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As the noble Baroness said, those conclusions are not new. They are what every report on the subject concludes. One has to ask the Government what the problem is with reforming the way we deal with women in prison. Or, if I may put it another way, why is it that when we want now local centres to which women can go to be helped, we get a “cross-departmental unit”? When we want now better access to local services, we get a “ministerial subgroup”. When we want as soon as possible small custodial units, we get a “project to examine”. When will another centre like the Asha Women’s Centre in Worcester, so much praised by the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, open? Will it be this year or next year? I will not go on to say “some time, never”. When will a diversion scheme be set up in a court so that the women who should be in treatment can get into treatment? Will that be this year or next
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I, too, am very impressed with the stamina of the Minister, which is wholly remarkable. I apologise that I have asked so many questions and I look forward very much to his reply.
3.56 pm
Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick: My Lords, it is a privilege to take part in a debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham. He and all the other speakers have brought great statistical insights to the debate and have helped us to understand how dreadful and compellingly awful the problem is. I had not intended to speak in the House this afternoon; it was not until I heard the excellent Julian Dee in the Cross-Benchers’ office regale us with some of the facts that my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham would use in his opening speech that I felt that I wanted to add my voice to those championing and campaigning voices that we have heard today.
This is an issue of great shame, on which we have to feel that action not only is long overdue but has been carelessly disregarded by the Government. We all know the facts, which have been cited in particular by the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, who led us through a despairing litany of statistics. We feel worse when we hear them and more fed up when we wonder why action is so far away. Report after report does not seem to change the intention to deliver.
We know what the facts tell us. Between 5.5 per cent and 5.8 per cent of prisoners in the English prison system are women; the figure is 4.4 per cent in Scotland and 2.2 per cent in Ireland. I do not want to distract us in any way from the subject of the debate, which is unbelievably important and must be acted on. Nor do I want to diminish the significance of focusing entirely on the need for a women’s justice board, to which I add my voice and my intention to give support. However, I will highlight just one sub-statistic. Behind the 5.5 per cent figure of women in prison, most of whom come from the majority population, is the fact that 21 per cent of women prisoners are black, even though black women make up just 1 per cent of the total population. About 13 per cent to 15 per cent, depending on the statistics that you read, of male prisoners are black, but 21 per cent of women prisoners are black.
A particularly difficult issue applies to black women as opposed to the general female population. As I say, this is not an occasion to distract from or undermine the significance of a women’s justice board, but we should recognise that we seem more able and willing to put away a particular coterie of our population and to treat them more harshly.
In 2003, the then Lord Chancellor and our first Justice Minister, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, said in response to a report that looked specifically at the circumstances surrounding black and Asian incarceration:
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“The statistics show that people from the black and minority communities have a different experience of the criminal justice system both as defendants and victims. Whilst we have the data, it does not tell us why this is the case. The extent to which experience is caused by prejudice or because black and minority ethnic communities suffer from other factors which increase crime is unclear”.
This article on the BBC News website says that the report also includes figures, originally published in 2002, showing that blacks were eight times more likely than whites to be stopped and searched by police and that Asians were three times more likely than whites to be stopped and searched.
We all know of the frenetic and divisive exchange that took place yesterday based on who could put out the latest stop-and-search proposals. Of course, the victims of inappropriate stop and search remain largely those of the non-indigenous cultures.
All I wish to add to this critical and compelling point about the need for a women’s justice board is that at moments of reform and opportunity—my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham is calling for action, determination and reform—we should focus on the particularly difficult wrinkles of the problem. What about the possibility of a black Britons’ justice board that could recognise the difficult and painful additional circumstances of minorities in this country when faced with the police or the criminal justice system? That is a bone I throw to the Minister for him either to chew or to throw away.
