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Lord Elton: My Lords, I apologise for arriving a moment or two late. I overestimated the interest of the House in the Statement that preceded this debate. I am most grateful, as are other noble Lords, to the noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, for giving us the opportunity to air not only her concerns about the prospects under NOMS but also to show that her concerns are widely shared, as I am sure we shall shortly learn. I am glad to see the Minister in her familiar, almost permanent place on the Front Bench, and look forward to her reply, which I think will be quite a difficult task.
Plans for reorganisation have produced such widespread alarm, despondency and criticism that we should start by recognising the substantial advances that have been made by the Government in criminal justice matters. My concern is with young people, young offenders and potential young offenders. I recognise that, thanks to the Criminal Justice Board, YOTs, and so on, there have been changes, such that from 1997 the time from arrest to sentence of a young offender was 142 days, and in 2001 that had gone down to 71 days, which is a notable improvement. In 2001, 25 per cent of young people who were arrested by the police said that nothing happened afterwards. That dropped by 2003 to 10 per cent, which is good progress.
We must recognise, too, the resource that the Government are putting into the probation service, which has risen by more than 46 per cent since 1997. Probation staff numbers have increased by 30 per cent. Most important, the young offender custodial population has remained more or less static since 1997, for which we should be truly grateful, while the adult population has soared.
It should also be recognised that newly available sentences mean that almost one in three young offenders can make some amends for their misdeeds. That is good, and is a good message to offenders. But we should acknowledge the scale of the threat and the problem. There are now nearly 5.5 million 10 to 17 year-old children in England and Wales of whom roughly 25 per cent will have committed some sort of criminal offence in the past 12 months, if the level reported in 2004 is sustained. That is not good progress. I acknowledge the resources. The Youth Justice Board budget has gone up from £234 million in 2001 to £394 million in 2003. That is the cost of successful intervention, but what about the cost of failed intervention?
The Audit Commission report on youth justice in 2004 states on page 6:
"Many young people who end up in custody have a history of professionals failing to listen, assessments not being followed by action and nobody being in charge. If effective early intervention had been provided for just one in ten of those young offenders, annual savings in excess of £100 million could have been made".
Probation work, as the noble Baroness said, is face-to-face work with criminals. In my case, the interest is with young criminals. It has to rest on trust, respect and time. It is disturbing that in 1996 the contact time available on average to a young offender was only one hour a week, and more so, that by 2003, contact time had risen to only one hour and six minutes. That is not sufficient progress, and causes me to worry about contestability.
In 2004 the Audit Commission reported:
"We found that although investment in early intervention has increased substantially in the last five years, it is often undermined by pressures to deliver improved outcomes in the short term".
Those pressures exist now, but how enormously will they increase in organisations targeted on winning a competitive bid by producing good figures in time for the bid going in?
That brings me, as it did the noble Baroness, to the 750 responses to the consultation on the proposals, and the alleged 10 in favour—740 against. I hope that the Government will not follow Ken Livingstone in his celebrated "consultation" on the extension of the congestion zone, which I think showed that 89 per cent were against. Having consulted, which was his statutory duty, he went ahead and did it. I hope that the Government will not follow that model.
If their aim is to bring more of the voluntary sector into play, we should all remember that there are already 1,500 voluntary organisations in partnership with probation services throughout the country, which are doing extremely well. Why cannot that be extended instead of inventing an entirely new organisation? The aim is to have a seamless transition from conviction through treatment into ordinary life. For that we are all enthusiastic, but we must count the cost and see whether the right method is being used.
My next anxiety is about the proposal to amalgamate the inspectorates of the Prison Service and the probation services. I shall not say much because there is somebody much more suitable who will talk about the issue later. Something that he may be too modest to say is the enormously valuable part played by the Chief Inspector in having the ear of the Minister and, perhaps more important in the political world, the ear of the public. If each service is subordinated to a supremo—a new Her Majesty's chief inspector of prison and probation services, it will be a buffer between the Minister and the services, and, more importantly, a buffer between the inspectorates and the public. Will the Minister take note of the concern that is widely shared that the individuality, independence and articulateness of the two services should be preserved under whatever arrangements are made?
