Better Prisons: Less Crime (Justice and Home Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Bishop of Gloucester Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, as Anglican Bishop for prisons, I wholeheartedly welcome this debate and this excellent report. It is also a privilege to follow two excellent maiden speeches.

I submitted evidence to the committee, and I will continue to bang the drum for reform. Better prisons will play a vital role, but they are not the end point or the complete answer to reducing reoffending. I agree with the reframing of this from rehabilitation, as rehabilitation implies that people were once at an acceptable place in life to which they can be rehabilitated, whereas for the majority of people in prison, this was never true in the first place.

The Minister has my support for measures being taken in the Sentencing Act, but these are not enough. We need an honest realignment of how to address crime and punishment in a vision for a society in which all people can flourish—victims, ex-offenders, families and communities.

I congratulate the report, and the noble Lord, Lord Foster, in pushing for a definition of the purpose of prison, as others have said. In the recent debate on what was then the Sentencing Bill, I was heartened by the breadth of support for my amendment on the purpose of prisons. This emerged from some work with a number of people across the criminal justice sector, as part of a round table which I have been convening in Westminster. We submitted our work to the Gauke review. I regret the Government’s reluctance to identify this as a crucial step. If we truly want clarity across HMPPS, the wider criminal justice system and, indeed, the public about exactly what it is we are seeking to do and be, we need this legislative definition of the purpose of imprisonment. Would the Minister agree to meet with me to discuss introducing such a definition?

In the past year, I have taken time to listen to young people across Gloucestershire, both through an online survey and at in-person events. It is important to include the voices of young people in policy-making. Most students thought that the most important use for prisons was to keep the public safe. The next most popular answer was that they are to rehabilitate offenders. Fewer students thought that prison’s most important use was to punish. Instead of building prisons or making sentences longer, young people thought that reducing crime required addressing some of the upstream issues that lead to that repeat reoffending, not least tackling drug and alcohol addiction. They also spoke repeatedly about the need for employment opportunities.

On a slightly different note, the committee’s report articulates well the challenges faced by prison governors in recruiting and developing staff. As I noted in my submission to the inquiry, based on my own visits to prisons,

“Whilst good governors are invaluable, culture cannot be created by one person alone and relies on the buy in to a set of values that are understood, shared, and lived by all the prison staff”.


I continue to be astounded that prison governors are unable to appoint their own staff. This is out of sync with most of the public sector. Absurdly, the first time governors meet newly recruited staff is on the day they start work. It is not a surprise then that governors express frustration to me, not least with the protracted HR processes to dismiss staff who do not meet their expectations and who would not have been recruited by them in the first place.

Much more still needs to be done to invest in staff and to value the prison sector, both in training and development, as we have heard. The public are shocked when they discover that training for prison staff takes a matter of weeks. I might also add that, in most of our prisons, chaplaincies are doing an outstanding job. Good chaplaincy teams feed into a good culture. They could be used much more to develop staff, not least in that relationship which is at the heart of a good culture system.

I will make a brief point about the recent policing White Paper which indicated that a crime prevention unit would be established in the Home Office. Shockingly, in 103 pages, the White Paper does not mention prison once. Where is the joined-up thinking? Can the Minister reassure the House that this new crime prevention unit will look at the place of prison?

This leads me finally back to culture. Good leadership within a prison builds culture and hope. If we want safer communities, we must create safer, more humane prisons. The culture inside the prison will translate to the culture outside the prison.