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Penal System

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. One of the worst effects of the early release scheme is that it undermines public confidence in sentencing, just as the Government undermined it in relation to their changes to determinate sentences, which mean that there is automatic early release after half the sentence is served—a proposal that we opposed. Ten years ago, the present Lord Chancellor said that indeterminate sentences gave"““justice, above all for the victim, but also for the offender.””—[Official Report, 19 June 1996; Vol. 279, c. 902.]" Now he wants to review those sentences. Perhaps he should have a word with the Home Secretary about his plans. Only last Thursday, she was berating hon. Members for not supporting the sentences. The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) is worried. In his column for The Sun he said:"““It’s no time for a u-turn on crime…what has been happening since the fragmentation of the Home Office…?””" He said that the Home Secretary"““has no control…over the froth that’s being talked about indeterminate sentences””." That is the problem with splitting the Home Office, which is no doubt why the current Secretary of State for Justice opposed the idea last year. One Department talks tough and the other lets prisoners out early. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside was right about another thing: the new Prime Minister shares the blame for the current crisis in our prisons. In his diaries, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside describes the 2004 spending review, in which the then Chancellor would agree to fund only two thirds of the additional prison places requested. The then Chancellor removed the Home Office from the current spending review and froze its budget. Clearly, in his judgment law and order was not a priority. That is why we have the catastrophe of overcrowded prisons. Some 17,000 prisoners are doubling up in cells—twice as many as when Labour came to power. More than 1,000 cells designed for two people are occupied by three. That means that nearly a quarter of the entire prison population is housed in cells designed for one fewer person. The price of such overcrowding is that the rehabilitation of offenders is made impossible. As the prison service annual report says:"““Crowding…dilutes the resource available for constructive activity. High throughput and frequent daily movement impact directly on regime delivery by diverting staff resources and making it more difficult to assess prisoners and allocate them to appropriate interventions.””" The number of prison officers has risen at only half the rate of the increase in the prison population, and prisoners are being transferred early to open prisons. Last summer, the governor of Ford open prison in my constituency warned that the transfer of prisoners who should really be in category C conditions"““will mean almost inevitably that the abscond rate will go up.””" She went on to say:"““Ministers have apparently been briefed to this effect and are taking this risk.””" The chief inspector of prisons too has warned that high-risk offenders are being transferred to open prisons, some without any proper risk assessment. Murderers are walking out of open prisons at will. In an overstretched probation service, some officers supervise up to 80 offenders and, as a result, reconviction rates have soared. Of the people discharged from prison, 65 per cent. reoffend within two years—up from 59 per cent. in 1998. Among young people, the recidivism rate is even higher. Reoffending accounts for more than half of all crime.