I said that the reward for a 10 per cent increase in early intervention would be the saving of more than £100 million a year. Early in this context means early in the offending career, but that is very late in the career of the offender. Almost all the characteristics predicative of criminality are formed well before the first crime is committed. The National Audit Office 2004 report on youth offending has a useful few
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paragraphs on the assessment scheme—ASSET—for young offenders. In figure 13 on page 31, they set out a hierarchy of the conditions predictive of criminal behaviour: "Thinking and behaviour" is at the top, followed by "Lifestyle", "Education", and "Family and personal relationships". I mention this, because it is easy to get it wrong. The first two lines, "Thinking and behaviour" and "Lifestyle", flow from the next two, "Education" and "Family". So family and education are actually the top predictors, which condition children to criminality. We must not lose sight of that. Intervention should be in the family and education at the earliest stage.
As a schoolmaster, I have seen frustration in children unable to get the just results of their efforts; largely, in my day, before dyslexia was recognised as anything except a non-specific learning difficulty. That frustration, that inability to make use of the powerhouse of energy, imagination and hunger within a child, is a prime driver to desperate activity, for going out of school and doing something more exciting, where you can see your results—which you can do if you smash a window, a telephone box or, indeed, a motor car.
We so often hear of children who simply have not got enough to do, perfectly respectable children who are bored to tears—they actually say so in their interviews. All of this is relevant to this debate, because we are talking about the volume of offenders going into NOMS, which is shaped to receive them. If only we spent a tithe of what we spend on catching and punishing offenders on preventing them becoming young offenders. If you want to harness the voluntary sector, look back into the dusty records of the Department of Health and Social Security, as it was, to a scheme, invented by the late Lord Ennals before he joined this House, called the Intermediate Treatment Fund. It is a prototype which should not have been shelved. It was shelved in the days of a government in which I had been a member, and I bitterly regret it. In that respect, at least, I hope I find myself closer to the Minister than I otherwise would.
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The Lord Bishop of Exeter: My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Gibson of Market Rasen, for giving us an opportunity to debate the major changes now in train in our criminal justice system. These changes are the most far reaching in living memory and deserve careful consideration. I recognise that the creation of NOMS marks a bold attempt to move away from fragmentary and short-term measures to consistent and constructive ways of dealing with offenders. Although I have reservations about the terminology, the goal of "end-to-end offender management" is right, and long overdue.
What is less clear is whether the institutional means adopted will adequately serve that admirable goal. We are in the midst of a huge experiment, the outcome of which is highly uncertain. That is troubling for those who work within the system and, as the noble Baroness
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indicated, especially in the probation service, as it faces dismantling and reconfiguration after a somewhat hasty process of consultation.
The effectiveness of NOMS will depend on developing partnerships in local communities, and between prisons and local communities, to provide supervision for prisoners on release and appropriate programmes for offenders serving community sentences. As the noble Lord, Lord Elton, has reminded us, much valuable work is already done in the resettlement of offenders by voluntary organisations, including churches and faith-based groups. At their best, these are able to offer strong motivation, flexibility and innovation.
It is good that this has been recognised in the formation of the alliance to reduce re-offending, and in the extensive consultation and planning being undertaken by the NOMS voluntary sector unit. Reducing re-offending is not just the business of professionals but a shared task within civil society as a whole. Members of churches and faith communities will want to respond to the opportunities and challenges of NOMS by entering into partnership with others who share their aspirations.
Having said that, I must voice some anxieties. In the light of our experience of dealing with offenders, the goals of NOMS are not only admirable but highly ambitious. It is excellent that national and local strategies for resettlement follow the seven pathways derived from the report of the Social Exclusion Unit. However, responding to the multiple needs of offenders is difficult and costly. It is a fine principle that a single offender manager should be responsible for the whole programme of work with an offender, with better risk assessment and sharing of information, but will the organisation be equal to these demands? Above all, will the necessary resources of staffing and funding be forthcoming? What will be done to ensure continuity of expertise and high consistent standards?
