right hon. Friend’s enlightened policies. Rehabilitation has been the Government’s agenda ever since we were first elected. Looking back at our performance, I concede that I am disappointed by the progress we have made. Prison management in the Ministry of Justice is infinitely better than it was 25 years ago, and some things have improved. Staff are keen to see the progress described by my right hon. Friend, and there are successes in the treatment of women offenders and young offenders, despite the problems in some institutions, as has been said.

The test that I apply is on the success that we have achieved in rehabilitation. No one shrinks from the fact that we still have to confess that 45% of adult offenders reoffend within 12 months of release. For offenders who serve sentences of less than 12 months, the figure, I believe, is 58%, which means that the prison system is not working as effectively as it should to protect honest citizens outside.

No one knows exactly why that problem is so persistent, but I remain strongly of the view that part of the trouble, if we look at enlightened policies not delivering the results—that is the test we should consider—is the fact that there are too many prisoners in prison. We cannot deliver these policies in squalid overcrowded slums where we do not have the space or the resources to deliver education, training, proper healthcare and better attitudes of the kind we wish to give.

A few years ago when I was Lord Chancellor I complained that the prison population had doubled since I was Home Secretary, despite the fact that the level of crime in the country had markedly dropped. I do not think there was any relation between the two because crime has dropped across the entire western world, in those countries that have shortened their incarceration rate and in those that have extended it. We now have the highest incarceration rate in democratic Europe. We are second only to the United States, where many states now are making determined efforts with even right-wing leadership to get the incarceration rate down and get out of the prisons the people who should not be there.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?

[Mr Clarke]

No. I am sorry. I know my hon. Friend’s views. That is not the reason that I am not giving way. I look forward to hearing them in the short time available, but I do not want to cut anybody out of this debate.

I believe that we should set out as one of our objectives reducing the prison population. I say to my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor, who is still in his place, that I set out to do that, not only because I believed that there were people in prison who should not be there, but because that reduction underpinned the bold spending commitments that I offered to the Treasury and which it gratefully accepted. I proposed a 30% cut in the budget of the Department that I had walked into, partly based—there were other savings as well—on getting down the ridiculously excessive prison population. I got it sagging, but it has gone up again, and it is about where it was when we came into office.

My right hon. Friend should not shrink from sentencing reform. He should consult my friend Lord Justice Treacy, who is in charge of the Sentencing Council, face up to the fact that mandatory minimum levels of all kinds do not match the reality of the varied circumstances of cases, develop better non-custodial sentences and so on. There is a whole speech to be made on that.

Finally, I shall concentrate on one positive suggestion, on which I think my right hon. Friend could proceed, serving the cause of justice, which above all we have to follow, and also meeting the needs of the moment by reducing unnecessary overcrowding. I urge him to get rid of the last vestiges of indeterminate sentences and those who are still serving such sentences in prison. Those sentences were introduced in 2003, they took off surprisingly, and I abolished them in 2012. They were sentences where a minimum tariff was given to reflect the crime but the prisoner would be held in prison indefinitely until he was able to satisfy the Parole Board that he was no longer a risk, or rather that the risks were manageable. I assumed that once we abolished those sentences so that no more would receive them, we would not keep for long those who were already serving such sentences as they steadily earned their release. That has not happened.

When I was Lord Chancellor, there were over 6,000 prisoners serving indeterminate sentences. The forecast was that there would be 8,000 or 9,000 by 2015. We have over 4,000 still there. Of those, three quarters have now exceeded the tariff—the sentence that the judge gave them for their offence—and 392 prisoners have already served five times the sentence imposed on them. Some of them will never be released unless we change the sentencing system. My right hon. Friend has the power to do so.

I wanted to get rid of those sentences altogether and let people out as they reached the tariff. Senior colleagues were understandably nervous and cautious about that and I was not allowed to take the step I wanted to take to achieve that. I took the power in the Bill. If my right hon. Friend studies the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, he will see that he has the power to alter the terms of reference for the Parole Board. At the moment, the individual prisoner has to prove to the Parole Board that he poses no risk. Of course, no prisoner could make any of us certain that he will not reoffend when released; we just hope that most of them will not. The burden should be the other way around: we should only keep a prisoner indefinitely—some of them will stay for life if we are not careful—when there is reason to believe that he would pose a risk if released.

There are 4,000 prisoners that my right hon. Friend could steadily and more rapidly get rid of. I think that easing the pressures on the Prison Service would help him achieve all his goals. I very much hope that he achieves them. If he can deliver what he has decided to try to deliver, he will indeed be a great reforming Lord Chancellor.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

First, may I apologise to you, Mr Speaker, and other Members: I have a meeting at 6.15 pm with the relevant Minister about the flooding in my constituency so I will be away from the debate for that time? No discourtesy is intended, and I hope my apology will be accepted.