As the chairman of Crime Concern, I have been pleased to work for many years with the Youth Justice Board and have seen how significantly it has changed the landscape of opportunity. It is, of course, underfunded, like any other government sub-department, and on many occasions underrecognised. But it has brought about essential advice on prevention and intervention, focus awareness, appropriate punishment and successful rehabilitation options. On the needs of black women, there is additional advice on sensitivity and sentencing that is not current in our system. I suggest to the Minister in the context of this vital debate that we take that factor into account.
4.02 pm
Lord Acton: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, with his vast experience, for introducing this debate.
In 1972, my former wife, Judith Garfield Todd, was imprisoned in colonial Rhodesia by the Smith regime. There was no question of a charge or a trial, and she went on hunger strike. She was taken to another prison, where she was force fed. Then she was put under house arrest. Judith was in prison for five weeks; for me, those five weeks were very, very long. The episode left me with an abiding interest in women prisoners.
Judith wrote that the superintendent of her first prison and his wife,
That is precisely the impression I have of the prison staff at Holloway. My noble friend Lady Corston writes authoritatively in paragraph 2 of the Executive Summary of her admirable report:
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“I pay tribute to the many dedicated, caring staff working throughout all of the criminal justice agencies, who strive every day to provide a decent environment and improve the well-being of the women in their care. I have been very impressed by much of what I have seen”.
As everybody who has spoken has said, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, many of us have long advocated a women’s justice board, as proposed in the Wedderburn report in 2000. Now the Wedderburn report has been supplanted by the Corston report of March last year. At the heart of this report, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, lies the proposal for a commission for women who offend or are at risk of offending. My noble friend Lady Corston says,
- “there needs to be a strategic top level cross-departmental commission, headed by someone very senior—director level”—
- “with authority to direct work in hand relating to women in the criminal justice system, supported by sufficient staff from the various departments and agencies involved”.
Then, at paragraph 4.14, my noble friend writes that the Youth Justice Board has,
- “been central in shaping and coordinating the complex web of agencies involved and has brought leadership, coherence and consistency to youth justice”.
It is now time to do the same for women, by establishing a strategic commission with the power to make things happen—I stress those words.
My noble friend Lady Corston’s formal recommendation about the commission begins:
“I recommend the immediate establishment of a Commission for women who offend or are at risk of offending, led at director level, with a remit of care and support for women who offend or are at risk of offending”.
The Government’s response of December 2007 accepts this recommendation in principle, and continues:
“The Government has agreed to the establishment of a new cross-departmental Criminal Justice Women’s Unit headed by a senior civil servant”.
I stress that last phrase. I applaud that the criminal justice women’s unit is already being drawn together, as I am informed. Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, I applaud the Government’s announcement of a ministerial champion for women prisoners in the person of Maria Eagle, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice; although, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, rightly pointed out, she has so many duties that she will not have much time for championing women prisoners.
However, the great shortfall in the Government’s response concerns the leader of the commission. My noble friend Lady Corston’s linchpin was that the full-time champion for women prisoners must be at director level; in other words, a grade 2 or 3 civil servant. However, the Government have downgraded this to “a senior civil servant”. That could mean a grade 5 civil servant who simply would not have the clout or authority to make things happen, where a director-level civil servant would have. I ask my noble friend the Minister to explain why the Government have rejected my noble friend Lady Corston’s explicit and convincing recommendation of a director-level
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4.08 pm
The Earl of Listowel: My Lords, towards the tail end of this debate, in which so many of your Lordships have spoken so eloquently, I shall reflect on a few things that have been said; notably, what the noble Lord, Lord Acton, has just said, and what my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham said about the leadership required.
I was put in mind of the Government’s decision in 1998 to appoint Louise Casey as the tsar for homelessness. The Government set her a clear target: to reduce homelessness to one-third within three years. Louise Casey was absolutely ruthless: she knocked together the heads of all the organisations involved. I spent time in a winter hostel for homeless young people. Before her arrival, much was to be demanded and better was to be expected of it. A year after she had been in post, it had been transformed: the best professionals were looking after these vulnerable young people. The Government are much to be commended on this.