The greatest uncertainties lie in the realm of commissioning and organising services. This may be unavoidable, but we are losing the overarching framework of expertise and accountability currently provided by the probation service without knowing what will emerge from the complex web of contestability between public, private and voluntary agencies. Like some others, I find in the structures of NOMS a potential conflict between the promotion of co-operation and the desire to control. I am not sure which tendency will prevail. I also fear that competition may lead to silo mentality and working, rather than genuine co-operation. There are great gains to be realised from the new partnerships which will be created and fresh energies which may be released. These will be negated, however, if the system of management does not allow them to flourish with independence and integrity, and within a culture of genuine co-operation.
However, sober realism about the challenges and the dangers does not entail being negative. I welcome the fact that NOMS is taking seriously the problems of
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capacity faced by voluntary organisations and is encouraging them to approach commissioning by building consortia, within which the stronger organisations can help and advise the weaker. In this way NOMS will be able to mobilise the commitment and local knowledge of such organisations, without subjecting them to intolerable administrative and financial strains. I particularly welcome the recent decision to appoint a faith-based development manager to develop a strategy, in partnership with NOMS and the voluntary and community sector, to underpin the work of faith-based organisations with offenders and their families.
I conclude by drawing attention to an area of work which, while not strictly speaking part of NOMS, is closely related and highly relevant to it. Community chaplaincy originated several decades ago in Canada, and has now taken firm root in this country. Like NOMS, community chaplaincy seeks to build bridges between prisons and the wider community. It aims to provide support to offenders on release and, to the extent that they wish, to help them on their journey of faith. It is not in the business of managing offenders, but it shares the concern of NOMS with resettlement needs. It recognises that one of the greatest points of vulnerability in the rehabilitation process comes at the point of release from a highly structured environment back into a community where support levels may be low, and pressures to re-offend high. Typically, community chaplains in prison work with those being released to assess their needs, and refer them as appropriate to a network of volunteers in the areas to which they are discharged.
At present, 10 such schemes have sprung up across the country in response to local needs and vision, and a similar number are being planned. At the heart of community chaplaincy is partnership, because, like NOMS, it depends upon integrated planning, and sharing of information and resources. It involves partnership between prisons and local organisations, between statutory and voluntary agencies, and between religious and secular groups. In many areas it is appropriately inter-faith. To date, both Muslim and Hindu communities have been involved with Christian ones. This is not a sectarian movement, but one which seeks to unite people in serving the common good.
As with any other work with offenders, it is legitimate to ask questions about the effectiveness of community chaplaincy. One of the earliest projects was set up in Swansea in 2001 and has been systematically evaluated over its first two years by Dr Joanne Portwood. She found that just over a quarter of prisoners released from Swansea prison requested some kind of support from the community chaplain, and that the reconviction rate of those who took part in the project was 22 per cent compared with the expected rate of 55 per cent. Although that figure must be treated with caution, and the influence of other resettlement work must be allowed for, it would suggest that the project may have helped to save £6 million of public money as a result of preventing reconvictions.
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Therefore, I am pleased that in his lecture to the Prison Reform Trust last September the Home Secretary commended community chaplaincy as an excellent example of the contribution of churches, faith groups and the voluntary sector to reducing re-offending. However, developing community chaplaincy is not easy. It demands sustained and sensitive work to create and maintain partnerships and to plan work in an uncertain funding environment. It requires responsible management with attention to the training, supervision and support of volunteers and careful monitoring of standards, but the potential achievements and rewards are considerable.
If the difficulties are considerable within the relatively free structure of community chaplaincy, how much greater will they be within the colossus of NOMS. As we travel into the unknown, I cannot help thinking of the man in the parable told by Jesus who began to build a tower without calculating the cost and found himself unable to finish it. The seriousness of managing offenders requires that we get the details right at national, regional and local levels, for the price of failure would be high.
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