|

Rehabilitation of Prisoners

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): The hon. Member for Burton (Mrs. Dean), my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison) and the other members of the Home Affairs Committee, under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham), have done the House a considerable service with their report on the "Rehabilitation of Prisoners". It must make a welcome change for them—a release—from having to carry out pre-legislative scrutiny on yet another asylum and immigration Bill or yet another criminal justice Bill. That seems to be their normal diet.

I take an interest in this subject partly because I practised as a barrister for a number of years and represented a number of people who then went to prison and partly because the first non-governmental organisation that I ever subscribed to was the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, but most importantly, in the context of this debate, because I have Bullingdon prison in my constituency. I want to comment on Bullingdon in more detail later.

We must recognise that the punishment element of prison is the loss of one's freedom. The punishment is going to prison. Prison itself should not be a further punishment. The punishment should be the removal of freedom. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere said that quite often, if prisoners are given good treatment, we have to deal with the type of knee-jerk reaction found in the Daily Mail or The Sun. However, we have moved on from Victorian times. We are now in the 21st century and we need to trumpet clearly the message that the punishment is the removal of freedom.

We must also recognise that the average stay of most people who go to prison is 23 months. Although they may be taken out of the community for a period of time, it is not necessarily that long. At present, we have a vicious circle of overcrowding and transfers in the prison system that make it much more difficult to help to rehabilitate offenders and, as a consequence, too many of those in prison reoffend once they leave.

We have not yet heard much mention of the recent report by the social exclusion unit, but I think that it shows that more than half—some 58 per cent.—of all prisoners are convicted of another crime within two years of release. Tragically, that figure is as high as 72 per cent. in the case of young men aged between 18 and 20. Those figures are tragic for us as a community. They mean that, clearly, prison is not succeeding in rehabilitating people.

The social exclusion unit made several recommendations, particularly with regard to helping ex-prisoners to find jobs. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere said, getting a job on release reduces the risk of reoffending by between one third and a half. Most of the recommendations from the social exclusion unit have not been implemented. We need to hear much more clearly from the Government what strategies they have for reducing overcrowding and reducing the need to transfer prisoners constantly between prisons in the system, and what more they are going to do to help to ensure the working of rehabilitation programmes in prison.

Paul Boateng is now the high commissioner to Pretoria, but when he was Minister of State at the Home Office, he said, in a Prison Service briefing in June 2000:

"Too often I hear of good projects in one prison rejected by another; of inconsistency of funding and a lack of coordination . . . I want to see some strategic developments".

We would be interested to hear from the Government what the strategic developments are.

The prison population is now at a record high, at somewhere near 77,000. It has grown by more than half in the past decade, and numbers are rising by an average of 250 prisoners a week. The Select Committee states in its report that

"it is clear that overcrowding is having a hugely damaging impact on the delivery of rehabilitative regimes across the prison estate, both in terms of quality and quantity of appropriate interventions."

It goes on:

"We are critical of the management of transfers of prisoners across the prison estate which appears to be more ad hoc and pragmatic than strategic in design. The very high levels of transfers have a direct and significant negative impact on rehabilitation measures, both through disruption caused to intervention programmes and failure to provide prisoners with the particular interventions they need, as identified through assessment and sentence planning."

There seems to be a vicious circle of overcrowding, which leads to transfers, among other things. The combination of overcrowding and transfers makes it difficult to rehabilitate prisoners, which means that prisoners leave prison not having benefited from the experience very much, and that leads to high reoffending rates. That is crazy, and something needs to be done about it. I shall make a few suggestions.

I am sure that most colleagues will think that my first suggestion is reactionary, so I shall start with that one and come on to the more liberal ones shortly. There are many foreign nationals in our prisons—some 10 per cent. of the prison population—and I suspect that that is a consequence of an increase in drug trafficking, more people involved in drug offences and so on. However, there is no justification for keeping overseas nationals in our prisons. When they finish their sentences, the burden should be on them to demonstrate to the courts why they should not automatically be deported to the country from which they came.