It was clear in this case that a large amount of political capital was laid on the outcome of achieving this reduction in homelessness. Louise Casey is quite an exception as a civil servant because she is prepared to be so outspoken. I think that the Government have recognised her unique qualities by placing her at the head of the Anti-Social Behaviour Unit. That is one reflection on what has been said so far.
My second reflection is on two related things: one is sentence inflation, to which my noble friend Lady Howe alluded. I remember being in your Lordships’ House as we debated increasing the tariff for adults who commit murder—I hope I have that right. It was argued that by doing so one would ratchet up sentence lengths throughout the system—I hope I have that right, too. The question then was: since we are raising the tariff for adults, should we not raise the tariff for children? The Government were very serious about increasing the length of sentences for children who kill. The psychiatrists and other experts working in this area told me that if this was done, all the good work that they do with children under 18 in special provision would be undone when they entered adult provision. We had to try to prevent this from happening. Fortunately, we were successful. Two things come from that; if there is a separate arrangement for women, there is at least a chance that they might be separated from any further ratcheting-up of sentencing for men. This is another example of what the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, said; women are lumped together with men and treated as if they had the same issues, and it is just not right to do so.
Action for Prisoners’ Families, led by Lucy Gampell, provided me with the words of a mother:
“On Thursday 14th June 2004 I was sentenced to a 7-year jail term. Within 48 hours my son was bedwetting again, within 96 hours he was too scared to go to sleep in case his Grandmother left him whilst he slept. Children with a parent in jail go through
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“Within a month of my sentencing he went from being the brightest in his class to falling behind so badly that he was almost kept back a year ... During my time in prison I was fortunate enough to be able to call my son every other night and write to him the days I didn’t speak to him. His father brought him to visit me once a month but best of all we had children’s visits in prison every school holidays. These allowed us to spend time together as mum and son, to talk, to play, to hug and just to be. These were so important to me but I could never express in words the extent of the importance of these days to my son Maxy. He would count down the days between these children’s visits and would actually save up things to tell me and to talk about. These were Maxy’s special time, his time to know and feel my love for him, his time to recharge his self esteem and security, his time to be my little boy.
“I was released on 13 August 2007 ... I am delighted to say that Maxy chose to live with me upon my release. I can place my hand on my heart and say that if it hadn’t been for the Children’s days we’d had together, when I was at Send and Downview I would most definitely have lost my son’s love, and my dream of him wanting and actually living with me as he does now would never have come true.
“On Monday just gone Maxy came top of his class in his maths examination ... But he still sees a child psychologist once a month to help him rid the demons of his nightmares that my stupidity created but he’s getting there and I am so proud of him ... Today there are tens of thousands of children with a parent in jail hurting just as much as Maxy if not more so, there are likely to be even more children in this position tomorrow, many have no one to hear them and no one to love them, we need to help these children for they have done nothing wrong”.
I draw the attention of noble Lords to another letter forwarded to me by the APF written by a 16 year-old female whose mother is in prison:
“I didn’t tell anyone, not friends or school. Teachers know now, because my behaviour deteriorated. A social worker got involved and informed the school. I told one friend who then told the whole school, who then stopped talking to me. Another girl supported me because her mum was in prison too. I dropped out of school for six months and left early without taking my GCSEs. I then got a job in a nursery”.
This is a letter from two sisters, aged 15 and 13, whose mother is in prison:
“She mustn’t think we don’t love her ... if we don’t keep in touch she will think we don’t love her and she will harm herself again”.
Children have a right to contact with their parents under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. All our instincts tell us that this is so. Only today the newspapers and Lord Justice Munby have reminded us of the gravity of separating mother and child. Why then do we permit our criminal justice system to do it apparently so frequently and freely? We need an independent commissioner for women’s justice to right this wrong.
