Welsh Affairs Committee

Oral evidence: Prison provision in Wales, HC 742

Monday 10 September 2018

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 10 September 2018.

Watch the meeting

Members present: David T. C. Davies (Chair); Tonia Antoniazzi; Susan Elan Jones; Anna McMorrin; Liz Saville Roberts.

Questions 273-358

Witnesses

I: Dr Robert Jones, Research Associate, Wales Governance Centre.

II: Graham Barrett, Governor, HMP Swansea; Nick Dann, Deputy Director, HMP Berwyn; and Janet Wallsgrove, Director, HMP Parc.

III: Amy Rees, Executive Director for Wales, HM Prison and Probation Service.

Written evidence from witnesses:

– Dr Robert Jones

Examination of witness

Witness: Dr Robert Jones.

Q273       Chair: Croeso cynnes i chi, Dr Robert Jones. Diolch yn fawr am ddod o’n blaenau heddiw. I ddechrau, a allwch chi ddweud wrthym am y fethodoleg a ddefnyddioch i greu eich “factfile”, neu adroddiad, ac hefyd os cawsoch chi unrhyw drafodaethau gyda’r Gwasanaeth Carchar cyn ei gynhyrchu, achos maen nhw wedi codi pryderon am beth sydd ynddo?

(Translation) A warm welcome to you, Dr Robert Jones. Thank you for appearing before us today. Can you tell us about the methodology that you used to compile your factfile, or report, and also whether you had any discussions with the Prison Service before you produced it, because they have raised some concerns about your findings?

Dr Jones: I’ll deal with the second point first. No, I had no conversations with the Prison Service prior to the publication of the report, because all of the information that was contained within the factfile could be accessed without having to go to anyone in the Prison Service, so there was no need. In terms of checking the validity or the accuracy of the findings, I asked a number of people to look at it, including a prison inspector who looked at it for me. So that, to me, was fine. From my end there was no need to go to the Prison Service. The data was available and I was able to access it through my own methods, which brings me on to the methodology.

As we have expressed here before, and as I have discussed before, Welsh-only data is not available on a disaggregated level. It is available, but not publicly. To try and access that—this was begun in 2012-13 during the course of my PhD—we routinely sent freedom of information requests to access the information, which always strikes us as a major problem. In fact, the inspiration for the report largely came after giving oral evidence to this Committee in February. If you imagine that situation in February: if anyone on this Committee wanted to know how many Welsh people were in prison, you would go to the Ministry of Justice’s website and you would not find out. You would go to the Welsh Government’s website and you would not find out. You would go to the Howard League or the Prison Reform Trust and so on.

So the aim of the report is in many ways just the ridiculousness of having to use freedom of information to find out how many Welsh people are in prison. That is very basic information. What we are now able to do, as you will see in the factfile, is to think about Welsh prisoners by offence type, by sentence length, by security category. Since the publication of the report, we have got Welsh prisoners by age, by religious identity and by race, so we are now able to further our knowledge and understanding of who from Wales and who in Wales—who they are and what their characteristics are.

The methodology is through the FOI, as we have expressed. I want to highlight the contradiction here within the Ministry of Justice, and in many ways the UK Government. In a sense, taking Wales seriously as a unit of criminological analysis flows from what the UK Government have done. In 2006, NOMS Cymru, as it was then, the Welsh Government—or the Welsh Assembly Government as it was then—and the Youth Justice Board produced a joint report together in Wales. In that report they acknowledged the “different Welsh perspective” and the “unique status of Wales”. From that you have, as we have now, HMPPS in Wales, CPS Wales, HMCTS Wales, and the Home Office in Wales. Wales as distinct has largely come from their actions—they have set up these agencies and different bodies—but the data has not flowed with it.

Q274       Chair: So you’re making a point about the need for far greater transparency with the data, more than anything else. Can I put something to you? At least one of the governors has raised some concerns about your report—not particular concerns, but they have disputed some of the figures in there and suggested, for example, that violence can be considered to be higher at HMP Parc partly because it included prisoners from the young offenders institute in the data. I think the suggestion is that nobody is questioning the validity of the overall report, but parts of it may not be completely accurate, possibly because you have not had access to all the information you wanted.

Dr Jones: You refer to the young persons unit at Parc. In March this year—again, this was part of the process of writing the report—I wrote to the Ministry of Justice and asked whether the figures available on their website, the safety and custody statistics, included incidences at the adult facility and incidences at the young facility, and whether disaggregated data was available. I was told that the figures were for both, and I was also told that they do not have a way of doing that.

Crucially, I heard this response before coming here today and I was told that the rates of violence would be very different if the incidences at Parc were taken into account. You will see in the supplementary evidence that I have provided that since the publication of the report I have FOI’d the Youth Justice Board, which has provided me with figures on self-harm at the young persons unit and with—I am not sure how comparable this is, hence why it is not included in the supplementary evidence—information on the number of assaults on young people and the number of assaults on those who are not young people. That is how they have termed it. Again, that highlights the problem here. The Ministry of Justice tells me that there is no way of disaggregating it and publishing it, but the Youth Justice Board has the data.

Chair: Okay. We are a bit tight for time today, so thank you for that.

Dr Jones: I think that clears it up. The data is not available. I cannot produce things that are not available.

Q275       Liz Saville Roberts: Mae eich ymchwil yn dangos tipyn i ni am y nifer o garcharorion o Gymru sydd yn cael eu carcharu dros y ffin, a’r nifer o garcharorion o Loegr sy’n cael eu carcharu yng Nghymru. I ba raddau dylwn ni fel Pwyllgor fod yn pryderu am hyn?

(Translation) Your research demonstrates a great deal about the number of prisoners from Wales who are placed over the border, and the number of prisoners from England imprisoned in Wales. To what extent should we as a Committee be concerned about this?

Dr Jones: I think that the major issue here is, of course, the impact that distances can have on prisoners, family relationships and the relationships that through-the-gate support workers and people in the community can maintain. There is a considerable amount of evidence, particularly from the United States, where this has emerged—of course, the jurisdictions are larger within states, and the distances are therefore greater—which shows that distances are a major impediment to the maintenance of family contact. We should absolutely be concerned about that. There has to be more accountability for decisions on why prisoners are sent to certain parts of the jurisdiction. The follow-up report we recently published was to provide as much detail as possible on a local authority level so we can really understand the spread.

I will add that the “in Wales/not in Wales” comparisons are sometimes not that helpful, because they do not always give us a sense of the distance. As someone from the north-east of Wales, it would obviously be better for me to be held at Altcourse than at Parc. At the end of June there were 240 prisoners from Wales at Berwyn, 35% of whom were from outside the six local authority areas in north Wales. They are in Wales so, in relation to the question, that would not be raised as a problem, but of course the distances can be significant. In fact, only Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Torfaen were not represented at Berwyn in June.

Q276       Liz Saville Roberts: Actually, I have slightly different figures. I looked at the numbers in your research, and only 13% of the prisoners with addresses in the six north Wales authorities were housed in Berwyn: 87% of them were housed outside north-west Wales and 75% of them were housed in England. That seems to raise some issues with Berwyn. The flip of that is that I would presume—the figures are here—that the vast majority of prisoners in Berwyn are therefore coming over the border from England. To come back to the fact that it is a category C establishment, I looked at Gwynedd and there are prisoners in 11 other category C prisons scattered across England, mostly, and, to a slightly lesser degree, Wales. In that case, with Berwyn particularly in mind but possibly the prisons in south Wales as well, to what extent is the prison estate in Wales dealing with overcrowding and the concomitant violence we are seeing in prisons in the English estate?

Dr Jones: I think there is an argument for that, and that is something you have heard in previous evidence. Anecdotally, I am told that when prisons in other parts of England lock out, there will be a surge of prisoners to Wales. In fact, looking at the data over the course of the last five or six years—we get it quarterly—you will occasionally see a real increase in one prison one month and so on. There is clearly something happening there. Obviously, Welsh prisoners have been held in Altcourse for a long time. There are prisons in England that deal with the knock-on from other regions locking out. I do not think Wales is unique in that respect, but absolutely—again, I come back to some of the evidence you have already heard—when there are problems in English prisons, they can flow into the Welsh prison estate.

Q277       Liz Saville Roberts: I have one more question to do with the figures. Looking at comparisons between the counties, what really interested me was that the populations of Gwynedd and Pembrokeshire are within 1,000 of each other, yet Gwynedd has 162 people in prison, according to your research, and Pembrokeshire, which is similar—it is rural, with old industrial areas—has only 49. There are three times more people from Gwynedd in prison than from Pembrokeshire. Does that warrant further research? Is there a discrepancy across areas in Wales as to the numbers imprisoned?

Dr Jones: Absolutely. The geography of imprisonment needs to be explored. One thing I would say is that if an area has a court, the home address of someone who has no fixed abode may go down as their committal court. I am not sure whether I mentioned last time that if you looked at the imprisonment rate in St Albans, you would think something had gone wrong there, but it is because there is further research about crime in St Albans. So there is a caveat, but absolutely. The elephant in the room is deprivation. We have seen it in England—I think I told you about it last time I was here. Without question, there needs to be a local sense of justice. This is the thing: when you pull this into a Welsh context—when you look at Wales as a unit of analysis—you can begin to think about the different areas across Wales, and that would be one example.

Chair: I am just going to gently say that I am told by my Committee members that we have to run through things quite quickly.

Dr Jones: Fine by me.

Chair: That is for everyone.

Q278       Susan Elan Jones: Pam ydy o’n bwysig i’r MOJ a HMPPS gael ddata ar wahan ar gyfer carchardai yng Nghymru a charcharorion Cymreig?

(Translation) Why is it important for the MOJ and HMPPS to disaggregate data for prisons in Wales and Welsh prisoners?

Dr Jones: If you look at the data out today on alcohol and drug finds in prison, for example, and the information I sent as a supplement to this Committee, tackling substance misuse in Wales is a devolved matter. When providing this information on a disaggregated basis, we in Wales are able to think about how that relates to the way in which policies in Wales are organised on a Welsh-only level. It will help with policy design and it can help with policy delivery. The information we recently sent out, the local authority breakdown, was deliberately targeted at local authorities, housing organisations and the housing sector in Wales.

