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Prisons: Howard League Commission

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Howard League for Penal Reform. I welcome the opportunity today to debate the report from the Howard League’s Commission on English Prisons. I look forward to a constructive reply by the Minister and am grateful to the distinguished noble Lords who have put down their names to speak in this debate. The commission was an independent review of the prisons crisis by some of the country’s leading experts and practitioners who were asked to look radically at the purpose and limits of our penal system early in the 21st Century. The final report, Do Better Do Less, was published last July. Key ideas in the report, such as introducing a model of localism in the criminal justice system and advocating the concept of justice reinvestment —to which I will return later—have been echoed in subsequent reports by the All-party Parliamentary Group on Local Government and a recent report from the Justice Select Committee entitled, Cutting Crime: The Case for Justice Reinvestment. The time is now ripe for urgent reform. In summary, the report advocates a new approach of penal moderation and fundamental reform. One headline is a significant reduction in the prison population and the closure of establishments. Another is localisation, of which more later. Thirdly, there is the replacement of short prison sentences, which achieve little if anything, with community-based responses. Fourthly, there is the dismantling of NOMS, including the break-up of the centrally managed prison service, save for retaining some centralisation for the most serious and dangerous offenders. The commission’s signal contribution to the debate was to link the penal crisis in our prisons to wider economic conditions and requirements. This was not new, but it re-emphasised that radical reform of the prison system can provide value for money—and save money. With prison numbers almost doubling in the past 15 years, it is fair to say that the imprisonment industry has been booming. Yet, as with many bad businesses, booming turnover has been accompanied by a bust in profit. Our prisons, groaning under the weight of more men, women and children than ever before, are simply unfit for purpose, particularly in being able to achieve any goals other than containment. The commission identified that the need to reduce public spending over the coming years brought with it an opportunity to inject some sanity, permanence and stability into the penal system. The message at the heart of the commission’s report is in its title: Do Better Do Less. Instead of more legislative hyperactivity in the field of criminal justice and ramping up ever higher the use of costly imprisonment, the commission argued with force for a principle of moderation. At the core was some well founded research, for plenty of information is available abroad. In its visits to other countries, the commission found that it was entirely realistic to have less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prisons. Surely that is the formula that we should adopt, yet here we are, bumping along towards 85,000 in prison, a figure that will increase as a result of the announcement, which I understand has already been made in another place today, that the early release scheme is to cease in March. Germany, with 20 million more people than the United Kingdom, jails around 72,000 people, France only 64,000. Yet in both those countries campaigners say that there are too many in jail and call for reform. Are the English and Welsh really any more criminal or likely victims of crime than the French and Germans and our other neighbours? Why do we feel the need to imprison so many more people and what does it achieve? Worse still than the sheer numbers, the prisons have become warehouses for dumping people with problems that should have been dealt with elsewhere. I would highlight the number of mentally ill people in prison, practically none of whom are dealt with in the way in which they would be in the community, were they to go through conventional clinical systems. In an overcrowded and overwhelmed prison system, those people will never get the help that they need to move on beyond the ever-revolving door. Reoffending rates speak for themselves; for young people leaving prison, the rates rise as high as 75 per cent. The commission espouses the vision of less crime, safer communities and fewer people in prison. The real key to that lies in the communities approach. The commission advocated a more localised criminal justice system, particularly for communities where crime is of most concern and the public simply do not understand why things are as bad as they perceive them to be. The commission’s report advocates devolving criminal justice spending and giving local authorities in partnership with the police the lead role in the fight against crime. It argues that localism should lead to less money spent on process and more on actions, which produce beneficial outcomes for the whole community. What is missing, among other things, is a sense that the public and those elected to represent them have any local ownership of the criminal justice system, a feeling that would be especially useful in producing effective restorative justice. A more responsive devolved system would allow local areas to shift resources smoothly from funding prison places to funding community needs. That is what is described as justice reinvestment, a concept that has come from the United States of America. Some states were unable to balance their budgets because of the very extensive use of prison. Those budgetary crises opened legislators to cross party lines and share together new ideas. They mapped neighbourhoods to prison populations, and as a result experts were able to identify what have been called "million-dollar blocks", so called because it costs $1 million a year to incarcerate a high proportion of the block’s inhabitants. The question that justice reinvestment asks is why we should not spend that $1 million not on prisons but on the area. In states that are pioneering justice reinvestment initiatives, that means reducing the use of prison and closing jails to free up funding so that it can be spent on dealing with the underlying causes of crime in these neighbourhoods. The Government have shown enthusiasm for the community court initiative in Liverpool—and I am delighted to see the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool in this Committee. It has proved to be very successful. The same can occur if they show similar enthusiasm for localisation of imprisonment. Justice reinvestment is not about alternatives just within the criminal justice system; it is about making partnerships within and outside the criminal justice system. It recognises that the criminal justice system as we have it can be a very blunt instrument, and nowhere is that felt with more frustration than by judges and magistrates as they send people to jail and know that they will be back again, certainly in magistrates’ courts in city centres, probably within a few weeks. Justice reinvestment, as advocated by the report, also enables localities to tackle issues of education and training, poor mental health and better public amenities, even stairwells, playgrounds and safe places for young people to hang out. Justice reinvestment, as advocated by the Howard League commission, advocates new local strategic partnerships and involves trusting local authorities and communities with responsibility but, I would argue, trusting them with the responsibilities and opportunities that they are best at. Thus, prison and probation budgets would be devolved to their control, giving them funds for justice reinvestment initiatives. If pilot projects were created, as has happened in the United States, I can see no argument contrary to the view that we would see benefit. I urge the Government, and the Minister in his response, to recognise that this report has made a useful and constructive contribution to the debate and that not to adopt it, at least on a test basis, would be an act of neglect.