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Rehabilitation of Prisoners

: On 22 November, we will launch that series of alliances. Transco will, effectively, be the leader of the corporate alliance—the employers' alliance. As it will be in that position, it will be able to influence greatly what we do. I hope that that reassures my right hon. Friend. The strategy is not just a bit of paper; it is a clear strategy. It is not being dictated by us; it is being developed in partnership with businesses and industry, and we recognise the leading role of Transco in that. The hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. Hurd) made a key point about the power of computers to track what is going on. On the OASys system, we will have completed connectivity by the end of the financial year. That will take longer for the National Offender Management Information System—NOMIS. I am pushing hard to ensure that we improve all our IT systems in prisons so that we get better information about prisoners' lives and careers. The hon. Gentleman talked also about whether we were determined to use the capacity of the voluntary and private sectors to make a difference. That is the case. It is one of the opportunities that we perceive in the new regime of offender management. If we are managing the sentences of people not only in prison but in the community and there is a seamless transfer, there are more opportunities to facilitate community-based, voluntary-led sentences, which can be more effective at rehabilitating offenders than some of what is done in prison. The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green echoed the comments on the importance of community sentences, particularly short-term sentences. I think that we all struggle with that issue. We have been ensuring that all prisoners are assessed to identify their pressing needs for housing, basic skills, health care, drugs treatment and job search and benefits advice right at the beginning of a short-term sentence to try to prevent them from losing their home and possessions. I am talking about making clear at the beginning of a short-term sentence whether people can sustain a tenancy, for example, during the sentence and about making housing advisers available to ensure that they can. I believe that when custody plus comes into effect next year, we will be better able to deal with the needs of this group of people in respect of reoffending, because all of them will have at least six months' supervision in the community, even if the average sentence is only six weeks. The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham critically said that offender management had sometimes seemed more about a headquarters operation than something on the ground. Actually, it cannot be on the ground until some of the new sentencing regimes are in place, but we need to ensure that we are prepared for it to be there. We need to ensure that we have in place the kind of interventions that can make a difference. Under the new community order, for example, we can sentence people to going to school, as it were. Doing that might make more of a difference than many of the things that we do currently. The hon. Lady mentioned the cost of prison places. They cost different amounts depending on what is being done, but the cost of a full new prison place is normally estimated at £76,000. The normal figure per year is £37,000 for all costs, but clearly the cost is different for different kinds of prison. The hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham talked movingly about people losing their tenancy and possessions. We are improving housing advice. I spend a lot of time talking about advice and people may say, ““What difference does advice make?”” Actually, with good, powerful advice, tenancies that would otherwise be broken by a prison sentence can be sustained. Housing advice is now available in more than 120 prisons. As a result, the proportion of offenders released from prison without accommodation to go to has dropped by one third. That is an important achievement. Since April, local prisons have been required to carry out a housing needs assessment for every prisoner, including those on remand. All those things will begin to help. The hon. Lady referred to home detention curfew and the fact that the figure for those on the scheme has hovered at about 3,000—it is 3,100 currently; it was 3,400 previously. I share her view that home detention curfew is under-used. I suspect that recent reductions have probably been caused by tabloid stories of cases in which someone on curfew has offended in a serious, horrible and outrageous way. I recognise that with a curfew there is always a risk of that. We need to improve our risk assessments. The chief inspector of probation has highlighted the need to do so in the probation service. I assure the hon. Lady that I am determined, as new technology offers us these new opportunities, to do more effective risk assessments, so that we can use them to the full. The rehabilitative impact of working in the community could then be supervised, so that people can maintain employment and so on.