Criminal Justice System

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, for obtaining this timely debate, coming as it does between the landmark speech by the Secretary of State for Justice on 30 June and the promised Green Paper setting out how his aims are to be achieved. Since that speech there has been a noticeable smile on the faces of those who take an interest in the criminal justice system, alongside optimism among those who have had meetings with the new Minister for Prisons and Probation, Crispin Blunt, because it appears that notice is being taken of the voices of practitioners. That is not to say that all that the previous Government did was bad. However, they did pass on two millstones—a system that, while not necessarily broken, was failing to protect the public; and a dire financial situation.

Perhaps I may make a small diversion before moving to my contribution. On Tuesday evening, in her valedictory speech at the end of her most distinguished time as Chief Inspector of Prisons, Dame Anne Owers— I join others in paying credit to her—said:

“The political game of ‘my prison system is bigger than your prison system’ has been profoundly unhelpful”.

All too often this is expressed in terms of how much more money has been put into something than the previous Government provided. In terms of outcomes, that is meaningless. Perhaps I may therefore respectfully ask the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, not to repeat her remarks about the 70 per cent increase in probation funding, because whatever it was spent on, it was not spent on face-to-face time with offenders. That has gone down to 24 per cent, including time on the telephone, which means that probation officers can spend only 10 to 15 minutes per week with medium-risk offenders and none with low-risk offenders. Frankly, I would keep quiet about the spending of money on such an outcome.

The criminal justice system is made up of four separate parts, each of which has its own distinct role—the police investigate, the courts sentence, and the prisons and probation administer that sentence. I shall limit my contribution to the reform of the latter two, which are currently called the National Offender Management Service but which I hope will be renamed the national offender management system, as that is a better description of what it is.

I start with the aim. If I understand Ken Clarke correctly, by announcing the “rehabilitation revolution” he means that he has changed the aim of the criminal justice system to one of protecting the public by preventing reoffending. One of the lessons that I was taught early in my Army career was the need to turn disadvantage into advantage. Were I a Minister in the Ministry of Justice, I would let everyone know that there are no sacred cows in the criminal justice system and that every function and job is to be examined against the criterion of whether it contributed to achieving that aim.

One of Ken Clarke’s announced intentions is to reduce the numbers in our overcrowded prisons. I have always equated the position of prisons in the criminal justice system to that of hospitals in the National Health Service—they are the acute part where treatment takes place, and no one should go there unless they need the treatment that only prisons or hospitals can provide. Although neither has any control over who comes in, both have to make people better, always conscious of the fact that the treatment will never be completed in the prison or hospital but will have to be continued in the form of aftercare. Today’s debate is about the alternatives to custody, the subject on which I shall now concentrate.

If he is to achieve this aim, Ken Clarke must find alternatives for those whom he seeks to get out of prisons, including women, children, the mentally ill, asylum seekers and immigration detainees. He must also ensure that there are sufficient alternatives to custody in which the public have confidence. One way to do this would be to give both prisons and probation the same aim and require them to do the same things with and for offenders. Therefore the aim of the national offender management system should be to help those committed by the courts to live useful and law-abiding lives. This would unite the 1983 Prison Service statement of purpose and the original purpose of probation, which was to assist, advise and befriend.

Armed with the same aim, both services should carry out the same sequential activities with every person they are required to help. First, they should assess what it is that has prevented them from living a useful and law-abiding life thus far. Secondly, they should turn that assessment into an individual programme, prioritised by the severity of the symptom and the time available. An assessment of law-abiding will include an assessment of risk as well as of criminal tendencies. An assessment of usefulness should include five subjects: first, education, including reasons for low attainment; secondly, job skills, including an aptitude test; thirdly, personal skills, including an assessment of the person’s ability to look after themselves and their dependants; fourthly, mental and physical health; and, fifthly, substance abuse. Such assessments should be standard to both services because there is no reason why such programmes should not be conducted in the community. Indeed, the best youth programme I saw in America, in the state of Massachusetts, had offenders spending half the day on education, including physical education, and half on community reparation, of which more later. The third sequential activity is that they should plan and implement transition programmes from prison to probation or the community, and from probation to the community, with the aim of continuing whatever treatment has been begun.

What I am describing boils down to nothing more nor less than putting appropriate and trained helpers face to face with people in need of their help. Those helpers, who can come from the public, private or voluntary sectors, need to be trained and resourced to carry out their tasks and require an organisational structure to deploy and support them. I suggest that all current managerial structures be examined and ruthlessly pruned to eliminate any parts that are not contributing to that purpose, such as those departments which are responsible for measuring process and overwhelming practitioners with unnecessary bureaucratic demands.

To take advantage of the savings that will inevitably accrue from this process and exploit the added value that comes from including local people and organisations in the resolution of their own problems, I recommend consideration of the following: first, the abolition of the post of chief executive of NOMS and the reappointment of separate directors-general of the prison and probation services, who will be responsible for professional leadership of their services and professional advice to Ministers; secondly, the appointment of regional offender managers who will be responsible for co-ordinating prison and probation services in their region, each with prison and probation deputies, but also with responsibility for population management and deciding when and where prisoners should move—this will save literally millions of pounds and ensure that people are not moved in the middle of courses or to places where courses do not exist; thirdly, the regionalisation of prisons so that, with the exception of high security, prisoners never leave their region; fourthly, the appointment of directors of each type of prison and prisoner to ensure consistency of treatment and conditions in every prison of the same type throughout the country, and with responsibility for turning good practice somewhere into common practice everywhere; fifthly, the giving of set aims to every prison, allowing them to concentrate on particular activities rather than requiring them to do a little of everything, which can mean that too much is not done very well; sixthly, the localisation of probation within regions, including the introduction of adult offender teams, male and female, alongside youth offending teams—each local area should be responsible for determining the community reparation part of every community sentence appropriate for that area; seventhly, the appointment of criminal justice system voluntary sector co-ordinators in every region and co-ordinators in every prison and probation area; and, lastly, laying down the principle that all contracts involving the voluntary sector should be for not less than three years, and preferably for five years, to allow investment.

The benefit of prison and probation using the same programmes is that the public are more likely to believe that they are appropriate alternatives to custody. As someone who strongly supports Ken Clarke’s intent and wants it to succeed, I know that there are sufficient motivated people and organisations to enable it to happen, but they need to be welcomed and helped to help, which means eliminating many of the impediments that are currently in their way.