I remember that during my PhD I interviewed somebody within the housing sector and they asked if I could send them through my data, because even though they were responsible for providing through-the-gate support to Welsh prisoners who were due to be released, they did not know where Welsh people were. They only knew where Welsh people were based on the referrals they received, so they were asking me for my data. The aim was to try to deal with that vacuum.

There are other areas—in fact almost too many: age in prison, for example, is something we looked at recently. I talked about that at the briefing in Westminster. If you look at HMP Usk, for example, 40% of that prison’s population are over 50, and 20% are 60 and above. For the health board, that has significant implications. How do you plan the health services for that type of population? If you do not have the data, how can you deliver and design policy?

Q279       Susan Elan Jones: That’s great. You have already answered my next question about the key areas, so I will not re-ask that.

Dr Jones: Substance misuse, housing, education, children.

Q280       Susan Elan Jones: Fantastic—that’s great. What discussions have you had with the MOJ and HMPPS about data provision? How open are they to the idea of disaggregation? If they are not open to it, what can we as elected representatives do to get them to be more open to it, because you have made a compelling case?

Dr Jones: I think it is fair to say that it doesn’t look like there’s going to be any change at the moment. The Justice in Wales working group produced a report last year, in which the MOJ even acknowledged that this information needs to be made more publicly available. When I tried to access that report, I had to do so by FOI. It was rejected, we appealed and we got the report. So there is some irony in the fact that the MOJ say that Welsh-only information needs to be made more publicly available, but the report in which it says that isn’t publicly available. However, I am optimistic. We talk about relationships: prior to the publication of the report, there were no relationships with HMPPS in Wales. But I am optimistic that there may well be relationships after the publication of the report, and that is something that I will look to try to develop further. I am not hopeful, but it’s something that I think we should try.

Q281       Anna McMorrin: The information in your report suggests that there’s been significant deterioration in safety in Welsh prisons. What, in your view, are the key factors behind this decline? You say that there were 24 self-inflicted deaths between 2010 and 2017, and in fact that, on average, a prisoner in Wales takes their life every four months. Those are pretty startling facts.

Dr Jones: For context, it is important to say that prisons in England have also experienced a marked decline—there’s no secret about that. What was quite shocking for me from the data was that there has been an increase in England, but the increase was greater in Wales.

The honest answer is I don’t know. That’s the reality. We are the first on the scene here to even diagnose the problem.  What now needs to follow—again, this is about relationships and it is important—is a serious piece of qualitative research. People need to go in to prisons in Wales and explore these very issues. But if you ask any academic—my research application to look at how Welsh people experience prison in 2012 was knocked back, and that wasn’t even looking at something as controversial as deaths in custody, self-harm or assaults. That was just about how Welsh people experience prison—I say “just” but it is an important area.

It is very difficult to answer those questions if we can’t gain access to prison. It’s important to take the views of the witnesses who will follow me, and I’m sure they can shed light on some of this. But from an academic point of view, and I think for the public debate, we really do need to seriously ask these questions.

Ultimately, prisons are violent institutions. We are shocked by the statistics, but should we really be surprised? The debate post-2010 has been about austerity and cuts. From January 1990 to December 2009, there were 1,404 deaths in prisons in England and Wales—that’s one a week. That’s the heyday—one person a week across England and Wales—that we talk about now: “If only we could go back to funding levels pre-2010.” This problem is, of course, exacerbated at the moment and it’s in the news and people are asked to come and be held to account for it. That’s good, but there was also a huge set of problems before. So this is as much about prison in general as it is about the current climate.

Q282       Anna McMorrin: From your research, what would you suggest we improve for prison safety? Would you make any key suggestions?

Dr Jones: To keep people safe from the harms of imprisonment, I think that not sending so many people to prison would be a very, very good start. I want to give an example of that. I looked at this last night and over the weekend in prep for this session. People often say that you need to keep people out of prison, but let me give an example.

At the end of June there were some 82,700 people in prison across England and Wales. That meant that we had an imprisonment rate of 147 per 100,000 of the population. If you look at Northern Ireland—another part of the UK—at the end of June/start of July it had an imprisonment rate of 79 people per 100,000. If we had in England and Wales a rate of imprisonment that was the same as Northern Ireland, at the end of June there would have been 36,000 fewer people in prison. Welsh people made up about 5.7% of the overall number at the end of June; 5.7% of those 36,000 is just over 2,000 people. If you deduct those 2,000-plus people from the 4,704 people from Wales who were in prison in June, you then have a Welsh prison population of two thousand six hundred and something. The baseline CNA of the four/five prisons in south Wales is two thousand seven hundred and something.

Let’s just forget who these prisoners are—we know there are women and different categories. We could hold all Welsh people in the prisons in south Wales and not one of them would be overcrowded if England and Wales had a rate of imprisonment that was the same not as that in Finland or Denmark, but as that in Northern Ireland—another part of the UK. We wouldn’t then be sat here talking about overcrowding and transporting prisoners from Wales to England, and we definitely wouldn’t be sat here talking about a new prison in Port Talbot. That’s before you even factor Berwyn in—that’s just prisons in south Wales.

Q283       Anna McMorrin: That’s fascinating. To move back to the safety element, do you have any robust data showing the differences in safety between Welsh and English prisons?

Dr Jones: No is the answer. Of course, when you look at the differences, size is often an issue and how new a prison is. That is where Parc is very interesting. The UK Government is pursuing a policy of modernisation—well, Parc is a modern prison, and yet we still see many of the problems within a “modern” prison in south Wales. That needs to be factored in. In terms of comparisons between England and Wales, that is another area where we need work. Again, I come back to this being about the numbers of people who are being sent there.

Q284       Tonia Antoniazzi: When producing your factfile, what most concerned you about provision for female prisoners?

Dr Jones: Clearly, there aren’t any in Wales—that would be one of them. In the course of collecting this data—we look at it quarterly, so we are looking all the time—one remarkable thing we found is that not only are Welsh women in HMP Styal and Eastwood Park; they are in every single one of the women’s prisons. That’s what’s shocking. It’s shocking enough when you meet an academic or colleague in England and they don’t really know that there’s no women’s prison in Wales and yet we have women’s imprisonment, but when you then factor in that Welsh women are in every single one of those women’s prisons, that’s a remarkable and startling finding.

Again, the question has to follow: why? Why is that the case? Why are they being sent to prisons across London? In the latest information, we have shown that by local authority. I found that startling. On the self-harm figures, anybody who looks at or studies them, or who has done a criminology degree, will say you almost become numb to it, because one of the first things you’ll look at and study is that there are higher rates of self-harm in women’s prisons. You will have seen over the last few days, I’m sure, stories about deaths of women in custody in England again. The rates of self-harm are staggeringly high, as per. I say “as per”, but we shouldn’t just say that and move on. Of course it’s a huge problem, but when you look at this it becomes almost normalised.

Q285       Tonia Antoniazzi: What role could smaller custodial units play in the management of Welsh female offenders?

Dr Jones: Do you mean units in Wales?

Tonia Antoniazzi: Yes, because that is the way I think we’re going to look at going.

Dr Jones: I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but we have to look at reducing the number of women in custody. There were 261 at the end of June. We have to think about that. I was fortunate enough to be funded to go to New York and California in 2014 to look at alternatives. I think this is something that the Welsh Government are looking at currently, in terms of a blueprint. We cannot predict what number that would leave us with, but it would determine how big or small any unit would be and, in fact, even whether we would need some kind of unit. But the status quo is absolutely not acceptable—that much is true.

Q286       Liz Saville Roberts: There is talk about 10 women’s residential centres throughout England and Wales. Taking on board the question whether they should be residential or not in the case of Wales, do you feel that there should be provision, residential or otherwise, in the north and in the south—so at least two centres?

Dr Jones: Yes, I think something needs to be done. I’m reluctant to say what, because apart from what I looked at in the US, which was courts and diversion, I haven’t really done any work on this. But, again, there’s no doubt that the current status quo is not acceptable and there has to be something here. Look at the reduction in the number of Welsh children in custody—it can be done. At the end of June there were 21 such children, which is a remarkable reduction. It can be done. That’s something we would look at.

Q287       Tonia Antoniazzi: You spoke about the children. What are the main issues facing children from Wales who are in custody?

Chair: Just so we know, I can see in the report that, by children, you mean aged 16 to 18.

Dr Jones: Under the age of 18. Following on from that, the number of children in custody has reduced significantly and continues to do so, even since the publication of the report. From memory, one of the things I was struck by with the latest data was that the number of Welsh children in custody had gone down, but the number of establishments where Welsh children were being held had gone up. I can send through that information, if it would be helpful to revise it. One thing I really want to flag is that English children held in Wales is another incredibly important issue, particularly at HMP Parc. The data I’ve given in the supplementary information shows that 65% were from England.

Q288       Chair: I think we’ll come to that with the governors. I want to ask one thing about women in prison. As you said earlier, prisons can be dangerous places. If women are moved into secure residential centres, are they not at risk of assault and violence from other women? That does seem to be a problem within prisons.

Dr Jones: And that’s where the research needs to come and we need to learn lessons from other places.

Q289       Chair: When you mention violence in prisons, is that violence mainly in male prisons, female prisons or is it proportionately about the same?

Dr Jones: Again, it depends what you’re looking at.

Chair: Assaults and that sort of thing.

Dr Jones: If you’re looking at violence turned inwards—self-harm—that is something we look at historically as a phenomenon in women’s prisons, although increasingly it is something that we see in the male prison estate.

Q290       Chair: What about assaults by prisoners on other prisoners?

Dr Jones: I think it is lower, but I would have to—

Q291       Chair: In women’s prisons?

Dr Jones: In women’s prisons the rates are comparatively lower.

Chair: It makes sense.

Dr Jones: Again, I am sure that the witnesses coming after me can talk about that.

Q292       Liz Saville Roberts: Gyda’ch gwaith ymchwil, beth wnaethoch chi ei ddarganfod am y gwasanaethau sydd ar gael i garcharorion sy’n siarad Cymraeg, ac oes yna faterion yn codi am argaeledd, neu fel arall, o ddata am siaradwyr Cymraeg? Beth, yn eich barn chi, fyddai’n gwella’r gwasanaethau?

