Lidington in the News

I see that the new Justice Secretary has used yesterday's London Evening Standard to disabuse us of the view he's on his holiday's. Here is the article:- 

Prison reform must also factor in a new focus on rehabilitation

On a visit to HMP Pentonville in Islington last month, I was given a mug made in the print workshop by offenders. It’s in my office now, and when I look at the date — 1842 — that forms part of Pentonville’s logo, my respect for its governor and frontline staff grows. Imagine trying to keep control of, and rehabilitate, some of society’s most troubled and troubling offenders in a packed Victorian-era jail with Dr Crippen buried in its grounds.

The print workshop is evidence of the positive work happening there each and every day, giving offenders skills for life on the outside, on the right side of the law. The staff I met were professional and energetic, engaged in promoting rehabilitation and setting offenders on the road to reform. The admirable women who run the sewing shop, to single out just two of them, have no fewer than 40 years’ service between them.

But staff face huge challenges in Pentonville and across the prison estate. There is too much violence and self-harm. There are growing concerns about increasing numbers of criminal gangs in London and other cities moving from the streets to prisons, continuing their violent feuds. The use of illegal drugs and mobile phones, and their trade inside jail, leads to violence, addiction, debts, threats and misery. Nigel Newcomen, the prison ombudsman, has referred to the spread of new psychoactive drugs as a “game-changer”.

In this environment, too few prisoners get the training and education that will set them on the path to a more positive future. So my first priority is to improve safety and security, and then press ahead with prison reform. I’ve heard governors, staff and union representatives say the need to stabilise prisons is paramount. It’s a view shared by our well-regarded Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke, in his meticulous reports.

Because I believe we should be accountable to the public for prison performance, and because it will help improve security and safety, I have decided to make our response to these reports more robust. It seems clear to me that when considered recommendations are made by the inspectorate they should be followed up. This is particularly true when the same issues crop up in different prisons: it should help governors — and policy-makers — understand the causes and find solutions.

For this reason I am setting up a new unit, ultimately accountable to ministers, that is responsible for making sure we respond and react to reports. We must do so in a timely fashion: we will also agree to respond within 28 days if the Chief Inspector flags up a significant concern he believes needs urgent attention. If we decide, with governors, that we should not accept a particular recommendation, or need more time to act, we will explain why this is the case or agree a new deadline where it is appropriate.

The changes we all want to see will not happen overnight, because in more volatile prisons the problems run deep. But more officers on the frontline will help. We are hiring 2,500 prison officers over the next 18 months — and the number of new recruits is currently at its highest level for seven years.

This means more support for colleagues, more eyes looking out for illegal drugs and mobiles, and more ears listening out for trouble brewing. And more support for prisoners, with our new key-worker scheme that will train each officer to work more closely with six offenders, building stronger relationships to bring about positive change.

Staff are getting more technical help: extra CCTV in jails, and more body-worn cameras for prison officers. Some 300 dogs have been trained specifically to detect psychoactive drugs. To combat the use of illegal phones, each prison now has hand-held mobile detectors, and we are working with mobile phone companies on new technology that makes handsets largely useless.

The people who use drones to deliver the contraband are being pursued through the courts: Tomas Natalevicius was sentenced to nearly eight years after being found guilty of conspiring to supply Class A drugs to prisons in the South-East. One of his targets? Pentonville. All these measures will help bring greater stability in the short term. But we must look to the longer term.

I want to see prison numbers come down. We need better custody that cuts reoffending and crime. And we need to ensure judges, magistrates and the public have full confidence in the other penalties available. The purpose of prisons is two-fold. First, justice, for victims and the wider public, by holding in prison offenders whose crime is so serious that no other penalty will do, or who would pose a danger to the public if released.

Second, rehabilitation, not because prisoners are entitled to an easy time of it but because society is entitled to expect them to make a fresh start when they get out. Prisons are out of public sight, and most often out of mind. But the vast majority of prisoners will at some point leave jail and rejoin our communities, which is why what happens inside matters to us all. And it’s why, when offenders are sent to jail, they should be held in conditions that help them turn their lives around.

The debate about prisons is now opening up to a wider audience, not least through the Evening Standard’s probing coverage of late. The facts on reoffending are stark: at the moment, around half of the offenders we send to jail will break the law again once they’re out, inflicting more pain on victims and ending up back behind bars. We must do better by offenders who are sent to prison to make them less likely to return. This will not happen overnight — but I will not shy away from the challenge.

David Lidington

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On the same day, the Parole Board decided to ramp up the heat regarding the disgraceful situation that IPP prisoners find themselves in. The story was all over the media yesterday. This from the Guardian:-

Justice secretary told to 'get a grip' on prisoners with no release date

Parole Board chair warns over ‘unacceptably high’ level of suicide among prisoners serving indeterminate sentences

The chair of the Parole Board has expressed his frustration at the government’s failure to “get a grip” on the issue of prisoners serving indeterminate sentences under the discredited imprisonment for public protection (IPP) programme. There are 3,300 people in England and Wales on IPPs in jail with no release date, Nick Hardwick told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. The scheme was abolished in 2012.

He said hundreds of prisoners were serving time several years over the minimum tariffs set for them, and many were prone to self-harm as a result. “The levels of suicide, assault, and self-harm is unacceptably high. It’s the fault of political and policy decisions that should have been put right two years ago,” Hardwick, a former chief inspector of prisons, said.

He described IPPs as a blot on the system when he was appointed to the Parole Board post more than a year ago. Now he is urging the justice secretary, David Lidington, to introduce urgent changes of the type agreed by the former justice secretary Michael Gove before he was replaced by Liz Truss.

Hardwick said: “We need to get a grip on this problem. Michael Gove agreed to a whole series of changes and then was sacked before he had the chance to do it, when he was justice minister.”

Relatives of one prisoner on an IPP said he was suicidal after being “left to rot”. In 2006, James Ward, from Nottinghamshire, was given an IPP for arson with a minimum tariff of 10 months. Eleven years later he is still in prison with no release date after his parole hearings were repeatedly delayed. His sister April told the BBC he was self-harming and dangerously thin.

Hardwick said Ward’s case illustrated the plight of many. “The description the Ward family gave of that young man is happening to hundreds and hundreds,” he said. “The prison system is simply unable to care for a prisoner with that level of need at the moment.” He said delays in releasing prisoners on IPPs could be reduced if the onus switched to the state to prove they were a danger to the public if they were released. 

Hardwick said: “Some of those delays are down to the Parole Board, but we are making good progress in putting those right. But the other main reason for the delay is that it is so difficult for somebody in that young man’s position to meet the legal test of demonstrating that they are not going to commit a serious offence in future. For people with a tariff or punishment part of their sentence of less than two years, the onus should be on the state to prove they are likely to commit a further offence, rather than for them to prove they are not. We can do something about the IPP problem without compromising the safety of the public.”

He also pointed out that scarce staff resourcing was being tied up in monitoring prisoners like Ward. Every prison officer you’ve got on constant watch looking at a prisoner in this situation is not somebody walking the wings, doing the rehabilitative work with other prisoners,” Hardwick said. “If we allow resources to be drained away to this extent, then it threatens the security of us all.”

The Ministry of Justice says it is working closely with the Parole Board to process the cases as quickly as possible. A spokeswoman said: “We are determined to address the challenge of making sure all IPP prisoners have the support they need to show they are no longer a threat to public safety ... Earlier this year, we set up a new unit focused on this and improving the efficiency of the parole process. This work is continuing to achieve results, with 576 IPP releases in 2016; the highest number of annual releases since the sentence became available in 2005.”