Mrs. Gillan : My hon. Friend might be interested to know that foreign nationals make up more than 10 per cent. of the prison population. At the end of March, when there were 9,194 foreign nationals in prison, the figure was 12 per cent. The Home Office does not have a grip on the situation: at any one time, there are some 1,200 people in prison for whom it has not been possible to ascertain a nationality, so the figure is even larger than the one he quoted.

Tony Baldry : Whether the figure is 10, 11 or 12 per cent., it is a significant percentage. We should make it clear that the burden will be on overseas nationals who have committed offences to convince the courts that they should not automatically be deported to the country of their citizenship at the end of their sentence. Then, if they are inclined to reoffend, they are less likely to reoffend in the United Kingdom. It is as simple as that. Any foreign national who breaks the law in this country such that it merits their going to prison forfeits their right to remain in the country.

Much good work is being done with the rest of the prison population.

Mr. Denham : I have a genuine query. Although I chaired the Committee, I may have misunderstood the report. My understanding is that those who are sentenced to more than two years generally are deported at the end of their sentence, and that the problem with those who are sentenced for less than two years is that the courts rather than politicians have judged, on the basis of various international conventions, that that is not a sufficiently serious sentence to deport. I may be wrong about the law on that, but perhaps the obstacle is the court's interpretation, not of the convention on human rights but of other international conventions.

Tony Baldry : The right hon. Gentleman reinforces my position. At present, the courts decide whether a person should be deported, and the sentencing practice of judges in such cases varies greatly from Crown court to Crown court. We should change the position, by statute if need be, so that there is a presumption that any foreign national whose offences in this country merit a prison sentence should be deported at the conclusion of that prison sentence.

Bullingdon prison is in my constituency. It is a sizeable local prison for men and one reason why I wanted to take part in this debate is that I do not think that those who work in the Prison Service have their achievements trumpeted often enough. Being a prison officer or prison governor must be a tough job. Prison staff work with people who, by definition, do not want to be where they are. They must often deal with people who are vulnerable and who have a history of personality difficulties. Treating them with dignity and firmness must often be testing, particularly if prisons are overcrowded.

Bullingdon prison makes every effort to try to help people to prepare themselves for the world outside. For example, it involves the St. Giles Trust, which has a contract to provide accommodation advice to prisoners. Interestingly, much of that advice is given by prisoners who have been trained to NVQ level 3 by the trust. It does its best to provide education and work opportunities. As Sue Saunders, the governor of Bullingdon prison, explained:

"Education is pivotal to prisoner resettlement and is provided throughout the" prison

"both in the classroom and workplace. Through working closely with Milton Keynes College, we fulfil a provision for Basic and Key Skills and Wider Key Skills in the workplace. In addition Vocational Training is provided within all industrial areas across the prison. That currently equates to over 60 qualifications in a wide spectrum of subjects and areas of work. Where self-study in cells is identified as the most appropriate way for the individual to learn, the education contractor offers peripatetic learning where tutors support the student. In addition to this all prisoners have a minimum access of 20 minutes per week to the library.

Having moved away from providing 'traditional' prison work, we are now focusing on providing qualifications to prisoners within our workshops. An example of this is the relocation of the Industrial Cleaning Workshop into the main prison, giving the workers a real life environment by providing cleaning services across the prison. This has been recognised by the Adult Learning Inspectorate who stated that this training provided real work experience in a way that would not normally be seen in a prison environment. In addition we also deliver in excess of 500 qualifications in this area.

In conjunction with colleagues from the Probation Service we now provide an access to work course: Transit. The aim of the course is to offer prisoners who are able and willing to find work, extra support and guidance to help them achieve their goals. This includes helping prisoners to understand the process of applying for work, writing CV's and completing application forms as well as helping with interview skills."

The prison has

"secured the services of Job Centre Plus for three days a week, offering advice and guidance on employment issues as well as a job brokering service."

