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Prisons: Carter Review

My Lords, from these Benches, we, too, thank the Minister for the Statement and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Carter, on his indefatigable efforts in these causes. We look forward to reading the report in greater detail. While broadly welcoming its general thrust, we have some notable concerns. There are two or three big print issues which stand out in the Government’s thinking on this report. The first and most serious point is the admission of either panic or defeat; namely, that building more prisons and locking up yet more people is the answer. The admission illustrates the paucity of imagination which leads us as a nation to intern more people than any equivalent country in the European Union. France locks up 40,000 fewer people than we do. Even Germany, with a population of 20 million more than the UK, incarcerates significantly fewer people than us. There is a paucity of imagination, too, in a Statement which calls for a ““rational debate”” on sentencing yet does not mention the word ““rehabilitation”” once in the text. While the Lord Chancellor in the other place made much this morning of how the headline crime rate is going down due to locking up more people for much longer, his solution is for yet another body, a sentencing commission, which will provide for indicative sentencing ranges. The sentencing commission is based on a proposition that guidelines be changed on the basis of capacity; that is, supposedly, variations according to the day of the week. Where there is an issue of confidence in the criminal justice system, it seems that this will serve only to reduce that confidence, not enhance it. As the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said so eloquently, we know that judges prefer greater discretion in sentencing, with fewer centrally imposed targets. Will the Minister give a reassurance that the working party which is expected to review this will indeed be mindful of the need to remove any perceived arbitrariness as to whether a sentence is given down on a Monday versus a Friday and the term which will go along with it? On prison overcrowding, we welcome the expansion of prison places through the building programme. But the emphasis on Titan prisons housing 2,500 prisoners is worrying. When the trend should be towards smaller, more widely dispersed prisons so that, as the noble Lord, Lord Henley, said, families are nearer prisoners, three super prisons will serve only to distance people from what precious few support networks they might have in the communities. Will the Minister explain why the emphasis is on these large units, given that prison inspectors say that smaller prisons work better? Many on these Benches will touch on that issue but it would be helpful if the Minister enlightened us as to why the Government have gone for those models rather than for the model that we know from research the trend favours. We welcome, "““a rigorous and effective framework of community penalties””," which the Statement calls for. However, for a long time much of the research has shown that not only is prison ineffective for short-term sentences but when communities are involved in the debate about community sentences and local solutions, greater awareness of the way in which community sentences work results in a change in attitude among those communities and those involved in rehabilitation. My noble friend Lady Linklater has demonstrated such schemes to the noble Lord, Lord Carter, and I pay tribute to her energy and commitment to this issue. Finally, there is the issue of knowledge and awareness. While we will respond more fully to the contents of the report in due course, will the Government accept the need for greater awareness of the many successful community penalty schemes which are found around the country? Will the Minister confirm that they should be better supported and expanded to address the long-term rehabilitation of offenders so that they can return to meaningful lives within their communities?