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Prisons

My Lords, I, too, endorse that sentiment and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, on bringing this matter for debate before your Lordships' House. A country is judged by its performance regarding its prison system and penal policy. We are told by the noble Lord that prisons are in crisis and the speeches have bristled with human rights issues and personal tragedies. The Howard League’s figures on prison suicide are terrible to read; in the case of women, especially, the figures have leapt by 167 per cent over the past couple of years, and the under-21s likewise. The youngest, a mere 15 years old, has already been mentioned. The tasks of such a commission should be to look at the comparative figures for the UK versus other countries and, if it was appointed tomorrow, at the currently rising numbers in this country looked at on their own. I shall give noble Lords a few figures. My source is the International Centre for Prison Studies—this is the realm of the noble Baroness, Lady Stern—and the figures are very up-to-date. I shall use the unit of measurement used in the centre’s national reports of number of prisoners per 100,000 head of population. The figure for the UK, which we have had already, is 152. I gather that in some countries, including the United States, Russia and other eastern European countries, the figures are way higher. We may be talking about 600 or 750 per 100,000 of population, but I shall ignore those and come closer to our coastline, starting with Scandinavia. I think we would all assume that in Scandinavia we will find a small number of prisoners per 100,000—at least I would—and so it is: Denmark has 66, Sweden 79 and Norway 75. There is an interesting parallel here. An organisation called Transparency International publishes an annual league table on the most and least corrupt countries in business dealings. It is based on businessmen’s evidence. Up at the top, in the sense of being the least corrupt, come the Scandinavian countries. It is rather interesting that these penal figures correspond. For France, the figure for prisoners per 100,000 of population is 91, for Germany it is 88, and Italy 75. We creep over the 100 mark with the Netherlands. Then there is the very startling result for Spain; I think the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, himself would be surprised. It tops the UK, with a figure of 154. There has been a tremendous increase in the Spanish prison population, from 35,000 in 1992 to 70,000 in June of this year. I also looked at the number of juveniles in prison. In the UK, 2.9 per cent of the prison population are defined as juveniles, minors and young prisoners. There may be some irregularity in the figures because the exact language may not be capable of totally accurate translation country by country. In Scandinavia, the figure in Denmark is 0.1 per cent; in Norway, 0.3 per cent; and in Sweden, 0.2 per cent. In France the figure is 1.1 per cent and in Germany it is higher, at 4.4 per cent. Then there is the astonishing figure of 11 per cent for the Netherlands which includes imprisonment outside institutions. In Italy, the figure is 0.9 per cent. We are not the worst in percentage terms—we are beaten by Germany and the astonishing figure in the Netherlands. On the occupancy level of prison accommodation, the figure for prisoners in the UK is 113 per cent against 100 per cent accommodation. Spain has the astonishing figure of 140 per cent, Sweden 106 per cent and France 118 per cent. All the others are below 100. Our figure is worrying. The royal commission should then look at the causes of our high figures. There are four possible things to look at: the restrictive attitude to bail; the restrictive attitude to parole, because of the fear of letting somebody out who commits a crime within 24 hours; the indeterminate sentences, where people linger; and long sentences, where there has been a huge change from the pre-war era. At that time about 9 per cent of male prisoners were serving three years or more. The comparable figure for 2002 was that 61 per cent of male prisoners were serving longer sentences. We have switched to long sentences. I will have to stop now, but I want to say one word on Titan prisons. The idea of a Titan prison creates dismay in my heart. With 2,500 prisoners locked up in a single building, what will happen if there is any sort of riot, industrial action or any of the things that we have been reminded of? What will life be like for those prisoners if they are being bullied or there is some sort of sexual aberration? You can imagine conditions of total horror. I close on that note. I hope there is still time for some rethinking there.