Sue Saunders continued:

"On 4th October, Bullingdon held its second Job Fair. 12 Potential employers and over 150 prisoners who are approaching release attended this and the feedback from all . . . was very positive."

As a consequence, a third job fair is planned for early next year.

Bullingdon prison also runs a two-week debt management course every eight weeks that covers income and expenditure budgeting, how to read statements and payslips correctly, and the importance of saving and planning finances. Trading standards at Oxford county council runs a bespoke money management course at Bullingdon consisting of four two-hour sessions each on budgeting, banking, accounts and borrowing.

That all seems excellent and well in support of what the Prison Service now has as part of its motto: unlocking potential and releasing success. It was not, therefore, surprising to me that Martin Narey, the chief executive of the National Offender Management Service, gave Bullingdon prison a glowing reference in his report, in which he said:

"There is some innovative and significant work taking place for the remand population. Rather than allowing remands to be marginalised—frequently inevitable in many"

local prisons—

"Bullingdon is giving some of them an opportunity to sort their lives out."

Martin Narey thought that the multi-skills workshop at Bullingdon was "first class" and commented that it was

"unusual to meet so many prisoners so enthusiastic about the training they were receiving and the quality of work was extremely high. A significant number of prisoners have made very impressive progress to NVQ level 2 and 3 qualifications in printing and related skills. Significantly, a number of them had achieved category D status, but were very keen to stay at Bullingdon to continue their training."

What he says after that, however, is the sting in the tail that causes me concern.

"Regrettably, prison population pressures mean that it is unlikely that we will be able to keep them at Bullingdon. This is tragic. Bullingdon are developing offender management on the lines of the national offender management model and are well placed to operate successfully in a commissioning environment. And not for the first time, I thought the work being done by RAPT to arrest drug abuse, was outstanding."

It is sad that the work of a local prison where, by every standard, the governor and the prison staff are doing excellent work in terms of advice on housing, rehabilitative training and getting people back into the world of work within the available resources is undermined by a combination of overcrowding and prisoners being all too frequently moved around the prison system. That is genuinely tragic.

Martin Narey concluded his report with comments, which should be trumpeted, about the governor and staff at Bullingdon prison, praising

"the consistent enthusiasm of every member of staff I met and the frequent evidence of prisoners being treated with dignity."

I have a footnote on that. I frequently find myself to the left of the Labour party, which is an increasingly uncomfortable position. Martin Narey argued two years ago for Bullingdon to remain in the public sector, and it has. I believe that prisons should be in the public sector, for that reason. My experiences with the proposed accommodation for asylum seekers at Bicester was searing, for whenever I sought information from the Home Office about what was being proposed, I was told that it was commercial in confidence. I emphasise that, because last time I said it, the Hansard reporter recorded it as "commercial incompetence".

One of the institutions that should be most transparent in its activity and delivery in our society is a prison. We should know what is happening in prisons in terms of the inputs and their outcomes. I have yet to be persuaded that handing institutions such as prisons over to Group 4 Securicor enhances the rehabilitative process of Her Majesty's prisons. However, that is just a parenthesis. There is no necessary consequence that private is good and public is bad. I believe that those who work in the public sector in prisons do a good job.

The thrust of my submission to the House this afternoon is simple. The best way to get the prison population down is to stop reoffending. If those in prison ceased to reoffend, our prison population would drop considerably. If consistent efforts were made at rehabilitation and ensuring that those who left prison had a better chance of accommodation, employment and life skills, the likelihood of their reoffending would drop and thus, the probability of our prison system being overcrowded would be reduced.

Although Ministers do not have it entirely in their gift to control the total prison population, the Prison Service could certainly make greater efforts to ensure that people, whether men or women, do not spend the whole of their prison experience being shunted around from one prison to another. Each prisoner should be treated as an individual. The Home Office and the Prison Service should take pride in ensuring that people leave prisons with the best possible skills and qualifications in order to tackle the rest of their lives crime free and in society with the rest of us.