(Translation) In your research, what did you find about the services currently available to Welsh-speaking prisoners, and are there any issues about the availability or otherwise of data about Welsh speakers in the prison estate? What, in your opinion, would improve that situation?

Dr Jones: First and foremost, on data I am not sure. I have been told before that it is not very good. Perhaps there is an FOI request—

Liz Saville Roberts: Waiting to happen.

Dr Jones: Yes—perhaps it will be in by midday today. Certainly, that needs to be asked. I think this is something that should be picked up with Berwyn, because in the last few requests I have sent out, Berwyn has been very good in terms of the data I have got back. I think Berwyn is pretty good on data collection and is on board with the need to collect data. It may well depend on different issues—I don’t think it’s across the board. Certainly, the health board has provided me with some really interesting information.

In terms of the experiences and the availability of materials and information, if you look at the inspectorate reports, there is a kind of ebb and flow. You’ll have a round of inspections where one inspection will say that there are problems that need to be addressed, and then the next inspection will say, “That was improved but there are still issues there.” There seems to be a consistent level, but an important question to ask is how high or low that level is.

When I spoke to Welsh prisoners as part of my PhD, there were concerns about bullying, teasing and the lack of access to services. In particular, there was a quite high-profile case of a Welsh-speaking prisoner at Cardiff, I think in 2012, and the Welsh Language Commissioner was asked to get involved in that particular dispute.

On a policy level, it is my understanding that to impose the Welsh language measure and the standards on prisons in Wales would need the consent of the Secretary of State. The Welsh Language Commissioner gave evidence that, to impose it on a Crown body, they need consent, and that consent has not been asked for. When you look at Welsh language policy and the standards, if that is a route to improving access and improving services, we need to think about this constitutional anomaly of having a Government in Wales that creates policy but is at the moment unable or unwilling to actually implement that one.

Q293       Liz Saville Roberts: So the Welsh Government would need to make that request?

Dr Jones: Or the Welsh Language Commissioner.

Q294       Liz Saville Roberts: And neither has?

Dr Jones: That became clear in the evidence, and I followed this up a year or two ago and it was the same then.

Chair: We have one very quick last question from Anna McMorrin.

Q295       Anna McMorrin: As a final question, you’ve just been given funding for the “Justice and Jurisdiction” project and are beginning work on it, which will be very interesting. Given what you’ve looked into and your findings from this piece of research, what do you have to say—before you carry out this other piece of work—about the non-devolved nature of justice? Do you agree with my opinion that it is a pretty broken system, and that justice needs to be devolved to Wales?

Dr Jones: On the second point, I couldn’t say, because we need to do the work and we need to look at it. The starting point, simple as this sounds, is that there is not an England and Wales system. There is a hybrid system. There are two Governments involved in this space, both with their own powers, their own responsibilities, their own democratic mandate and their own vision and agenda. What I am currently doing as part of this work is looking at how that system operates—how these two different policy areas intersect and overlap—and the report will be available in December or January.

It would be wrong of me at this stage, having not read all the transcripts, to talk about what we are finding, but it is an incredibly complex and complicated space. When you look at how much the Welsh Government is already doing, a significant amount of justice-related policy is already devolved, and the piece of the jigsaw that is HMPPS, sentencing policy and criminal law is significant, but I wouldn’t want to commit to whether to devolve it or not at this stage.

Chair: Diolch yn fawr iawn, Dr Jones.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Graham Barrett, Nick Dann and Janet Wallsgrove.

Chair: Bore da. Croesawaf Graham Barrett o HMP Abertawe, Nick Dann o HMP Berwyn a Janet Wallsgrove o HMP Parc i’r cyfarfod heddiw. Byddwn yn cymryd tystiolaeth yn Gymraeg neu Saesneg.

(Translation) Good morning. Let me welcome Graham Barrett from HMP Swansea, Nick Dann from HMP Berwyn and Janet Wallsgrove from HMP Parc to today’s meeting. We will take evidence in either English or Welsh

Q296       Susan Elan Jones: A yw rheoli carchar yn Nghymru yn wahanol i reoli carchar yn Lloegr?

(Translation) Is managing a prison in Wales different from managing a prison in England?

Graham Barrett: It’s difficult for me to say, because Swansea is my first post as governor. Although I have been a deputy governor in prisons in England, I have not actually been a governor there.

Janet Wallsgrove: The situation for me is the same. I have been a deputy governor and a director in Wales.

Nick Dann: I was deputy governor at a high-security prison and I have governed an open prison, and my experience is that there is a lot more integration in Wales than in England.

Q297       Susan Elan Jones: I am interested in that point about a lot more integration. How would you describe your relations with the Welsh Government and what are the key challenges in having different Governments responsible for different services? That is, if there are any challenges—it might all be wonderful.

Nick Dann: I have been at Berwyn since April 2016. Definitely there was learning for me, coming from England, where you have the probation service and Prison Service. Having an integrated service in a prison, where you have probation officers who are part of the same team, does make a difference, whereas in England it feels slightly different.

Q298       Susan Elan Jones: I want to ask another two little questions. As you say, in Wales, prisons and probation services are under the management of a single executive director. Mr Dann, you have already said you see that as positive. Are there any other comments on that?

Janet Wallsgrove: I would like to say that I think it’s extremely positive. The fact that you can work collaboratively with colleagues and set strategic objectives that you are working on together, under the directorship of the Executive Director for Wales, makes a massive difference. There is far greater integration. Although I have not governed in England, I have colleagues in England, and I think it’s a very different landscape there, so I think that is enormously beneficial.

Q299       Susan Elan Jones: May I ask one final question on a slightly different tack, about local businesses, local business opportunities, volunteering and the like? What has your experience been on working with prisoners to make that transition into the world of work, whether through employment or volunteering?

Janet Wallsgrove: I am happy to take that one. In truth, the honest answer is that it is quite difficult, because some of the challenges are that the local businesses we work with may be prepared—we had a couple of examples which I shared when colleagues came to Parc—particularly around young people where we actually managed to secure two training places for young people. The issue was not the willingness of the business or the young person, but geographical difficulties: the business was in Bridgend and the young man lived in Cwmbran. He had no access to a car—the family did not have one—so the logistics just precluded the opportunity. So there are some real challenges. There are firms and businesses that are happy to work with us, but it is not as simple as that, because geographical location has a big impact.

Nick Dann: May I came in there, on one of my experiences coming into Berwyn? Some of you have been to Berwyn, and it is located on a very large industrial estate. When I first joined the project, one of the things that I was responsible for was communication across the community of north Wales. Given where Berwyn was being built, I was really surprised with the approaches I found through some of my networking—particularly on the Wrexham industrial estate, which has a business meeting once a month, so I presented to them a few times. We had positive approaches from companies on the industrial estate, looking for men to train them in particular things. One example from the industrial estate is the Village Bakery, a Welsh bakery. We sought their advice on setting up one of our kitchens—one option was setting up a bakery in the prison—and they were very keen to come to tell us how to do it, then saying, “When you are training all these men to be bakers, I would be very keen to take them through that progression, potentially from release on temporary licence through to permanent employment.”

Susan Elan Jones: Bring them to Minera as well.

Q300       Chair: Ms Wallsgrove, may I ask you a question? You have had the experience of running both a public sector and a private sector prison. Informally, you have given us some indications of what the differences are when we visited. Would you like to outline any of them for the Committee?

Janet Wallsgrove: It is important to caveat my feedback with the fact that I left public sector prison in 2005. I certainly didn’t leave for any negative reason; my primary reason for moving into the private sector was that I wanted predominantly to govern and be a director in Wales. I didn’t want to move into England, so Parc afforded me the opportunity of a new build, a bigger prison and some greater challenges. So I am giving you that context, but I also think, 13 years down the line, that the landscape in public sector prison is very different.

I can comment on the differences I found when I moved. As a director in a private prison, I think you have—first off, with most of those prisons—larger and newer prisons, which affords you greater flexibility in what you are actually able to provide. Some of the older Victorian establishments are quite tight on space, so it is quite hard to do that.

Some of my other observations were that you had to have a more rounded view of running a business. I think I moved—somewhat naively—into a space thinking that I knew how to manage a prison operationally. I found that it is almost identical, but there were some other issues, such as responsibility for recruitment, which fell squarely on my shoulders, or issues around things like maintenance. Some of the commercial or contractual issues I had not really had to deal with before.

I had been fortunate in that I had been a Home Office controller at Parc, so I had had the opportunity to look up running a contract and to see what managing a contract was. What being on the other side of that means is that you are much more aware that there is a greater level of scrutiny. For example, we had on site 2.5 Home Office controllers at Parc, and I think that is quite correct. That’s important if you are working outside the state sector, to have that higher level of scrutiny, but it does mean that your reporting systems need to be absolutely 100% accurate, because there are contractual failings that we need to report, as well as some incidents.

Q301       Chair: One of the advantages put to me—I don’t think it was by you; I wouldn’t want to cause you any problems—is that it’s much easier, if you have a good idea, to enact it in the private sector because you have the power to simply go ahead and do it. For example, I know that you came up with a new training scheme or something like that. There is less red tape to go through, and you just get on with it. Is that a fair point to make?

Janet Wallsgrove: I think that’s fair. If I wanted to go and run with an idea this afternoon, I would be able to do that. Some of that is around workforce flexibility—the fact that if I decided this afternoon that I wanted to change the staffing profile and have a bit less of this and a bit less of that, the responsibility for recruitment rests solely with me, so it is much easier to do that. That’s really what happened when we set up the families project. We changed our resourcing around that idea, and we were able to do that. That is one of the advantages, and I think it probably remains an advantage.

Q302       Liz Saville Roberts: Maddeuwch i mi, ond dwi eisiau mynd yn ôl yn sydyn at gwestiwn 7 cyn symud ymlaen i’r cwestiwn dwi i fod i ofyn. Pan fuom ni’n ymweld â charchar Abertawe, dywedwyd wrthyf bod yna broblem gydag ail-gartrefu cyn-garcharorion, i’r graddau bod rhai yn methu cael tai o dan y trefniadau gwahanol yng Nhymru, a bod rhai carcharion yn cael eu rhyddhau gyda phebyll fel rhywle i fyw. I ba raddau dylem ni ystyried rhoi carcharorion mewn cartrefi pan maen nhw’n gadael carchar?

