Written evidence from Lord Ramsbotham
1. I am conscious that the Justice Select Committee’s inquiry into prison reform was launched before the Government’s recently published White Paper on Prison Safety and Reform. My contribution to the inquiry is a repeat of what I have said and written to the current Secretary of State for Justice, but, in explanation of any suspicion that it is written in a spirit of frustration or irritation, I should point out that I have said exactly the same to every Secretary of State responsible for prisons since I was appointed HM Chief Inspector of Prisons in 1995. The problems of which I immediately became aware have worsened since them, because of, amongst other factors, a lethal combination of government action, such as that taken by Mr Chris Grayling during his time as Secretary of State for Justice, and inaction, such as that which followed the only previous White Paper on prisons, Custody, Care and Justice, published by the then Home Secretary, now Lord Baker of Dorking, in 1991, to which I refer later. My contribution covers three aspects – the aim of imprisonment, governance and prison regimes.
THE AIM OF IMPRISONMENT
2. During my first inspection, of HMP Holloway, then the largest women’s prison in the United Kingdom, in my first week in office as HM Chief Inspector, I noted the negative first part of the Statement of Purpose given to the Prison Service:
‘It is our duty to keep securely those committed by the courts, to treat them with humanity, and to help them to live useful and law-abiding lives in prison and on release’.
This negativity was reinforced in the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard’s simplification of the purpose to ‘Security, Security, Security’, following the escapes from the high security prisons HMPs Whitemoor and Parkhurst.
3. Following my suspension of my inspection of Holloway, because the treatment of and conditions for prisoners were too awful to inspect, I thought through what the aim of imprisonment should be, bearing in mind that prisons were part of the Criminal Justice System, which thought process I repeat below, because I suggest that it might be repeated, with advantage, by anyone with any responsibility for prison management.
4. Prisons are but one part of the Criminal Justice System quartet, in which Police investigate crime, Courts sentence identified perpetrators and Prisons and Probation administer whatever sentence courts award, whether in custody or the community. In 1995 the Criminal Justice System did not feel like a system at all, but more like a number of warlike tribes competing for ever diminishing resources. Prisons appeared to be the odd one out, because courts, police and probation had worked closely together for over a hundred years, since the formation of the Court Probation Service.
5. Based on my experience as Chairman of an NHS hospital trust, I then reflected on the similarity of the role of hospitals and prisons, within their respective systems. Both are the acute part, to which people should only be sent if they need the treatment that only they can provide. Neither has any control over who comes in, but have to try to make them better, conscious that that process is never going to be completed in either hospital or prison, but will have to be carried on in the community in the form of aftercare. Choke either with people who should not be there, and they will be unable to give the necessary treatment to those who should.
6. Soon after he became Prime Minister in 1997, Tony Blair, who may have identified the problem when he was shadow Home Secretary, issued a unifying aim to the Criminal Justice System:
‘To protect the public by preventing crime’.
Nothing wrong with the sentiment, except that it was given to the wrong people. The Criminal Justice System does not prevent crime, it only clicks in when a crime has been committed as I have explained. Far better had the aim been:
‘To protect the public by preventing re-crime, or re-offending’
which would have given a purpose to both prisons and probation.
7. Based on this, I then returned to the Statement of Purpose, whose negativity had been nagging me. Nothing wrong with the words themselves, but, quite apart from containing three aims, when all my military training had taught me that there should only be one, their order seemed to emphasise the negative. So why not turn them round, in the context of the modified CJS aim to read:
‘It is our duty to help those committed by the courts to live useful and law-abiding lives in prison and on release, with the qualifications that they must be treated with humanity, and must not be allowed to escape’.
8. The beauty of this aim is that it is positive, and gives a sense of purpose to everything that is done with and for a person committed to prison – assessment of why they have not been able to live a useful and law-abiding life until now, delivery of what has been identified as necessary to enable them to do so in future, and transference of all this to those responsible for aftercare in the community. What is more the same aim could, in suitably modified form, be given to probation:
‘It is our duty to help those committed by the courts to live useful and law-abiding lives, with the qualification that they must be treated with humanity’.
