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Prisons

My Lords, I strongly support the call by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for a royal commission into the state of our prisons. This country has never before had a royal commission into the state of our prisons, except that in 1964, we set up a commission and then disbanded it in 1966 before it completed its work. The principal reason why that committee foundered was that its terms of reference were very wide. If a royal commission were established, it would be important to avoid making the same mistake again. The terms of reference of the royal commission should be limited to three things: first, prison conditions and regimes, secondly, prison management, and thirdly, the use of imprisonment. Although there has not been a royal commission, there have been a number of inquiries into the state of our prisons, from the Gladstone committee of 1895 to the Woolf report of 1991. A royal commission could do worse than reiterate the principles set out over a century ago in the report of the Gladstone committee. The crucial contribution that the Gladstone Committee made to penal thinking was its insistence that reforming prisoners should become one of the primary aims of the prison system. It argued that prisoners' treatment, "““should be more effectually designed ... whenever possible to turn them out of prison better men and women, both physically and morally, than when they came in””." This argument is as valid today as it was at the end of the 19th century. Set in today's context, this philosophy would argue for a smaller prison population held in prisons where regimes were based on the need to prepare prisoners for release. For many years, the United Kingdom has had a higher proportion of its population in prison than most other western European countries. We currently have 148 people in prison for every 100,000 people in the general population, compared with 93 in Germany and 85 in France. As a result of our overuse of custody, we tolerate a routine degree of overcrowding which could have shocked the Gladstone committee. It was critical of the fact that the provision of the Prisons Act 1865 that every male prisoner should sleep in a cell by himself had occasionally—I emphasise that—not been adhered to because of the reception of unusually large drafts of prisoners. Compare that with the position in Britain today, where our local prisons are routinely overcrowded. Overcrowding means that 18,000 prisoners are held two to a cell, built for one person. It means that it is much harder for prisons to provide genuinely rehabilitative regimes which could reduce reoffending on release. It means an increased risk of suicide and self-harm; that point was ably demonstrated by previous speakers. It means that prisoners are often moved before they have finished educational and rehabilitative courses, which could have helped to reduce reoffending. The pressure of numbers also means that prisoners are often moved to prisons far from their homes, making it harder to keep family links intact, even though support from a family can provide a very strong incentive for released prisoners to avoid further crime. Most offenders who are sent to prison each year in England and Wales receive sentences of less than 12 months. In most cases, these sentences do no good. They do not provide significant public protection, they are too short for significant rehabilitative work to take place, and they are followed by high reconviction rates—that has already been explained by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. Most of these offenders would be better dealt with by supervision programmes in the community. There are an increasing number of intensive and rigorous programmes, which make real demands on offenders and significantly restrict their liberty. They also hold out more hope of preventing reoffending than a short prison sentence. When offenders are imprisoned, there is overcrowding and overwhelming evidence of the importance of rehabilitation in protecting the public from further offending. There can be a significant impact on reducing reoffending from regimes which involve highly focused work on attitudes to offending, help offenders to restrain impulsive and aggressive behaviour, increase their empathy with victims, develop their education and employment skills and provide help with drug and alcohol problems. Getting offenders into jobs reduces their likelihood of reoffending by between one-third and one-half. According to one study, providing offenders with basic skills education cuts their likelihood of reoffending by two-thirds. Offenders who enter and stay in a drug rehabilitation programme have an average rate of reoffending which is one-fifth of their previous level. The appropriate use of imprisonment and the need for rehabilitative prison regimes are inextricably linked. A royal commission with a remit to examine the use of prisons, the management of prisons and prison regimes could produce proposals for a more rational approach to imprisonment and one with a better chance of protecting the public through reducing reoffending.