(Translation) Forgive me, but I want to return quickly to question 7 before I move on to the question that I am supposed to ask. When we visited Swansea prison, I was told that there was a problem with rehousing former prisoners to the extent that some prisoners could not get housing under the different arrangements in Wales. Prisoners were being released with tents as accommodation. To what extent should we look at putting prisoners into homes when they leave prison?

Graham Barrett: Housing is obviously devolved to the Welsh Government. I am not sure it is the same in England. Before my time at Swansea, former prisoners were prioritised and would be found housing, but that changed at some point before 2016. I have checked what you were told, and it has been correct at times.

Q303       Liz Saville Roberts: Is that an issue at either of your prisons?

Janet Wallsgrove: I think it is less of an issue at Parc, potentially because Graham has got more short-termers. The advantage of being in a training prison is that you have longer to work with people prior to release.

Nick Dann: From our perspective, being a new prison, we have only started releasing men over the last six or eight months. What we do in Berwyn each month is have a resettlement needs meeting. Each of the six local authorities has appointed what they call a prison housing officer, so when one of the men is going out to a particular local authority, we get it to send in the prison housing officer to make sure, in the planning stage prior to release, there is something available for them.

Q304       Liz Saville Roberts: Mr Dann, I would particularly like to raise with you the question of the rehabilitative culture in Berwyn. How is it different from that of other prisons?

Nick Dann: We had an opportunity with building Berwyn and recruiting a large number of new staff from the local area. We planned our training around the different level of training. The prison officer training that we do at Berwyn has been adapted to ensure it focuses on the rehabilitation of the men. That is things like language, but primarily it is about building relationships. Relationships between the men and the staff or the women and the staff in any prison are key to the individuals’ rehabilitation.

We have new staff and staff who have come over on level transfer from another prison. The new staff go through their 10-week training programme, but all staff, including the staff who are already experienced from working in another prison—predominantly an English prison around the north-west area, from where we have taken some staff—go through an induction programme. Part of that induction is about what rehabilitation means to us. It is about rehabilitative leadership, the processes we have changed and the way we do things in the prison. It was an opportunity for us to refocus the staff prior to the first men arriving back in February 2017.

Q305       Liz Saville Roberts: It is my understanding that all prisoners who transfer to Berwyn are given immediate enhanced privileges, but that there have been examples of prisoners arriving who have not indicated that they have any particular commitment, or have not demonstrated any particular commitment, to improvements in behaviour. Does that need to be revisited in future, given that we have had issues with behaviour in Berwyn, to speak frankly?

Nick Dann: What happens, when the men come in—and the men will come in on a different level of privileges—when they first arrive at Berwyn and they go into reception, it will feel different to them. The staff who meet them on arrival will shake their hand when they come off the transport that comes in; they will go into our reception; they will not be locked in a holding room—they will go into a room that is open and has a TV; and they will be offered tea and coffee and something to eat.

That is the point when we say to them, “If you have come on standard, it is an opportunity to change now, and part of that change is that you will go on to the enhanced.” What happens then, if they go on to the enhanced level of privileges—the language that we use with them and the conversations that we have—is that it is for them, from that point forward, to lose that privilege. That is where the encouragement around their behaviour starts.

When they go into the community where they live, they will have conversations with the staff and their key workers about the expectations of their behaviour. But those who do not exhibit the behaviour expected of them as an enhanced individual can, and do, have those privileges removed and get moved down to standard or basic.

Q306       Anna McMorrin: We have heard from previous witnesses throughout our inquiry about the rise of self-harm incidents in prisons in Wales—across the UK, but particularly in Wales—and of deaths, in fact. Why are self-harm incidents so high in your prisons, and what are you doing to reduce the rate of self-harm?

Graham Barrett: Self-harm has increased. It does fluctuate, but the trend over my time at Swansea is that there has been an increase in self-harm. When we look at this, and we study it on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis to look at trends and reasons, a large amount of the incidents of self-harm are committed by a very small number of men who use it as either a coping mechanism or a goal orientated to achieve something or as a protest about something. It is their way of coping with custody. We have to work closely with healthcare partners and psychologists to try to find strategies to help them to find other ways to cope. There are anecdotal stories of quiet success. I have one man at the moment who has self-harmed over 20 times in a three-month period.

There is also the context of what self-harm is. Self-harm can be anything from a ligature that is an attempt to take your own life to a scratch on the forearm with a razor—they are both one incident of self-harm. It is about understanding the context, the seriousness and the risk involved in that self-harm. I have been very clear in my time as governor that everything that we should report we do report, and there is no such thing as a trivial incident of self-harm—every incident of self-harm is an indication that there is an issue that needs to be addressed. We support men who we feel are at risk of suicide or self-harm by the ACT process. I do not know if the Committee is aware of what that is; I can go into a bit of detail.

Chair: It is kind of you to offer, but I think we may pass on that right now, because we are very pushed for time.

Graham Barrett: That is fine. That is our support, in particular, for all men who we feel are at risk. Even if they have not self-harmed and we just notice a low mood, we can provide support. On top of that, as part of the offender management in custody changes that we are making, all prisoners will have a key worker, and those who are complex and in serious need of more support, we are prioritising with key workers, so they will have a prison officer who meets them for a period of time every week to make sure that they are on track and that their needs are being looked after.

But your question was why it is so high. I think we reflect the community. I have read data about the levels of suicide and self-harm in the area that my prison is in. We are pretty consistent as well with the rates per thousand prisoners with what has happened at Parc and other prisons in England which we know have reported really well. As I say, you have got to get the context of what self-harm is, how often is it low-level self-harm, compared to high-risk self-harm—that is a real concern—and the small proportion of men who use self-harm as a coping mechanism.

Anna McMorrin: Thank you.

Q307       Chair: May I ask a quick supplementary on that? Has any research ever been done on the difference in the number of people who self-harm while in custody and those who may self-harm or commit suicide while on community sentences?

Graham Barrett: I am not sure about that.

Q308       Anna McMorrin: Ms Wallsgrove, would you care to comment on that question? We heard about the increase in levels of violence and assaults in Parc on our visit—in fact, we spoke to you. Why is violence so high there? Will you comment on what you are doing about self-harm, the risk of suicide and deaths in prison as well as the incidence of violence in Parc?

Janet Wallsgrove: Of course. I largely concur with what Graham said. One of the issues we have got for self-harm—it is important to look at the context—is that, for example, last month 10 men accounted for over 50% of the self-harm data at Parc. The reasons why people self-harm are many and varied. There are a huge range of issues, from significant mental health issues—a number of people are awaiting placement to secure units at the moment—to personality disorder, drug and alcohol abuse, and family issues. So as Graham said, it is very difficult to generalise. The whole point about self-harm is the context of the individual.

On what is happening in Wales, the Public Health Wales publication is about a greater understanding of the ACE agenda and what impact that has on the prevalence of self-harm and violence. We are in our infancy in prison, and that is a really useful and helpful framework for us moving forward with better understanding.

One of the things we are doing is appointing a behaviour analyst—we are about to hold interviews—to help us to try to look at the plans we need to put in place for people who may have a personality disorder. They are not under mental health services, and they are kind of falling through the pathways. On our young persons unit, where we have adopted this approach, we are beginning to see some early successes in how you can use the ACE agenda with looking at people’s behaviour to manage and improve their behaviour in custody. Alongside that, there is improved training for staff—new staff training has come online—and reviewing what we do around our early days in custody, because obviously that is a time when people are very vulnerable. Those are objectives that I think we are all carrying out. We have just completed our review at Parc.

The other thing is, when we are talking about violence and self-harm, we talk about drugs. The influx of PS—psychoactive substances—into our estate has had a very negative impact on both self-harm and violence. So I am not able to give a simplistic answer to self-harm, because every individual has a different tale and we have to respond differently. As Graham said, I think the definitions are a little frustrating sometimes when we talk in terms of somebody who might make a small scratch being categorised in the same way as something more serious. Neither do they take into account that cohort of complex men.

To answer your question about violence, no one could defend the levels of violence in custody in England and Wales. I know you asked Dr Jones earlier about how Wales compares with England. It very is difficult, because in trying to compare an open prison with a category B or category C establishment, you would not be comparing like with like because of the nature of the population in there. So we are all put into comparator groups.

At Parc, one of the reasons that our violence levels are so high is because we have young people—15 to 18-year-olds—within our population. We have quite a lot of young offenders, 18 to 21-year-olds, and we also have quite a large percentage of young adults. Evidence shows that the younger the people in custody, the more likely they are to self-harm. In the context of that, you spoke to Dr Jones about disaggregation of data, which is a frustration, but I can tell you that on average the young persons unit, which generally comprises around 40 young people, would typically be 27% or 28% of our violence during the month. So it does skew the figures at Parc.

The other issue is that we run a very open regime. People are out for association. They dine out on association at Parc. The greater the access that people have to that type of freedom, which I believe is the right way forward, unfortunately the greater the ability for people to come into contact and fall out with each other.

As we said about self-harm, the reasons for violence are many and varied. People will commit violent offences for the most bizarre reasons: if they don’t like the sandwich filling up to drug-related debts and issues that come in from the community. This is the reality. Parc takes people from Cardiff and Swansea, and sometimes conflicts come in from the community.

Q309       Anna McMorrin: The issue is that Parc has recorded the highest number of prisoner disturbances in both England and Wales. The figure is pretty startling and you seem to be saying it is because you have young offenders—a high proportion of young people there. Why is it particularly high? I can’t imagine that in terms of statistics you are far and away above all of the other prisons across Wales and the UK in terms of your prisoners. Are you getting the support you need? Is it the design of the prison? You talked about the prisoners having more access to open areas. There must be a reason why the levels of disturbance far exceed those of other prisons.