9. Reflecting then on how success - or failure - might be measured, I returned to two admissions that had amazed me on my very first day in office. In answer to my specific questions, Home Office officials admitted that re-offending could not be measured, and that no one knew the actual cost of imprisonment. Let me expand briefly on both, because the answers to these important questions are still not known.
10. The ‘re-offending rate’ is used as the measurement of success or failure of the prison system, despite the fact that the only thing you can measure is the reconviction rate, from court statistics. When I took up office the so-called re-offending rate was 55% within two years of release from prison, but only 50%, or thereabouts, for probation. The prison rate then increased to 65%, but suddenly went down to 45%, for which I soon discovered the reason. Instead of two years after release, Ministers told officials to use one year, which is a ridiculously short period. But I contend that to base measurement of success or failure, and such contractual arrangements as Payment by Results, on something that cannot be measured, is stupid to say the least. Armed with a positive aim, parts of which can be measured, and substituting reconviction for re-offending, would, I suggest, enable a more factual measurement system to be devised. What is more it would better identify those areas where improvement is required.
11. When I worked in the Ministry of Defence, the three Armed Services had to cost their commitments each year, based on what was set out in the annual Defence White Paper. Deficiencies were then explained to Ministers, who had the option of either sanctioning things not being done, or trying to obtain more Treasury resources. Naturally I thought that this was Whitehall practice, and, having known the cost of what the Army was asked to do, presumed that the Prison Service would know the cost of imprisonment. This was, I was told, the amount of money made available to the Prison Service by the Home Office, based on what it had been given by the Treasury. But when I then asked how much it would cost to deliver the treatment that had been assessed that every prisoner needed, to enable them to live useful and law-abiding lives, I was told that this had never been worked out. What is more no one knows the actual cost of delivery today. If Ministers do not know how much it costs to deliver government policies, how on earth can anyone understand the impact of any shortfall? If you do not know the size of the shortfall, how on earth can you calculate the effect of any subsequent cuts, or determine which of your programmes cannot be afforded?
12. Had it been in possession of the facts I simply cannot believe that any responsible Cabinet would have allowed Mr Grayling to get away with the cuts he made to staff numbers, in grossly overcrowded prisons, with their obvious impact on safety both in prisons, and subsequently, because of the inevitable reduction in activities designed to help prisoners live useful and law-abiding lives in prison and on release, on the public. I blame officials in the MoJ and NOMS for not working out these facts, and then briefing Ministers, but will shift that blame if it can be proved that they did, and Ministers deliberately ignored the facts. But that does not alter the truisms that correct decision making depends on correct facts, and fudge results from fudge.
GOVERNANCE
13. I believe that, based on my personal experience and observation over the past 21 years, until and unless two drastic changes are made to the way in which prisons are managed, no improvement will be possible. My logic includes my belief that there is no room for two bureaucracies in any organisation, particularly an operational one, which, if accepted, explains why I believe that there is no place for the current National Offender Management Service (NOMS). I have always believed that NOMS was wrongly named anyway, because it is not an operational Service in the understood sense of that term. Furthermore, if my hospital analogy is accepted, probation rather than prison should be the default position of the Criminal Justice System, more justice being delivered in the community than custody.
14. Far from being an operational service, which people join for a career, NOMS is a second and competing bureaucracy within the Ministry of Justice, when no operational organisation has room for more than one. The cult of managerialism, which bureaucracies practice, is based on the belief that all directions issued in writing will automatically be carried out, because they have been issued in the name of the boss. In the case of prisons this ignores the fact that they are staffed by people, who need to be led, the best leaders being other people not pieces of paper. In the days of the Prison Commission, before prisons were put under the Home Office, many Governors were ex-military, appointed not to run a prison but to lead its staff. Prisons are not Whitehall desks but operational entities, which, like all other operational entities, are best organised into operational groups to ensure consistency, and run, at different levels, by operational management structures, formed into what is called a chain of command. This is how every operational structure in the world, except for HM Prison Service, is run, witness every business, hospital or school.