4.16 pm
Baroness Murphy: My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the gap, which I think is due to a computer glitch. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham for what he has said today. I wholeheartedly support his thesis and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, whose report we have all so admired in the debate. As a psychiatrist, noble Lords will not be surprised that I want to talk about mental health and drug misuse problems, which are often the cause of these women’s criminal activity and
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We cannot take away the tragedy of the abusive and unloving childhoods that often precede addiction, chronic distress and inadequate personal relationships. We do not have any miracle cures for many of the mental health problems these women face, but we can at least try to stop making them worse. We can take seriously the notion that we need to innovate and find different ways of intervening, and then evaluate them properly. Perhaps I may describe a handful of problems that have been mentioned to me in the past few days. As we try to tackle them, we realise that we know far less than sometimes we pretend about the research into what works. The recommendations of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, are very sensible and are based on the current evaluations of small and community units, but I want to stress that we need far more co-ordinated research into interventions.
A huge amount of thinking and considerable investment by both the Department of Health and the Ministry of Justice, and before that the Home Office, have gone into initiatives to reduce harm. Yesterday I talked about some of these issues with my colleague at St George’s University of London, Dr Annie Bartlett, the lead clinician on mental health at Holloway prison—not perhaps the most typical prison; indeed, it is a rather unusual one—where serious efforts have been made to try to address some of the most difficult issues. Among many of the overarching problems, she pointed out the difficulties of engaging these women in treatment programmes. It is no easy matter. For some women, the comfort zone of abusive relationships is as addictive as the drugs they have come to depend on. The drop-out rate on the outside from what start out as good counselling relationships inside prison is very high. It is a difficult problem. More investment in extra time and places in the community with increased numbers of staff are required to try to engage with and keep these women in treatment.
We know that half the women leaving prison have no GP and that GPs are reluctant to take women on after their release from prison, yet they desperately need that supportive primary care which is now available to quite a lot of women inside prison. Perhaps we have to coerce GPs to take them on with direct funding, as we so often do in other areas.
The noble Baroness, Lady Corston, rightly emphasised the need for a community-based alternative, and my noble friend Lady Stern gave us a marvellous example that I would like to see repeated. But we must also remember how we approach seriously addicted drug misusers who at present often get an opportunity to detox in prison. We must think about what kind of appropriate residential treatment facilities are needed to help at that point. Creative thinking is required about needle exchange programmes, which have been successfully introduced in a number of women’s prisons on the continent. I believe that Hindelbank prison in
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We know that cutting and self-harm need a whole-prison approach but it is difficult to do that across the wings in a place like Holloway and some of our other prisons. We know, too, that we need a whole-prison approach for the prevention of suicide. That means the engagement of every single member of staff, not only those in the mental health units. Tinkering around the edges and trying to establish therapeutic regimes in an alienating punitive environment is unlikely to make much headway.
We need to get one group out of prison fast, and that is the 10 to 14 per cent of prisoners who have a psychotic illness—an horrendous figure. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and I are uncertain about this. He would like to see the Mental Health Act recommendations implemented in prisons; I am ambivalent about that. Far better, it seems to me, would be to get them out into proper units where they can be treated in a therapeutic regime. A custodial environment cannot be right for someone with a psychosis. That is what forensic units are for. They must accept not only Crown Court cases but women who have a psychosis, however it was determined that they should receive treatment.
For most of these women we do not know enough about how best to help them and how to help society by reducing their reoffending. We need to allow a thousand flowers of alternative types of provision to bloom. We do not know enough to say that one only is the alternative. We need much more evidence-based research.
I am rapidly running out of time. I suggest that the only way we are going to get a comprehensive strategy is to think through what we pilot and where and what problems should be tackled, on a comprehensive basis, before offending, during offending and in aftercare. A women’s justice board could look at these problems across the piece, carry out trials and encourage innovation in the whole area of the criminal justice system for women.
4.22 pm
Baroness Falkner of Margravine: My Lords, we, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for his tenacity, energy and clear-sightedness in pursuing this matter over the years that he has been in this House. I am grateful because he has given us an opportunity to look at this case.
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