Janet Wallsgrove: I am not absolutely clear what the term “disturbance” refers to. I certainly don’t recognise those figures, so I can only speculate. For example, an act of concerted indiscipline, which I can only assume is what is being referred to, is, under our contract, if two or more people act together to interrupt the regime. We have a different contractual measure of what a concerted indiscipline is. I am not clear what those things mean about disturbances. It is not an issue that has been raised with me previously. If I am able to—if it is okay—I think I need to do some more research on what the terminology and the definition is, and I can get back to you. But I certainly would say that the young people, the young offenders, the young adult population feature disproportionately in our violent incidents. Absolutely definitely.

Q310       Anna McMorrin: May I ask Mr Dann next? We have seen reports about high levels of assaults, especially on prison staff. Why is that such an issue, and what are you doing to tackle it?

Nick Dann: From my perspective—I touched on it earlier—we have got a large number of new staff at Berwyn who are new to the role and are still trying to find their feet and understand how to operate as an experienced prison officer. We have unlocked 1,144 men this morning. You have got some men who come into custody who have probably spent four, five, 10 or 15 years potentially in custody and they are coming into an environment that feels and might look a little bit different to them. So, for us, I would not say the levels of violence were exceptionally high, but what we are seeing, unfortunately, is the effect of things like novel psychoactive substances in the prison, which we have to deal with, as does the whole of the estate.

Q311       Liz Saville Roberts: It has been explained to me, none the less, that there is an example of a prisoner at Berwyn who has assaulted three staff members and has been allowed on normal locations on the wings. The question has been asked by the POA through me why is he not being kept in segregation or transferred out? I am told about examples of men who assault staff and there seems to be very little sanction on their behaviour. Can you explain these situations? It is more the psychoactive drugs, from what I understand, in Berwyn.

Nick Dann: Yes, there are different reasons. It may be that someone has had a phone call. The men have got phones in their room— they have had a phone call with a partner; there may be things like a relationship is ending, and men come out quite angry. But I think not knowing what each particular case is, where there has been an assault at Berwyn that is serious, the men will be segregated. We always engage with the staff, so if you have got someone who is an individual’s key worker and knows that said individual, who is acting out of character because something has happened to them, we always engage with the staff and say, “We are thinking of keeping them in the location, giving them another opportunity—giving them a chance”, which is what we try to as part of our rehabilitative culture. If it is three separate assaults, I do not know what that particular case is, but in terms of an assault, that is the application of force to a member of staff—an unlawful application of force. That might just be a push; that might be a touch. I do not know at what level that is, but I can assure you where there is a serious assault against a member of staff, the priority is that that individual is segregated and the staff are kept safe.

Q312       Liz Saville Roberts: What qualifies as a serious assault, for there to be sanctions taken?

Nick Dann: It would be a high level of force used against an individual—a punch, maybe someone pushed over. As I say, each one will be on each case. There is a particular reporting level that we have to do nationally, which may be bruising, broken bones or something like that.

Q313       Liz Saville Roberts: Is this true for other prisons as well—just the same?

Graham Barrett: On reporting?

Liz Saville Roberts: Yes.

Graham Barrett: Reporting is the same, yes.

Q314       Tonia Antoniazzi: We have heard some concerns about the Welsh language provision in your prisons. What more could be done to support Welsh-speaking prisoners?

Graham Barrett: I think from my reading there was an issue that, maybe three or four years ago, was raised, and work was done; so all I can say is what I know to be the case now: I have quite a number of staff who are Welsh speakers. For some of them, it is their first language. They support any men who come into custody who only speak Welsh or prefer to speak Welsh. All the documentation—I say all, but it could be most—is translated, so it can be read in Welsh as well. What more could be done? It is hard to say, because I think we are working quite hard to make sure that we can meet needs, but we would do that for anybody with any language, as well.

Q315       Tonia Antoniazzi: How many job roles in your prison have Welsh-speaking skills as an essential or desirable requirement?

Graham Barrett: To start off, an obvious one is a teacher who teaches Welsh language. That is obviously essential. I do not think I can think of another role which is essential. My Welsh-speaking staff are spread across all sorts of departments and partners, as well—not just the staff who work for me, but those who are in partnership, so it is quite a diverse job role for people who speak Welsh who are happy to support and help.

Q316       Tonia Antoniazzi: And the same, basically, for you, Janet. What more can be done?

Janet Wallsgrove: I think we focus quite hard on our education, learning and skills function. We have got 10 Welsh-speaking teachers and we are able to offer a broad curriculum at GCSE beyond maths and English. An individual coming into custody could conduct all their education through the medium of Welsh. I have got 48 Welsh-speaking staff and at the moment 26 Welsh-speaking prisoners—that is men who have declared on arrival with us that they wish to have their first language listed as Welsh.

I think we are quite fortunate; because of the geographical area that we recruit from, we do get quite a number of Welsh staff applying for roles with us. We do not list it as essential, I guess predominantly because for the vast bulk of our prisoners, Welsh is not their first language; but I think in terms of the kind of education, and the ability to make sure that people are able to read important information, our kiosk system, our CMS system, is in English and in Welsh. As Graham said, we need to cater for other languages as well. I think the answer is around identifying people, supporting people who also indicate that they wish to learn Welsh while they are with us. I think that is really important, and one of the things that we have agreed is going to start in November is we are going to get together a group of our Welsh-speaking staff. As Graham says, what is tending to happen is our education staff will meet, but maybe not with the operational staff. We are going to bring some people together to look at what more we could do, and what different things we could offer.

It is not a one-off. It is not something you can do once; it has to be a continuous process. Coming to give evidence has really focused my mind that perhaps we could do more to promote people speaking Welsh when we do recruitment. That is something that personally I have taken away and we will be looking to press forward with.

Q317       Tonia Antoniazzi: Is it different for you in north Wales, Nick?

Nick Dann: No, it is definitely not. I’m an Englishman moving into north Wales. We have been very keen to promote that. On the recruitment of staff, we have 25 Welsh-speaking staff at the moment. We have three men in custody who are our Welsh language mentors. We have a Welsh language evening session once a month that we do in college. We have Welsh language classes that we deliver in college for staff and the men we have in custody, and similarly through the Unilink system that we have with the men’s laptops in their rooms. They have direct access to the Welsh-speaking staff through them as well.

Q318       Liz Saville Roberts: Buaswn i’n leicio gofyn i Graham a Janet yn gyntaf i ba raddau mae gorlenwi yn effeithio ar eich gallu i redeg carchar effeithiol.

(Translation) I would like to ask Graham and Janet first to what extent overcrowding affects your ability to run an effective prison.

Janet Wallsgrove: In fairness, the level of overcrowding at Parc is relatively low. I think the recorded figures were 17%. We are lower than that now because some places have been removed from us due to there not being the kind of population pressure. It is not a massive issue at Parc. Our cells tend to be bigger anyway.

It is quite difficult with overcrowding because there are some people who want to share accommodation. There are some people who we prefer to share accommodation for various reasons. We talked about self-harm, and people being companionship. The reality is that it is important that your regime is able to support the number of people that you have. For me, that is the critical factor: that you are able to provide a safe and secure environment and allow people to have access to a positive regime. That is the critical issue. Overcrowding becomes more of a problem where your infrastructure is not able to support the number of people that you have. That is not really an issue for us at Parc.

Graham Barrett: I echo what Janet has just said. It is about the infrastructure. It is not just about the number of beds that you can put into the rooms available; it is about making sure that the people we have to look after have enough to do. That said, in Swansea, as you know when you visit it, it is a small site in the city centre. There is no room for expansion. We have seven single-occupancy cells. After that, people have to share, unless they are high risk of sharing. Someone who is high risk of sharing will be in a cell with two beds, but on their own. By its very nature, that can cause problems obviously, because people may not know each other well and they are spending a significant amount of time in each other’s company.

I think it is the same for any institution though. We all spread out to fill the available space and then, as more people come into the prison, we have to adapt. Any institution—a school or a hospital—that is resourced to serve so many people is far better when it has a reduced capacity. I think it is the same for a prison. Having said that, the operational capacity at Swansea is 497. We have never got to 497 because of the high risk and the single cell issues. Last year, at the time of the inspection that was, I think, the most the prison has ever held. Certainly in my time it is the most it has held, and I think going back over recent history it is probably as many prisoners as it has had in the past as well.

Q319       Liz Saville Roberts: Thank you very much. I will turn to you now, Mr Dann. Berwyn is effectively 18 months’ old, so why are prisoners still sharing in the newest prison in the estate? We have heard the arguments in favour of sharing, but we were told when we visited inmates that they felt that it went against the principle of trying to normalise rooms, as opposed to cells, and that it reduced privacy.

I noted that you mentioned that there are 1,134 inmates at present—

Nick Dann: 1,144.

Liz Saville Roberts: That presumably means that the operational capacity has risen from 890. That was what we were given. None the less, our understanding from the Howard League and from visiting you is that there are activity spaces for 1,000. We are looking to men potentially being in their rooms for 23 hours a day. With Berwyn, surely there was a missed opportunity to have single-occupant cells. This is perhaps dealing more with the fact that people are being left on their own for possibly 23 hours without meaningful activity. The infrastructure of support and the activities available are highly important.

Nick Dann: The way we are ramping up at the moment—we have a very clear ramp-up plan—is that the men who come to us will have purposeful activity. We are just increasing our temporary provision of activity for the men. It is primary for us and our stability that we have activities for the new men as we receive them each week. The current plan is that Interserve has been contracted to deliver 520 activity places in some of the workshops. That was part of the outline business case when Berwyn was designed. The building work on those workshops has started now, and they are expected to come fully online in January or February next year. We are always conscious that when men come to us, they have some purposeful activity, and that is just part of our ramp-up plan.

Q320       Liz Saville Roberts: How long on average do prisoners spend in their rooms?

Nick Dann: On average, our evening lock-up is 7.15 pm. They are unlocked in the morning at 8 am. At lunchtime they are locked up for about an hour and 15 minutes. The majority of the men are out the rest of the time. If they are refusing to engage in the regime, or are on basic and will not go to work or college, they will remain locked up in their rooms.

Q321       Liz Saville Roberts: Is there data on hours?

Nick Dann: Yes, but I would not like to quote what it is. There is a requirement for prisons to ensure that they have the men unlocked and that there is purposeful activity for each of those men.

Q322       Susan Elan Jones: I would like to ask about the delivery of healthcare services. Can you talk a little about the challenges that you face in delivering healthcare services? What further support or changes in policy might help you in that area?