15. One of the two major changes to the way in which prisons are managed was ordered in the 1991 White Paper, but has never yet been implemented. Before coming to that, however, may I explain my reasoning behind the other, the need for which became immediately apparent to me during my first inspection? The lack of either has, to my mind, been behind the almost total lack of progress during the 21 years since then, and I confidently predict, will lead to the same lack in future unless rectified.
16. The prison system consists of a number of prisons, of different types, situated in different parts of the country, the key person in every prison being Governor. It would seem logical therefore that the central tenet of governance of the prison system should be to ensure that Governors are given the direction and support that they need to run their prisons. Different types of prison need different direction, but, if there is to be consistency in how each type of prison is run, in different parts of the country, it would seem logical that, as in every business, hospital or school, named people should be made responsible and accountable, to the Secretary of State, for what is done in that type.
17. That would seem the logical and sensible thing to do, but, as I discovered in my first week in office as HM Chief Inspector, for some reason that logic continues to escape HM Prison Service. With the single exception of High Security prisons, for which a Director was appointed by Michael Howard, following the 1994 escape from HMP Parkhurst, on the recommendation of a military contemporary, General Sir John Learmont, who had come to exactly the same conclusion as me on his first acquaintanceship with prisons, no one is responsible for local, training, resettlement, women’s or young offender’s prisons. True Deputy Directors of Custody have recently been appointed, for women and young offenders, but they do not have the powers to direct that I deem essential.
18. Having said that I would re-inspect HMP Holloway six months after I had walked out in disgust, I asked the then Director General of the Prison Service whether I could see the Director of Women’s Prisons, to be told me that there was not one. All there was was a civil servant in the Policy department, who laid down women’s prison policy. When I asked who was responsible for overseeing the implementation of that policy, and who its consistent application in women’s prisons around the country, I was told that that was the job of Area Managers, who, I had been told, were responsible for budgets. When I asked how many Area Managers had worked in women’s prisons, and so were in a position to advise their Governors, he admitted that he did not know.
19. I have always believed that, in addition to Directors of each type of prison, there should be Directors of different types of prisoner, such as Lifers, Sex Offenders, Foreign Nationals, the elderly and Indeterminate Sentenced Prisoners, to oversee their sentence planning, to ensure consistency, and to advise Governors in whose prisons they were held. In other words the Prison system needs responsible, and accountable structures, for directing and overseeing, ‘What’ should be done with and for every prisoner, in line with overall Ministerial policy.
20. But this is where I counsel caution about the autonomy that Michael Gove, when Secretary of State for Justice, announced that he was going to give to prison Governors, so that they had more control over what went on in their prisons, a sentiment that has been picked up by his successor, Liz Truss, and repeated in the White Paper. Of course Governors are responsible and accountable for everything that goes on in their prison, but, at present, the Ministry of Justice/NOMS combination is not very good at laying down the ‘What’ they should deliver, while pouring forth torrents of minutiae about ‘How’ things are to be done, including for example how many sheets of music may be held in a cell. If Governors are to be given autonomy it should not be over the ‘What’ but over the ‘How’. The Ministry of Justice, on the other hand, should concentrate on the ‘What’, and leave the ‘How’ to individual Governors, which will exercise their powers of leadership and give them ample scope for local initiatives, including over the choice of who is to deliver which service within their prison.
21. This is where the second organisational change comes in. I mentioned in para 16 that Governors need direction and support, and have described how I would deliver direction. In his seminal report following the last prison crisis – the riots in Strangeways and 23 other prisons in 1990 – Lord Justice Woolf concluded that the three factors most likely to encourage anyone not to re-offend were a home, a job and a stable or family relationship, all of which were put at risk by imprisonment, particularly if someone was imprisoned far away from their home area. He therefore recommended that, with the exception of High Security prisons, because there were not enough high security prisoners to justify the expense of having a High Security prison in each area, prisons should be grouped into Community, or Regional clusters, each Region having a sufficiency of prison places to hold the numbers, in different categories, from that Region. He pointed out the advantages of doing this from the resettlement or rehabilitation point of view, because local ownership of a problem was a very powerful motivating factor. Local people, responsible for their own protection from re-offending, would be more inclined to become involved in the rehabilitation process, if they knew that they could contribute to their own safety. What is more the same organisation could deliver aftercare in the community, having worked with a person in prison.
