Prison Capacities
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(3 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Baroness Burt of Solihull
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to address challenges around prison capacities, and to ensure the safety and wellbeing needs of vulnerable prisoners.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I am so glad that so many noble Lords have expressed their wish to speak in this debate, and I am sorry that each noble Lord will have only a short speaking time. I will try to be succinct. Please do not waste time congratulating me on securing the debate.
I thank all the agencies that have sent information, which I have heavily leaned on, including the Howard League for Penal Reform, and of course our excellent Library.
We are in a sorry mess with our Prison Service today. The number of prisoners is double what it was just over 20 years ago, and the average length of sentences has doubled. One does not have to be a statistical genius to work out that there is some kind of causal connection.
The Minister himself has described this increase as a societal addiction to punishment, leading to sentences that are much too long. I was delighted to read that the Government have indicated that they will review sentencing—a move that is very welcome indeed. I wonder if I can tempt the Minister to say a little more about this review, such as how soon it might take place, what sentences it would cover, and whether alternatives to prison will be used more frequently.
On the subject of sentence reviews, will the Government consider implementing the recommendations of the Justice Select Committee to the previous Government on imprisonment for public protection, including a resentencing exercise for that unfortunate rump of individuals still serving sentences that are today obsolete? Today, no one receives this cruel sentence, and no one has since 2012. The British Psychological Society describes such a sentence as leading to a sense of anxiety, helplessness and depression, with self-harm and suicidal behaviour. I strongly commend the work of the previous Government, in particular that of the former Secretary of State Alex Chalk, on diminishing the time on licence and delivering more improvements for IPP prisoners. But the point remains: all this falls short of the one thing that would make the difference—having the certainty of a release date.
IPPs are just one problem confronting the prison system, and those people are not the only vulnerable group suffering in our prisons today. Women prisoners are another; their travails warrant a separate debate in their own right. While they themselves are low risk, they typically suffer from trauma, domestic abuse, mental ill-health and substance misuse. Their rates of self-harm are eight times that in the male estate. And all that is before we take into account the separation effects on families and children.
Mental health problems are also huge. The British Psychological Society says that nine out of every 10 prisoners enter prison with at least one mental health or substance abuse problem. There is a complex cocktail of health and social problems. In the last year alone there has been a 24% increase in self-harm and a rise of 27% in the number of assaults in the men’s estate. Too many prisoners mean that there is not enough space, and not enough resources, to make a prisoner’s experience rehabilitative, or even safe.
Recently, the BBC’s Sima Kotecha wrote a piece about Pentonville prison, describing the dire conditions, in which most prisoners were being held in their cells for up to 22 hours a day. I think if those prisoners were animals, the RSPCA would be called. Overcrowding makes everything so much worse. Prison officers have to deal with a highly inflammatory situation. Trying to keep prisoners and themselves safe preoccupies most of their time, and rehabilitation sometimes goes out of the window—no wonder recidivism gets worse.
I hope the Minister will outline a more effective plan to control the eternally rising prisoner numbers—a plan that does not necessarily use prison. He himself has said that society has an addiction to punishment that leads to sentences that are much too long, and we know that long sentences have an inverse effect on rehabilitation.
We also know that we cannot build our way out of an overcrowding problem. The Ministry of Justice’s forecasts say that the prison population will grow to between 94,000 and more than 114,000 in the four next years alone. It is time to stop the rot, because other services are not equipped to deal with this situation. The Probation Service is on its knees, with chronic staff shortages, excessive workloads and poor morale. Many of us will have had a briefing from the probation officers’ union Napo, which is dismayed at the mass release of 1,700 prisoners this week; it fears that they will not cope, so there will be more risk to the public and to themselves, and more mistakes will be inevitable.
Turning people out of jail earlier, without proper preparation before and after release, is a recipe for disaster. People will not get the help they need. They will reoffend, and the whole merry-go-round will go faster and faster until the parts fly off.
My final question for the Minister is this. How does he plan to address the needs of prisoners? If he does not, our Prison Service will continue on its inexorable spiral of decline until it breaks. Wrongdoing must be punished, but there are other methods of punishment as well as prison.
Prison Capacity
Baroness Burt of Solihull Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Timpson (Lab)
Having somewhere to live when someone is released from prison is vital, and we are planning to continue with all the schemes that are currently in place, including the 84 nights that are scheduled for people who leave prison. One of my concerns is that recently, because capacity has been so constrained, hard-working prison and probation staff have not always been able to manage the transition from prison to the community as well as I would like to see in future.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, I warmly welcome the noble Lord to his new role and to this House. His considerable experience and reputation go before him and he is highly respected as a man who lives his values. Having said that, it has to be said that he has inherited a crock, and I am afraid it is not a crock of gold.
The Minister paints a truly horrific picture of the situation now facing this country and we on this side are looking forward to working with him constructively over the next parliamentary term. In time, we can further reduce the prison population by implementing the recommendations of the Justice Select Committee and conducting a resentencing exercise for the unfortunate indeterminate sentence prisoners still stuck in a limbo of uncertainty. Will the IPP sentencing review include indeterminate sentence prisoners? I know that is perhaps a discussion for another day, but right now we can do little other than agree to the release, with suitable support and safety conditions, of certain categories of prisoners who are towards the end of their tariff to make room for other individuals who present more of a threat to society.
Lord Timpson (Lab)
I am well aware of the issues around indeterminate sentences for public protection. I know that matter is of great interest to noble Lords. It would not be appropriate to make changes in relation to IPP prisoners, because they are a different order of public protection risk. I am determined to make more progress on IPP prisoners. As I say, we will build on the work done by the previous Government. We worked constructively with the previous Administration on sensible changes that could be made in the safest possible way for the public. Those changes were on the licence period and the action plan, and we will crack on with that as a new Government. Any changes that we make to the regime for that type of sentence, which has rightly been abolished, must be done while balancing the public protection risk, which we would never take lightly.