Janet Wallsgrove: The challenges for health are enormous—the challenges for health in the community generally are enormous. When men come into custody, sometimes they have the most complex needs. They often have multiple healthcare needs and often have a long-term addiction, in some cases to prescription medication. It is very difficult. On top of that, you have got issues around alcohol and drug detox. You have got mental health issues. The range of factors we have to deal with means that it is actually a really significant challenge to ever meet the expectations of the men we look after.

One of the issues that I know HMPPS Wales is working on is looking at the measures and indicators around the data that is collected and how well we as a group of prisons are performing against that. I think the difficulty at the moment is that there is no clear set of indicators that would allow us to measure how effectively we are delivering. That is one of the strategic objectives, along with medicines management.

Some of the issues that are being talked about are about who is coming in, what medication they are on and whether they should continue to be supported in that medication. Similarly, with substance misuse, what is the best way of dealing with that? Is it maintenance? Is it detox? Those issues are quite complex, and they are very complex for individuals. Often people are very resistant to being taken off the medication that they have been prescribed, for obvious reasons. In their view, they have been prescribed that in the community, so why shouldn’t that continue in custody?

You have then got the complexity of people who are on quite high levels of medication. What happens when they are found to have had a positive drug test or have taken psychoactive substances, which themselves could be dangerous and work against the medication that they are on?

I think the whole issue of health in a prison context is extremely difficult. I absolutely agree—I don’t think anybody on the panel would disagree—that we should do more. Mental health is a significant challenge to us. Learning disability matters, as we become more aware of the challenges and the number of men in custody whose needs must be met. There are also the issues of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and medication—who gets it, how it is prescribed and what happens in the community. I mentioned mental health—you then have the issues of people who have personality disorder, who don’t fit neatly into any of the boxes.

So as a director of a prison, I would say that health probably represents the greatest challenge; it always has done in my 32-plus years of working in prisons. It represents a real challenge, which is why we absolutely need to have those joint priorities and we need to work on performance indicators, so that we are all able to measure how well we’re doing and what improvement there is.

The kind of mechanisms that are now being put in place are very welcome, certainly by me as a prison director, because anyone who visits a prison will be met immediately by a group of men who say that their medical needs are not being met, so it is important that we are able to benchmark that and look at how well, or not, we’re doing.

Q323       Tonia Antoniazzi: Janet, when we were at Parc one of the things that struck me when we met the prisoners was that they have a system in the corridor in their area where they use their fingerprint to access the services. And it was low-level stuff—so not the big-ticket stuff over the drugs and the access to different systems—that was impacting on them every day, such as an ingrowing toenail.

Now if someone had to stand on his feet to do a job and wanted to have the best life he could have within the prison, it just seems that those low-level, kind of everyday problems that people have are being overlooked. Is that the case? Is that how difficult it is for them to access the health services every day?

Janet Wallsgrove: It is difficult. I think that at the time that you were visiting, we had a particular issue with people not turning up or not arriving, and we’ve worked really hard to reduce those numbers. So people now are getting where they need to be and we’re monitoring that data more effectively.

It’s difficult because sometimes there are undoubtedly going to be cases where people don’t get dealt with as quickly as I personally would like or as they would like. However, sometimes that is around expectation about how quickly people would see their need needing to be met. For example, you will get what we might be able to have access to in the community. 

So, absolutely, it’s important that people get their healthcare needs met, but I guess that, as with everything else, we have to operate some kind of triage system to make sure that the people with the most pressing needs get dealt with more quickly, because sometimes it’s almost impossible, as it would be in a GP’s surgery, to get everybody seen within the first few hours that they might want to be seen in.

However, I absolutely take your point, and that is something that we are working on with our health colleagues, to try and get men seen more quickly, because otherwise you are right that other issues would undoubtedly be created.

Q324       Tonia Antoniazzi: I just think that something like this—quite easy, simple and quick to deal with—wouldn’t have gone into a long-term issue that you then had.

Also, one of the things that I would like to bring up is that although I know this fingerprint system is in schools—it’s everywhere—there are some people that it doesn’t work for, because they might be quite old and their fingerprint doesn’t hit on the system. I just wonder: are there the reassurances for perhaps the more vulnerable prisoners that they will have access to these services if they can’t just walk up to the machine and use it? I mean, in Swansea they don’t have that system and therefore they have got that one-to-one with the prison officer, which is quite reassuring. Do you have something in place for that then?   

Janet Wallsgrove: Yes, we have just re-energised and rolled out again our healthcare champions. Effectively, the healthcare champion system is a group of men who work with healthcare and who are trained.

If, for example, somebody does not necessarily feel that they want to speak to a member of staff or are a bit concerned, they can actually go and raise those issues with one of their peers. That peer then has direct access to the patient liaison nurse, so we can make sure that those people are seen. That is one way that people can do that.

A bit similar is the listener scheme. Our evidence is that a number of men are more comfortable approaching their peers than they would necessarily be approaching others. Obviously they can book appointments on the CMS system, but if people are not comfortable doing that, we have a range of mentors—especially for men with a learning disability, who would all be allocated a buddy or a mentor. We put systems in place to make sure that people don’t fall through the system.

Q325       Liz Saville Roberts: One last question, forgive me, to Mr Dann. The governor of Berwyn, Russ Trent, was suspended in August. Are there any further details in relation to that, and for how much longer is this situation likely to run? I note that you were appointed in April, and that you have previously been governor at two institutions. Do you plan to change the regime at Berwyn in any way in the meantime?

Nick Dann: I don’t think it’s appropriate to comment on that at the moment.

Chair: I have had a discussion before the meeting today, and I think that we should leave that for now.

Liz Saville Roberts: Frankly, I think it is something that we have to raise; it is our duty to raise it. I understand if Mr Dann feels he can comment no further. However, I think the questions about the regime, which has existed since the prison opened, are fair.

Q326       Chair: Is there likely to be any change in the way that the prison is run at the moment?

Nick Dann: I can say that there was always a plan, from when Russ Trent was up there—he was there to get the prison open and operational. Before Russ was suspended, he had announced that there was a plan for him to leave Berwyn at the end of this calendar year. My understanding is that the job is about to be advertised, but that was always planned and has nothing to do with Russ’s suspension.

Chair: Thank you very much indeed.

Examination of witness

Witness: Amy Rees.

Chair: Ms Rees, may I welcome you to the Committee? You have obviously seen the line of questioning that we are pursuing. Given that some members will have to leave early—I hope you won’t see that as a discourtesy; it is because of trains to London—we will carry straight on with Tonia Antoniazzi.

Q327       Tonia Antoniazzi: Hello, Amy. Your role brings together oversight of prisons and probation in Wales. What advantage does that dual role offer?

Amy Rees: I think you’ve already heard from my colleagues who went before me that it has significant advantages. I genuinely believe that the best way that we can run criminal justice, or justice in general, is to create a system from end to end.

In reality, we see in justice systems across the world—not just in England and Wales—that people recycle themselves through the system. Whether they are in custody or community is an artificial distinction. The reality is that they will have moved through the community cycle, they will go into custody and they will come back out to be responsible in the community side—in probation. The best possible way to run that system is to do it from end to end.

In addition, I also think there is an artificial distinction between public and private. Whatever people’s political perceptions of public and private, they are a reality of our system in England and Wales, and what we want is the best possible outcome for offenders. I am not only responsible for probation and prisons; I am also responsible for public and private provision both in prisons and in community.

Q328       Tonia Antoniazzi: That obviously brings challenges to the role. What are the biggest challenges that you face?

Amy Rees: The biggest challenges are the same across the system: trying to integrate a system. I obviously have a specific challenge in Wales, which is that I am a non-devolved civil servant working in a devolved landscape. That requires a new challenge for me to join it up across the system. I want to be very clear that I think that is a challenge throughout. I talk publicly and openly about seeing the fact that there are devolved and non-devolved systems in Wales as an opportunity for me, because I know in Wales that I have to go out there and have meaningful discussions to make a reality of things on the ground. No political landscape will deliver that for me—I have to go and make that happen. I find that a reality, because we have open and frank conversations with the Welsh Government and other partners about whether we will deliver something together. We know that to deliver it, it needs to be together.

Q329       Liz Saville Roberts: Could you give us an approximate percentage of services involved in prison and probation that are devolved, to compare Wales with England and to get a sense of the difference?

Amy Rees:  I couldn’t possibly give you that percentage in real terms. I could not even promise to write back, because I think it would be extraordinarily complicated to work out. You just heard about health. If you ask me what the three most important things are that I need to resettle a prisoner, I would say health, accommodation and employment, none of which belongs directly to me—they are all devolved services.

Q330       Liz Saville Roberts: Health, accommodation and employment. I raised the issue of housing provision in Wales and that that had changed since the previous situation where there was a degree of priority for ex-offenders. To what degree do you think this is an issue that we should consider in this inquiry? To what degree is it different from England?

Amy Rees: Frankly, one of the opportunities given by my appearing before the Committee is to convey how much accommodation is an issue to me, practically and operationally on the ground. I have done most of my career in London; I naively thought that the position would not be quite so acute in Wales, but that is not what I am finding. I am so concerned about the provision of accommodation for offenders leaving custody. On the community side, I have my own special project where we are trying to work with partners—the Welsh Government and local councils—to see what more we can do.

Q331       Liz Saville Roberts: To move ahead, the chief inspector told us that, in the past, prisoners in Wales have performed better than those in England, but that situation has now reversed. Why has this happened, do you think? In relation to your role, what are you doing about it?

Amy Rees: I have no wish to get into his head, but my understanding of the evidence that he gave is that at one time he would have said that performance was distinctly better in Wales, but now he would not say that. I am not sure that he said it was worse, and that is an important distinction for me.

It is very difficult to compare. We have heard a lot, not least from Dr Jones, who appeared before you this morning, about violence in prisons in Wales. You just heard from the Director of Parc, Janet Wallsgrove, who gave you a very nice understanding of why you cannot compare all prisons to all prisons; you have to do prisons in comparator groups. For the record, I want to be clear that both Swansea and Cardiff are performing better than their comparator groups against safety and order. On violence measures, which include self-harm and violence, both Swansea and Cardiff, which we have heard a lot about, are performing better. Usk and Prescoed have some of the best levels of performance in their systems—I think you will have all had an opportunity to read a very positive inspectorate report about them.

