---

Prisons: Howard League Commission

My Lords, I start by paying tribute to the Howard League for Penal Reform and to its president, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. I thank the Howard League for the chance to discuss the important and radical report that it produced last summer and the noble Lord for introducing the debate. I also thank all other noble Lords who have spoken. We very much welcome the contribution that the report has made to a continuing debate, although we do not of course agree with all its conclusions. The report argues for "penal moderation". The Government agree that the use of prison must be effectively targeted, but we are in no doubt about the important role that prison continues play in delivering a fair and just society for victims of crime, the general public and communities. Prison remains the right option for dangerous, serious and the most seriously persistent offenders. To that end, we have increased prison capacity by more than 25,000 places since 1997, and are committed to increasing net capacity to 96,000 places by 2014, following the report of my noble friend Lord Carter. We will always make sure that there are enough prison places for those the courts sentence to custody or place on remand, and we make no apology for that. Resource spending on prisons was 42 per cent higher in real terms in 2007-08 than was the case in 1996-97. One consequence of providing that additional capacity is that we can now withdraw the end of the custody licence scheme, as my right honourable friend the Justice Secretary told the other place earlier today and as we will discuss later. That scheme was introduced in 2007 as a temporary measure to ease pressures on the prison population, and we now have sufficient headroom in the estate to withdraw the scheme. We have always made it clear that the scheme would be temporary and it is right that we have ended it as soon as it was safe to do so. However, we do not believe that the Government are engaged in unthinking "hyperactivity", as the report and some noble Lords have alleged. We are thinking through carefully the establishment of this new capacity, with a close eye on the needs of offenders. The new prisons, each of around 1,500 places, that were announced a few months ago, will be built in areas where places are most needed. That will ensure that prisoners can be held closer to home and will reduce the number of times an offender is transferred between establishments, which we know disrupts rehabilitative and educational programmes. We have increased investment in education provision, which is a critical part of rehabilitation, from £57 million in 2001-02 to more than £175 million in 2009-10. In 2008-09, nearly 38 per cent of offenders entered employment, training and education on release, and the figure into this year shows continuing increases each month. We are also committed to providing alcohol and drug treatment for offenders in prison. The Committee will know that since 1996-97 funding for prison drug treatment has increased 15-fold with the introduction of the integrated drug treatment system, in particular. We are working with the third sector and the private sector further to improve the drug treatment framework available to offenders, as well as strengthening the continuity of support between prisons and the community. We have also done good work on alcohol offending. In our view, prison remains a key, valuable and necessary element in our criminal justice system, but the Government agree that less serious offenders can often be better dealt with in the community. Therefore, we have programmes in place to divert offenders from custody when appropriate, including vulnerable women offenders. The female prison population decreased by 5 per cent between June 2008 and June 2009. Following the report by my noble friend Lady Corston, we committed to reduce the women’s prison estate by 400 places by March 2012. We are providing £15.6 million of new funding over two years to provide additional services in the community for women offenders who are not a danger to the public and for women at risk of offending. We are also committed to action on diverting offenders with mental health needs, where that is appropriate. In response to the Bradley report, we published a national health and criminal justice delivery plan in November last year. We are committed to develop those policies further. Offenders with mental health needs and vulnerable women are not the only groups where we have seen the population falling or where we are putting into place measures to reduce the population. We have seen a decline of more than 600 in the population of under-18s in custody in the past 16 months. We cannot be accused of treating prison as the be-all and end-all of the criminal justice system. We have ensured that the courts can use tough community punishments in place of short custodial sentences where doing so is justified and proportionate. Community sentences allow for direct payback to the community, while interventions that help offenders tackle the causes of their behaviour are provided. These sentences are enforced rigorously, with more than 90 per cent of offenders who fail to comply returned to court. Within this broader approach to the promotion of community sentences, we are doing some important focused work on seven intensive alternatives to custody pilot projects currently under way around the country. They are targeted at offenders who would otherwise receive short custodial sentences. Nearly 1,000 offenders have started intensive orders in the pilot areas. The projects have developed innovative partnerships with the police and the third and private sectors to give offenders opportunities to turn their lives around or face swift and tough sanctions. The projects, which are being evaluated, have engaged with the courts to build sentencer confidence in intensive community orders as a robust, demanding and effective alternative to short-term custody. The commission argues that local communities should have a role in managing offenders, and we agree. We introduced community payback, enabling the public to have a say in what unpaid work offenders carry out in the local community. Local agencies must work together to tackle what is a shared problem, to reduce the social and financial costs of offending and to improve life for local communities. The integrated offender management model, local commissioning and the introduction of probation trusts increase the scope for local flexibility and innovation. Crime and disorder reduction partnerships, working within local community justice boards, play a key role in reducing re-offending, bringing together and co-ordinating the actions of housing providers, health services, local authorities and other key players. Restorative justice has the potential to be an important part of community engagement, and we are moving actively towards a culture of more visible justice with a stronger focus on encouraging offenders to be more directly accountable to communities. We have also seen restorative justice being used in a pioneering way in the youth justice system. If I had time, I would talk about the justice reinvestment programme in the United States. We have the Diamond Initiative programme in London, which we believe shows real promise. I do not have time to go into that today. Moving on from the use of prison and community sentences to the institutional framework, it will not surprise the Committee that we do not agree that NOMS should be abolished. The recent reorganisation means that the prison and probation services are working together more closely than ever before. If there are any questions that I have not answered— I am conscious that I have not answered all of them— I will write to noble Lords with answers. I finish, first, by reminding the Committee that crime has dropped by more than a third and that the chance of being a victim of crime is at an historic low—these are important considerations; and, secondly, by reiterating our thanks to the commission, to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and to all who have contributed to such an important and thought-provoking report and debate.