22. The then Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker, saw the sense of this, and directed that it should be implemented, over time, in his 1991 White Paper, Custody, Care and Justice. He also initiated Regional Criminal Justice Boards, chaired by a judge, which included not just Criminal Justice System agencies but local government, health, education and the voluntary sector representatives. This system could have accommodated Regional Offender Managers, both of prison and probation, responsible and accountable for supporting all prison and probation entities in their region. Unfortunately Mr Grayling has damaged the potential of such a structure, by taking probation away from Criminal Justice boundaries, and allying it with Department of Work and Pensions boundaries, but I do not believe that all is lost. I would still group prisons into Regional clusters, and appoint Regional Offender Managers, responsible and accountable, to the Secretary of State, for supporting prison Governors in their Region, and for organising aftercare in their Region. Not only would this give clarity to the whole process, but would save money.
THE REGIME
23. Armed with a positive aim, and a clear structure focussed on helping prison Governors to deliver it, attention needs to be turned to the regime necessary for achieving it. When Chief Inspector I always had, on my desk, the remarkable speech on prison estimates, made, on July 20 1910, by the 36 year old Home Secretary, Winston Churchill. It contains the following words:
‘An unshakable belief that there is a treasure in the heart of every man, if only you can find it’.
the inference being that it was the job of the Criminal Justice System to find the treasure in the heart of everyone committed to its charge. Helping someone to lead a lawful and law-abiding life, in prison and on release, begins with finding their ‘treasure’ and then nurturing and developing it to best advantage. That is the intention of sentence planning, which begins with assessment, and should take account of severity of symptom and need and availability of time. It is no earthly use launching someone serving a six month sentence on a course lasting two years, unless you can guarantee that it can be completed in the community. But, successful completion of sentence planning requires full, purposeful and active days in prison, not days spent locked up in cells, doing nothing.
24. Unfortunately the Government’s disastrous staff cuts have made full, purposeful and active days an impossibility. Prison inspection report after prison inspection report details how many activities have been cancelled, because there are not enough staff to escort prisoners to them. If the public is to be protected, which Ministers continually claim to still be the Government’s aim, delivery of a regime, designed to achieve that aim, should be their No 1 priority. Therefore, as a matter of urgency, what it is that is preventing one from being delivered. Only when armed with the results of such an examination, will they be in a position to go back to the Prime Minister, and the Treasury, and explain what exactly is needed to ensure the promised protection of the public. Sadly I see no sign that that is their intent in the recently issued White Paper.
25. Having gone for the big thing as it were, can I conclude by what may seem like a more trivial recommendation? People are always talking about ‘what works’ and can I commend, for deeper consideration, something that undoubtedly works, and comes at no cost. I am referring to the Toe-by-Toe reading programme, initiated by a now deceased friend of mine, Christopher Morgan, in which prisoners teach other prisoners to read. To introduce it, Christopher had to overcome the opposition of the then Director General, who felt that it would demand too much staff time. Knowing that it did not, Christopher then asked the Prison Officer’s Association for their support, which they willingly gave, after which the Director General had no option but to agree. The beauties of the programme include the fact that teachers gets as much out of helping someone else as the person they are teaching, and the programme is transportable, so that it does not matter whether a person moves or leaves prison; another teacher can pick up from where the predecessor left off. What is more the teaching is free.
26. When I inspected some prisons in Kenya recently, in an extradition case, I was very struck by the numbers of prisoners who were being used as instructors in education, cooking, building, painting and decorating, plumbing, metal-work and gardening for example. As a result the majority of prisoners had full, purposeful and active days, at no cost – other than for consumables, but that was offset to a certain extent by sales to the public. I am absolutely certain that, amongst our prison population, there are many prisoners with skills that could be used in the same way, to the advantage of achieving the aim. Anyway, it is worth thinking about, not least in the context of the present situation, which undoubtedly contributes to the disgraceful number of assaults and suicides, in which so many prisoners are locked up all day, with nothing to do.