---

Offender Management Bill

Many other speakers have talked in detail about the impact of this legislation on the probation service and have expressed serious concerns, which I accept, about the involvement of the private sector in offender management. I hope that the House will forgive me if instead of concentrating on those points, I talk about the impact of the legislation on the voluntary sector organisations with which I have worked as a Member of Parliament during the past 18 months. I also want to talk about something that has not come up in the debate so far: the offenders themselves. We have talked about the structures, systems and details of the legislation, but not about the people out there whose lives will be affected by the changes—I hope for the better, although some Members will have different views. I want to talk about those people. My interest stems from when I spent several years working in the criminal justice system. I worked for a firm of legal aid solicitors, most of whose criminal clients were young offenders. Before that, I worked at a magistrates court, where I saw the same young men come before the courts time and again. If they were not in the dock themselves, they were usually at court anyway, as their mates or brothers were there. Turning up each day was a way of life for them. Each time they came back before the magistrate, their offences were more serious and their sentences became longer. They swiftly moved from being antisocial nuisances, to career criminals, to hardened convicts. Perhaps one or two of them stepped away from a life of crime after their second brush with the courts, but we could more or less guarantee that their first appearance would not be their last. In later years, when I had stopped working in the law, I would read reports of the same individuals in the local press. One had been found dead in a ditch in mysterious circumstances; another had died of a heroin overdose. Another had died from glue sniffing and yet another was in court for a bank robbery. It was clear that, whatever their experience of the criminal justice system—from cautions to convictions, from community sentences to custody—nothing had stopped them offending, and doing so in more and more serious ways as their lives progressed. No doubt, some would say that such prolific offenders will always be with us, that some are simply beyond help and that the best we can do is incapacitate them by locking them up for longer and longer periods. We heard some of that argument from the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) earlier. However, I argue that we cannot afford to give up on such offenders because the cost to society is too great. The social exclusion unit’s report calculated that in 2003-04 the cost of reoffending was £11 billion—nearly a third of the total cost of crime, estimated at £36 billion. The Home Office estimates that 10 per cent. of active offenders are responsible for half of all crime. I have been told that in my local area there are 110 prolific offenders who generate 63 per cent. of acquisitive crime. Most, of course, have serious drug habits to feed. It is estimated that those offenders are responsible for about 25,000 crimes a year. Avon and Somerset police say that the socio-economic cost of each to the taxpayer is £225,000 a year, which includes the cost of their crime, policing, convicting them and trying to clear up some of the mess that they have caused. We have two alternatives for those 110 offenders: we could lock them up and throw away the key or make a serious attempt to rehabilitate some of them. Lots of figures have been bandied around in today’s debate, and those for rehabilitation are not encouraging. Some 66 per cent. of those who serve a custodial sentence go on to reoffend, and 58 per cent. of offenders reoffend. Of most concern is the fact that up to 85 per cent. of young offenders go on to reoffend. The only conclusion that I can reach is that prison clearly does not work. It is also clear that in many instances the probation service does not work either; there are people whom the probation service has not been able to reach. They need a different kind of focus and structured, sometimes very intensive, support. That brings me to role of the voluntary sector, particularly that in Bristol, which has been doing excellent work with offenders and young people who are seen to be at risk of offending. There are organisations such as Restore, which engages with young people on a south Bristol housing estate, involving them in a furniture recycling project. Those young people are learning skills, being kept off the street and away from other young people in the community who are committing crime. That organisation does really good work. another organisation called Amber looks at offenders’ education, training and employment needs. And there is one called RAPt, the Rehabilitation for Addicted Prisoners Trust, which provides a structured residential drug treatment programme for offenders. Research that RAPt commissioned from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies shows that two years after release, more than 50 per cent. of those who have graduated from the RAPt programme are still clean of drugs, compared to 20 per cent. who have not been through the programme. Only 16 per cent. of RAPt graduates have been reconvicted since their release, compared with 43 per cent. of non-graduates. Last month I hosted the parliamentary launch of Believe, an organisation that has worked with prolific offenders in Bristol for the past two years. I was grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) for speaking at the event. We heard from an ex-offender who had spent most of his adult life and much of his youth in custody. He spoke eloquently and passionately about the way in which his life had been transformed by support from Believe. He is now mentoring other offenders who have been released from custody more recently. Over the last two years Believe has worked with 150 offenders, half of whom are deemed to be prolific offenders who are almost 100 per cent. certain to reoffend. The organisation calculates that its work is currently preventing reoffending at a rate some 20 per cent. above what the probation service would achieve. It costs £5,000 a year to put an offender through Believe’s programme. That should be taken in conjunction with the £225,000 figure given by Avon and Somerset police. Believe reckons that in the two years for which it has been in operation it has saved the taxpayer some £4 million, and it says that with more resources and wider partnership work—which the Bill will facilitate—it would be able to do much more. Why do I think that Believe could succeed where the probation service may have failed? I think that its success may be partly due to the fact that it works with offenders in a much more intensive and motivational way. It builds consistent, long-lasting and trusting relationships. Many of the offenders with whom I have dealt in the past know full well how to play the probation service. They see it as part of the establishment—something that ought to be challenged, tricked, conned and worked around. They do not have the same relationship with the people with whom they work in the voluntary sector. Another thing that voluntary organisations seem better placed to do is allow offenders themselves to play a part in determining strategies that would work for them as individuals. Rather than operating a set programme, such organisations have long discussions with offenders. They tolerate the occasional lapse. When they work in partnership, which is happening increasingly in Bristol, they can provide an integrated package of interventions and support dealing with addictions in prison and on release, accommodation and employment problems, family relationships, mental health and debt—all factors that contribute to the revolving-door lifestyle, which NOMS has already identified in its action plan as being particularly important. I mentioned family relationships. Over the past year or so, I have had some dealing with Action for Prisoners’ Families, and I commend it for its work. I think most people would agree that an important element in the prevention of reoffending, particularly among those who have served short sentences, is the maintenance of a stable and secure family life to which offenders can return. If an offender’s family has not disintegrated or turned its back on him, that will be a key factor in putting him back on the straight and narrow. I recently visited Ashfield young offenders’ institution, which is just outside Bristol. I talked to very young men from broken homes, who were due to be released within the next two or three weeks and had nowhere to go. They did not even know which city they would be going to. Some had come from as far away as London. As for their family homes, they were the last places in the world where one would want them to go. If there were more organisations working with young offenders and giving them a helping hand when they leave such institutions, they would stand a better chance of not becoming involved in crime and not falling in with the wrong people again. Those who read the ““Society”” section of The Guardian—I am sure that that now includes many Opposition Members—