I will not go over the points about Parc, but you know it has been very difficult for us just to compare that as a whole, because they have issues with young people who are disproportionately violent. There is clear statistical evidence about how violence is inversely proportionate to age, so the younger you are, the most likely you are to have a propensity for violence.

Q332       Liz Saville Roberts: Given the situation, there is a sensible arrangement that there is a comparator across similar prisons within England and Wales. Should we have access to that data? Otherwise, it is possible that we are comparing too simplistically.

Amy Rees: Absolutely. I can write to you with lots of information about comparator groups. With the exception of Parc, where we have the issue, prisons in Wales are performing very well against their comparator groups.

I would not want the Committee to misconstrue what I am saying: violence and self-harm levels are too high across England and Wales. Frankly, I do not want to get carried away with the idea that we are doing better against a performance that should be better across the board. I do not want you to mishear that I do not think there is an issue—I do, but on those measures, we are performing better than our colleagues in England.

Q333       Susan Elan Jones: I’m intrigued about how we know which offenders get placed in certain prisons. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about how this happens, and why it is that so many Welsh prisoners end up in English prisons and vice versa.

Amy Rees: Of course. Actually, I am genuinely glad you asked me that question, because it is something that I wanted to take the opportunity to explain. Political differences aside, at the moment we still have a criminal justice system that is in England and Wales.

For example, when Dr Jones was speaking earlier, he said, “If we reduce the levels of incarceration down to Northern Irish levels, you wouldn’t have a single prisoner outside Wales,” but I would convey to you that, in the current system, that would be an abject mistake, because we do not have the provision in Wales to deal with lots of different things. I will give you an example: we do not have a women’s prison, as you know, but we also do not have anywhere to put high-security offenders or anywhere to house terrorists. Equally, Usk, which is in Mr Davies’s constituency, provides a national service in terms of sex offender treatment.

At the moment, we have a system in England and Wales that is not designed solely on the basis of geographical location. It is also designed on the basis of the needs of the prisoner, and they can be geographically dispersed. There is much academic debate about which trumps which, but quite a lot of academics would tell you that closeness to home is not the sole factor in whether someone rehabilitates. You have to weigh all those things—what the regime, the provision and the intervention are that you want to give the individual, versus closeness to home.

Just to answer the question fully, at the moment about 63% of prisoners have an origin Welsh address—again, that is important to say, because it means the address they gave on entry into the criminal justice system was in Wales. It does not necessarily mean that they are Welsh, but they were residing in Wales before they came into the system.

Susan Elan Jones: I have to say that I am not especially enamoured with the need to house Welsh terrorists close to home, to be honest.

Amy Rees: That is a classic example.

Q334       Susan Elan Jones: In terms of the serious point about the data aspect, would it help if there was better data about whether prisoners considered themselves to be Welsh?

Amy Rees: It is an interesting question. I do not wish to be pedantic, but when we say, “It would help,” my question is, “What would it help?” At the moment there is a system that, like I say, does not solely work on the basis of whether closeness to home is the single contributing factor.

The other thing that I would like to say for the record is that lots of people think about local prisons as serving the local area that the individual comes from, but of course they do not—they serve the court. If you were to go on your holidays to Blackpool and commit an offence in Blackpool, you would be housed in a local prison in Blackpool because your court would then be in Blackpool. It is not that you would be brought home to your origin address. Local prisons serve local courts.

It often happens, of course, that people end up committing crime in the area where they live, but the system is not designed around the individual’s address. The system is designed around court appearance, need, and then the individual’s closeness to home in terms of visits and looking at their release. We now run a system where we try to get people back to a local prison—local to their address—12 weeks before their return to custody.

Q335       Susan Elan Jones: I have a slightly different question, to which I am intrigued about the answer: why do you think there are fewer criminals in Northern Ireland?

Amy Rees: I am not certain that there are fewer criminals. There is a question about how we all wish to treat those who break the rules of society. I am afraid that that is a slightly bigger question than I can answer, and is probably more apt for people around this table and other tables. In the end, I can accept only those who are given to me by the courts who have been remanded in custody.

I would say that in my senior role, I have a role to play in asking people to consider those questions in different lights. One practical example we have of that is the women’s pathfinder diversion scheme that we have been running in Wales for some time, where we are finding that for those with a low level of risk, it is very possible to divert them from custody with much better results. Again, that is not surprising to me as a professional.

Q336       Liz Saville Roberts: Very quickly, you mentioned that 53% of prisoners with a Welsh address were imprisoned in Wales.

Amy Rees: 63%.

Liz Saville Roberts: None the less, that is not the case in north Wales.

Amy Rees: No, that is true.

Q337       Liz Saville Roberts: The figures at that level of sophistication were that 13% were being housed in Berwyn from the six counties in the north, and 87% were being housed beyond north Wales, of which 75% were in England. That situation is not satisfactory, is it?

Amy Rees: It is not satisfactory, but neither is it set. I have two important things to say about that: obviously, we are only halfway to ramping up Berwyn, and in that ramp up we have not yet started to take those who are going to be released close to home in north Wales. That is genuinely a picture that we would need to return to in a year and a half’s time when Berwyn is fully ramped up. Then we should have a look at whether there has been an improvement.

Q338       Chair: We met in one of the prisons—I am sure you know which one—at least one transgender prisoner who was looking to transfer to a women’s prison. Are there many in that situation at the moment?

Amy Rees: Yes, transgender prisoners are a reality of prison life across England and Wales. As you know, there have been lots of high-profile cases about how they have been treated and their level of self-harm and vulnerability. Our policy is to look at every individual on an individual basis and to actually have them reviewed by the equivalent of an area manager—we call them a prison group director—in any level of complexity. It is a complex part of our system. We do have quite a few residing in Wales.

Q339       Chair: Generally speaking, what percentage are able to transfer to the prison of their perceived gender?

Amy Rees: I genuinely wouldn’t be able to give you a percentage. The reality of our policy is that the individual is placed according to the gender of their birth and then a risk assessment is undertaken with the individual, which considers all their circumstances and balances their needs but also the risk they may pose to others. We then decide, within a period of time from when they come into custody, where we can place them and what would be appropriate. That is our policy.

Q340       Chair: Would there be a presumption, if possible, to place people in the prison of their acquired gender?

Amy Rees: We do not have a presumption. Our presumption is to look at every case on an individual basis. What we try to do, like I said, is balance the needs of that individual with the risk they may pose to others, because of both the reason they are in custody and other complexities. They really are very complex individual cases.

Q341       Chair: Are you aware of any changes to the procedures that you go through as a result of the conviction of a prisoner for sexual assault in a women’s prison that was reported in the last 48 hours?

Amy Rees: I am not aware of any changes to procedure. What we are all doing is making sure we are reviewing our cases and following the current robust procedures.

Q342       Chair: Do you think the Government need to call an inquiry into that particular case, or to offer better guidance to prison authorities as to how to place people?

Amy Rees: I am not sure I could comment on whether an inquiry would be helpful, but I certainly think it is a very complicated and complex operational issue to manage.

Q343       Chair: Okay. Can I ask a completely different question? There are one or two things we just want to hoover up. We briefly discussed the issue of English junior offenders—young offenders—coming into Welsh prisons and perhaps bringing a gang culture with them. How big a problem is that, and what is being done to tackle it?

Amy Rees: There are a number of levels to that question. First, as we have heard, we have a system at the moment that is designed around England and Wales; it is not designed around just keeping an individual close to home. I think the Committee is aware that I have been leading work with the Welsh Government to do blueprints, both on young offenders and on women in custody, so we can look again at what we could do operationally on the ground for both those very distinct groups with distinct needs.

That said, in terms of your specific question about what sort of problems they create, it is also important to understand that, given the brilliant work that has been done to reduce the number of young adults in custody, you are left with a very complex, high-risk group. That is the nature of reducing the number of young adults in custody: we are left with very complicated people to manage. There are risks such as gangs. There are very high levels of violence. All that needs to be managed, but I would also say that it is not just a closeness-to-home issue. For example, in Wales, we have co-defendants that we just could not house together and we need to practically consider that. The numbers are so small, and when you are talking about anything less than 50 all these things become very complicated in terms of where you can manage them and who can go where.

Q344       Anna McMorrin: Can I just go back to the statement you made about devolved/non-devolved and the difficulties that may create for you? You say you need to create an end-to-end system from custody to community. You are in a unique position to see at first hand, across the whole of Wales and the UK, the challenges of working in non-devolved and devolved areas. Can you tell me how you believe this can be resolved, bearing in mind the differences between UK Government priorities on justice and Welsh Government priorities on the services and prison policy it might seek to implement?

Amy Rees: Yes, of course. The first thing is that I am genuinely passionate about the opportunities that Wales affords. There are so many opportunities for us in Wales to really get this right. Like I say, the fact that you work against a devolved/non-devolved Administration is, for me, an opportunity, because it means that you have to join up and get the right policies, and then you know that you really have broken that ground and that people are going to come on the journey with you and do what you want.

In practical terms—how you actually make this happen—we have got two real examples. Since I have been in post—just over a year now—I have set up a Justice in Wales strategy group, which is jointly chaired by a colleague in the Welsh Government called Martin Swain. We have also made the All Wales Criminal Justice Board a more lively debate, and we have decided to have priority areas to deliver, rather than just a review of what’s going on. All those priorities are about us saying, “What is the best practical thing on the ground that we can do for the people we look after?”—whichever side you are looking after them from. If you do that and take that as your starting point, everything flows from there.

I don’t want to be naive. When you don’t have the backdrop of a devolved system, none of those things is easy to deliver. As we heard, joining up healthcare and joining up accommodation is a challenge wherever you sit in this landscape. I think there are really unique opportunities in Wales, because people are very clear about which areas they are responsible for, and then we get together and do joint work. Of course, you have to work hard at putting the politics aside and continuing to focus on the practical outcomes that you want, but I have found everyone in Wales, including the Ministry of Justice, willing to do that and to say, “What are the best practical outcomes that we could want to achieve here?”