I want to concentrate on one thing that I believe is seriously overlooked in debates on justice: the use of fixed-term recalls, one of the biggest injustices in the criminal justice system. Most people believe that if someone is let out of prison early—whether halfway through their sentence, a quarter of the way through on home detention curfew, or at some other point before they should be let out—if they reoffend during that time or breach their licence conditions, they should go back to prison to serve the rest of their original sentence at the very least, and some, like me, might argue that they should be sent to prison for longer. Unfortunately, that is not always, or even often, the case.

The Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 amended the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to introduce fixed-term recalls. It was not done because it was the right thing to do; it was done to reduce the prison population when it got out of hand under the last Labour Government and they did not have the necessary capacity. A fixed-term recall occurs when an offender reoffends or breaches their licence conditions, and as a result they do not go to prison for the remainder of their original sentence; they go back for 28 days—just 28 days.

The overwhelming majority of the public believe offenders should serve the whole of the sentence they were given in the first place. In fact, a poll by Lord Ashcroft found that 80% of police officers, 81% of the general public and 82% of victims believe sentences are already too lenient, but thanks to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, as of 3 December 2012, the eligibility criteria for fixed-term recalls were relaxed further to make them available to previously denied prisoners. These were offenders serving a sentence for certain violent or sexual offences, those subject to a home detention curfew and those who had previously been given a fixed-term recall for breaching their licence within the same original prison sentence.

I recently asked a parliamentary question and found that in 2014 an astonishing 7,486 people were given this 28-day, all-inclusive mini-break in prison for reoffending or breaching their licence conditions. These included a staggering 3,849 burglars and 546 people whose original offence involved violence against another person, including wounding, manslaughter and even murder.

The sheer number of offenders being returned on these 28-day recalls appears to show that people are being let out when they are not ready to be released into society, yet those who have committed the most serious offences, such as murder, who are released and breach their licence conditions are still required to come back to prison only for a mere 28 days. Anyone who thinks someone on licence for murder should simply be returned to prison for 28 days for reoffending or breaching their licence condition surely needs their head tested. This kind of initiative is ridiculous in an age when public confidence in the criminal justice system is so low.

The Ashcroft poll found that more than two thirds of people—69% —believed that rates of reoffending were high because sentences were too short and prison life was not hard enough. Just recently I was made aware of a case of a local serial offender who was released early on licence for burglary only to commit multiple offences weeks afterwards. That offender was returned to prison, but he was not required to stay there until early 2017, as he would have been if he had had to serve his sentence in full. He was just given his 28-day fixed-term recall. How can that possibly be right? How can that possibly protect the public? That should be the first duty of the Government, rather than making speeches in here trying to make it look to the wider world as though we are compassionate. Do I want people to think that I am compassionate just for the sake of my own reputation? We should be concentrating on how we protect the public from becoming the unnecessary victims of crime.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

Surely, if rehabilitation is effective, it will protect the public and reduce the number of future victims of crime. Is not my hon. Friend making the wrong argument on that point?

[Philip Davies]

According to the Ministry of Justice’s own figures—the Minister can confirm this—the longer people spend in prison, the less likely they are to reoffend. There should be a lesson in there for my hon. Friend. In fact, the punishments with the lowest reoffending rate of all were the indeterminate sentences that were introduced in the name of public protection—the very punishments that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) scrapped, even though he said at the time that his main purpose was to reduce reoffending. Let us stick to the facts about what actually works, rather than trying to make ourselves sound good to our constituents and to the wider public.

An equally staggering fact is that many of the offenders who are released on licence and who then reoffend or breach their licence conditions and are recalled for 28 days and then go on to reoffend or breach their licence conditions again once they have been re-released are still only recalled for 28 days on that second or subsequent occasion. Between September 2013 and September 2014, 1,160 offenders received more than one fixed-term recall, including 49 offenders who were serving sentences for violence against the person and 705 who were serving sentences for burglary. That is absolutely outrageous, as my constituents in Wilsden and Harden, who are facing a spate of burglaries at the moment, will know only too well. Perhaps we should ask them to listen to some of this liberal claptrap while they are having their homes burgled every five minutes by people who have been released from prison on fixed-term recall.

This weak response to reoffending is becoming so well-known in the criminal community that some people are taking their chances and reoffending, knowing that the punishment will be pathetic. Worse still, some are deliberately trying to get themselves back into prison for 28 days, as that is just enough time for them to make money from dealing drugs and committing other crimes on the inside before being released again. They are deliberately going back into prison because they know that it will only be for 28 days, and that they will not have to serve the rest of their original sentence. The concept of the fixed-term recall takes dishonesty in sentencing—which is already bad enough with people only serving a maximum of half their sentence—to a new low. Fixed-term recalls are completely unjust and unjustifiable, and they should be scrapped with immediate effect.