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Crime: Reoffending

My Lords, I welcome today’s debate, initiated so ably by the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, as the subject lies at the heart of the problems currently affecting the British penal system. I begin by declaring an interest as a magistrate for 27 years, now on the supplementary list. I shall try to keep my use of statistics to a minimum this afternoon, not only because others far more qualified than me have already used very telling ones—always one of the problems of being a tail-end Charlie—but also because this is an area in which statistics abound. Some are precise but, with others, statisticians themselves admit that more needs to be done to achieve absolute certainty about the facts. There are also many complexities and many variables, so that even a comparison between the percentage of reoffenders following a custodial sentence or a community sentence seems to indicate that there is a variable of only about 10 to 15 per cent between the two categories, which is unwelcome news and not enough to satisfy the proponents of each argument. We are currently giving custodial sentences to about 25,000 more people than we were nine years ago. That is a drab, inescapable fact. By any standards, it isa remarkable increase, and an unsustainable one,given the present level of funding for the PrisonService. One of the core beliefs in public life, not always accepted by politicians, is that you cannot remove or solve problems by throwing money at them. Recent experience in both the education service and the NHS gives credibility to that view. But I suggest thatthere is an exception to this rule: the Prison Service. More accommodation, better staffing levels, proper education and training facilities for those inside—all those factors, and more—can help in the fight against reoffending. Of course, that is only half the story. Let us imagine what could be done if we funded sensibly services that keep people out of prison. Is it worth it? Put cynically, I suppose it is fair to say that there will be few votes in it, but making a big dent in the £11 billion annual estimated cost of reoffending would seem to be a worthwhile enterprise, to put it mildly. At present, according to the Prison Service, "““providing work for prisoners is not currently a central and essential part of the prisons regime””." It is calculated that about 10,000 prisoners are employed in 300 workshops in the prison estate, with workshops run by charities accounting for some 1,000 more prisoners in 75 prisons. There is not much training there then, I suggest, against a total prison population of 80,000. What chance is there for meaningful education with an understaffed service and a total prison population of 80,000 of which, as the noble Lord, Lord Corbett, said earlier, it has been estimated that 50,000 are serving a sentence of less than six months? Add to that the prevalence of ““churning”” within the prison population, an inevitable evil in the never-ending struggle to find places, and meaningful educational progress becomes just a pious hope. The upshot is all too predictable, as the Social Exclusion Unit found. Prisoners not taking part in education or training are three times more likely to reoffend. It must never be forgotten that many of these prisoners enter the system with an unenviable failure list, such as a lack of literacy and numeracy skills, drug and alcohol dependence and an absence of any kind of normal family life. In all probability, they have been unemployed and, in some instances, may be unemployable. In all these areas, prison could, indeed should, be helping, but offenders are instead turned out, for the most part, as they came in. In some instances, they are even worse off. On the other hand, if they stay in society, properly and intelligently managed and supervised within an appropriate community sentence, the chance of recidivism recedes. A few years ago, I had the privilege of organising a visit with other noble Lords to the Medway Secure Training Centre, then in its infancy, which had been reported as experiencing staffing problems and other assorted hiccups. In fact, I was agreeably impressed by the commitment and genuine enthusiasm of the staff for a full and varied education programme for the young men. However, at the end of the visit, one took me to one side and expressed his dismay that, once the inmates had gone off site and been released into their local areas, there was no effective follow-up and all the good work was wasted. As I say, that was some years ago. I hope and pray that matters have changed fundamentally in the intervening years. Certainly, the creation of the National Offender Management Service should, in theory, put an end to such dysfunction in the system, with its concept of end-to-end management. Yet the creation of a large new bureaucratic empire—with, as we have been told, 1,600 new jobs in NOMS alone, for example—and the emphasis on regional management set alarm bells ringing in my ears. I share the scepticism of my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham. How will such management liaise effectively with local authorities and, even more importantly, local communities and local charities? In the north-east and on Merseyside, for example, they have made valiant strides in combating the dangers of reoffending. Again, how will morale within the Probation Service stand up to tampering with probation boards? These are all crucial questions, which must be answered in the fight against reoffending. It is a fight which we, as a society, cannot afford to lose. To combat it, we must certainly employ fresh and practical initiatives, but we must also surely learn once again to do common-sense things well as part of a communal, joined-up effort across the whole country.