Q345       Anna McMorrin: Can I ask you about prisoners and prison officers speaking Welsh? We have been told that HMPPS does not collect data on the number of prisoners and prison officers who speak Welsh and for whom it is their preferred language. What prevents you from collecting that data? Is it just resource? Would it help you to make provision for Welsh-speaking prisoners?

Amy Rees: Okay, I have a few things to say. Since 2015, we do record data about offenders, both in prison and on the community side, about their preference for the Welsh language. The first set of data was published in December 2017—that is the latest set of data. We also record locally the number of staff we have who speak Welsh, but that is local data recording so it isn’t published and it isn’t publicly available.

The other thing I want to say quickly on this, because you asked in the previous session about the jobs for which we state that Welsh is a preferred criterion, is that for every single job that HMPPS advertised, Welsh is a preferred criterion, but it is not—

Anna McMorrin: Not essential.

Amy Rees: Not essential.

Q346       Anna McMorrin: You have also stated that you aim to employ a sufficient number of bilingual staff. What does “sufficient” look like?

Amy Rees: That’s a really good question. I think you heard figures today that the number of staff who can speak Welsh outstrips the number of men in their care. That is universal at the moment. We have more staff who speak Welsh than offenders who ask us to use the medium of Welsh to converse with them.

Q347       Tonia Antoniazzi: We have been told that the current probation programmes in Wales are not achieving their rehabilitative aims. How would you respond to that, and what more could you do?

Amy Rees: I’m not exactly sure what that is referring to. If it is referring to the fact that we have announced a consultation—we are hoping to run a very different system in Wales—that is something I would like to talk to the Committee about. People might remember that we did something called “Transforming Rehabilitation”, in which we split low, medium and high-risk offenders. High-risk offenders stayed and were put into the national probation service, which was in the public sector, and low and medium-risk offenders went out to what we call community rehabilitation companies. We are consulting at the moment on a model that I am very passionate about, which will bring all offender management back into the national probation service in Wales, but then still go out to partners to deliver interventions—things like community payback and so on. I wasn’t sure exactly whether that question referred to that set of changes or something different.

Q348       Tonia Antoniazzi: Has it changed because of the state it was in? I know a number of probation officers who are extremely dissatisfied with the system and are very pleased that you are going back to what they perceive to be the system as it was. What advantages will be offered by this new system in Wales?

Amy Rees: I think there are a lot of advantages. First, this system presents an opportunity to reflect the devolved landscape in Wales. We are currently consulting on the possibility of co-commissioning for some of those services with PCCs, the Welsh Government and others, so that it would properly reflect the Welsh landscape. I also believe this could be a more efficient system, allowing me to put resources into the frontline. It also allows me to bring supervision to those who are sentenced to under 12 months in custody, which was the benefit of transforming rehabilitation, and to really work with that group by providing resources to help them.

Q349       Tonia Antoniazzi: Do you see any hurdles to going back to this system?

Amy Rees: There is an inevitable change curve. There will be change in a system that has had quite a lot of change over the last few years. As you said, however, I have done a number of consultation events and the broad reaction from practitioners was that this is a positive change, so I hope that will help us to get through the change curve, but it is another set of changes in an already difficult day job.

Q350       Tonia Antoniazzi: Do you think it is a shame that this is not happening in England?

Amy Rees: I really could not comment on that, because this is for my bit of the system.

Chair: You’re not going to catch out Ms Rees!

Tonia Antoniazzi: I don’t think so!

Amy Rees: There are genuine differences between England and Wales, not least me: my job does not exist in England. There is not a prison and probation service in one geographical area, so that is a massive advantage in running this model in Wales.

Q351       Tonia Antoniazzi: It is a massive opportunity.

Amy Rees: It is a massive opportunity, which I feel very passionate about. I already have responsibility for the CRC in Wales and they are geographically coterminous in a way that they are not in England. The NPS is completely the same as the CRC, in terms of the geographical area they are responsible for. That is not the same for my colleagues in England. Running this model would be an entirely different proposition in England.

Q352       Tonia Antoniazzi: Maybe they could take a leaf out of your book.

Amy Rees: No comment.

Q353       Chair: I have one quick question. The chief inspector suggested that measures for prison overcrowding may have been adjusted to justify current population levels. I think I can see what he is driving at there. Do you agree that we ought to have some way of measuring overcrowding that everyone can agree on?

Amy Rees: Just to go back one step, I don’t want to be pedantic but I want to correct the record about overcrowding. The difference between certified normal accommodation and operational capacity is the level to which they are crowded, but crowded does not mean overcrowded. Crowded means that you have agreed—for me, it would be with my direct report, the prison group director—that that prison is capable of holding that number of people, not just because of the physical space you could put them in, but because there is enough activity and regime for them. Overcrowding means going beyond what we have agreed. There is no overcrowding; there is crowding. Overcrowding is very serious and we have seen it in jurisdictions not in England and Wales in the past. It is not as if that is something that can never happen. It is an important distinction to make. At the moment, in England and Wales we do not have overcrowding but crowding. It is worth saying that the last time this Committee took evidence, overcrowding in Swansea was at its absolute highest and it has since decreased by about 15%. For me, as a professional and practitioner, to have an agreed definition, so that we all understand what we mean by it, is helpful.

Q354       Susan Elan Jones: I have a quite different question. I have always been of the view that the decline of heavy industry profoundly changed the experience of some young men growing up—their experience of life and society. While accepting that that old way is not coming back, do you think there is a role for mentoring young men that should be built into this system?

Amy Rees: Yes, of course. Mentoring is profoundly helpful. A lot of the research we do shows that mentoring is helpful not only to the person they mentor, but to the mentor themselves. They find it helpful to reflect on their own journey and to work with somebody else. If another way of asking that question is, “Is it very difficult once people arrive with me aged 16, 17, 18, or even 24 or 54, to then correct what might have been a very difficult start in life?”, the answer is that it absolutely is. Most of the issues in the criminal justice system are started a long time before anyone enters the criminal justice system, and that of course is the fantastic ACEs work that is going on in Wales.

Q355       Liz Saville Roberts: I have a couple of quite specific questions. I think deaths in custody were particularly raised when we were discussing Parc, then inquests—there seems to be a concern about the long wait before the final reports come through. Do you have any comments about this situation, or how it could be addressed, alongside the fact that a consultation has just closed on the possibility of legal aid for the families of prisoners who died in custody? Is there something we as a Committee should be alert to about this?

Amy Rees: I wouldn’t have any specific comment on legal aid. I think we all know that that has been a difficult debate over probably the last five or six years, about what does and does not receive legal aid. My comment would be, though, that the sooner we get the report the better for us operationally—to have had the coroner’s hearing and then to have the final results is extremely helpful to us. I would say that, operationally, we try to work on immediate findings, even if they are in draft. Even if we haven’t had all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed, we try to get on with and start working with any learning that we have got as soon as we are presented with it, whether completely finalised or not. The sooner I get any information, the sooner I can act on it.

Q356       Liz Saville Roberts: From your point of view, would there be any way of speeding up the official process, as things stand?

Amy Rees: I would have to reflect on that properly, to go away and look at the cases, before—

Liz Saville Roberts: We’re talking about over a year in some cases.

Amy Rees: We are waiting quite a long time in some cases.

Liz Saville Roberts: Would it be possible to have a response for that?

Amy Rees: Of course.

Q357       Liz Saville Roberts: My second point was, I think, raised with Swansea. I got the impression, in relation to drug detection—the significance of an internal market as a business model, with people breaching their conditions in order to come back in, carrying drugs in their bodies—that it was felt that body scanners would be a way of capturing that, and that there are just not enough body scanners in prisons in Wales. Are there any plans to improve the infrastructure—the facilities or equipment—we have?

Amy Rees: Absolutely. There are lots of pilots going on across England and Wales about what the most useful technology is for us to use. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that people are getting themselves recalled to custody in order, for example, to bring in drugs. We know that there is an illicit economy around drugs that is extremely lucrative. There is no hiding from any of those facts. We have got to ensure that we invest in the right things to give us the best opportunities to resolve those issues. At the moment, for example, in Wales we are finding that there is quite a strong prevalence of using psychoactive substances on paper, so we are looking very carefully about what we can do with mail and so on. That can, literally, be different 100 miles away. The way in which this illicit economy tends to work is that people find a preferred methodology. The other thing, as we get on top of that methodology, is that they switch to another one. We have to be careful about how we look at the learning and how we respond to local intelligence before making a sensible set of decisions around that, while still ensuring that people have access to mail and so on.

Q358       Chair: On the drugs issue, in England there is an integrated drug treatment system—basically it’s methadone replacement, as I understand it in simple terms—but we do not do that in Wales. We certainly saw an alternative in Berwyn. What do you think of that? Do you see an argument for introducing a replacement therapy for people with a drugs problem?

Amy Rees: You heard earlier that health and the particular challenges of mental health from substance misuse are probably the biggest of all the challenges that we face—arguably the biggest. I certainly want us to review exactly what we have in place in Wales and what the best opportunity would be. At the moment, we have a brilliant system called Dyfodol, which is psychosocial—so it is not clinical prescribing but what we do with psychosocial work.

On early report, that looks to be very effective, and it is providing joining up across the system. What we need to make sure is that the clinical side is as strong as the psychosocial that we have in Wales. At the moment, we are running a pilot in Swansea that looks a bit more like the IDTS that they are running in England, and it will be very interesting to see the results of that. That has been borne out by multiple PPO recommendations for us to look at something similar.

I am really glad that you have just given me the opportunity to mention something about health, because one of the things that I would ask this Committee to reflect on and argue for is that, in areas like mental health and substance misuse, as much resource as possible is devoted to prisons or the criminal justice system, because it will be to society’s benefit. I literally have a captive audience of people with these multiple needs, who in nearly all cases will be very quickly back in the community. They are often chaotic individuals because of the nature of their drug-taking and so on. If we joined up powerfully, we really could do something effective with these individuals while we have them as a captive audience before they go back into the community. I would make that case very strongly for mental health and for substance misuse. There is more that we can all do.

Chair: Okay. That’s absolutely superb. Thank you very much indeed, Ms Rees, and to any of the other people who have given evidence today who are still here.