Oral statement on the Carter Report
05 December 2007
Jack Straw's oral statement to the House of Commons on Lord Carter's review of prisons.
With permission, I should like to make a statement on the report of the prisons review carried out by my noble Friend Lord Carter of Coles. Copies of his report are available in the Vote Office and on my department's website. Lord Carter was asked in early June of this year to undertake his inquiry. He was asked jointly by my Right Hon Friend the Prime Minister, as Chancellor, and my predecessor as Lord Chancellor, my Right Hon and Noble Friend Lord Falconer. I am extremely grateful to Lord Carter, and his team, for all their time, expertise and professionalism.
Lord Carter's report proposes a large increase in prison building. It says that there is an urgent need for an improved long-term mechanism for better balancing supply and demand for prison places. It puts forward far-reaching proposals for a judiciary-led sentencing commission, and for efficiency and organisational changes
Let me first give the context of the review. For more than half a century, from the end of the war, crime rose inexorably. As each successive Government left office, crime was higher than when they came in significantly higher, in the case of the 1979 to 1997 administration.
In sharp contrast, we are the first Government since the war under whom crime has not risen, but fallen and fallen by a third. Violent crime is down, burglary and vehicle crime are down, and the chance of being a victim of crime is lower than at any time since 1981.
Those improvements are due to many factors: the police, local communities, local authorities, industry, stronger powers to deal with disorder, substantial youth justice reform, and greatly increased investment in law enforcement, with 14,000 more police officers, bringing numbers to record levels. In turn, those improvements have led to many more serious, persistent and violent offenders being brought to justice, and being sentenced for longer.
The result has been a very rapid growth in the prison population, which is up by one third since 1997 from 60,000 to 81,500, last Friday's figure. During the same period reoffending rates have improved, while the physical condition of prison has been transformed, as has security. I pay particular tribute to prison officers, probation officers and staff at all levels. They do a difficult job in difficult circumstances.
The whole House is agreed that, wherever appropriate, offenders should be punished in the community. Overall, investment in probation services has gone up by 72 per cent. in real terms over the last 10 years. We shall test intensive alternatives to custody, and provide sentences with more rigorous non-custodial regimes.
Of course, the House and the country are clear that prison has to be used for violent, serious persistent and dangerous offenders. With so many factors in play, forecasting future trends in the prison population has always been complex and uncertain. Predictions made over the previous seven years have put the prison population for this summer both at 20,000 above, and 12,000 below, its actual level of 80,600.
However, there is no doubt that the prison population will continue to rise in the next few years, given the increasing effectiveness of the system in bringing more offenders to justice. To meet previously anticipated demand, a programme of 9,500 extra places is already under way. An extra 1,600 new places have come on stream in 2007, and a further 2,300 will do so next year.
In light of Lord Carter's recommendations, I can now announce that to secure the long-term availability of prison places, I have agreed with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer additional funding of £1.2 billion, on top of the £1.5 billion already committed, to deliver a further and extended building programme that will bring an additional 10,500 places on stream by 2014. We will act on Lord Carter's recommendation to build up to three large titan prisons, housing around 2,500 prisoners each. That extra capacity will help us to modernise the prison estate, close some of the older, inefficient prisons on a new-for-old basis, and reconfigure some of the smaller sites to accommodate female or juvenile offenders.
The building programme is aimed to bring overall net capacity to just over 96,000 places by 2014. To provide additional capacity within that total in the short to medium term, we intend to convert a former Ministry of Defence site at Coltishall in Norfolk into a category C prison, provide further places through expansion on existing prison sites, convert Her Majesty's prison Wealstun, near Leeds, into a closed prison, and bring forward projects from the building reserve list. In addition, my Department is actively looking at securing a prison ship.
As for women in prison, the Prisons Minister the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my Right Hon Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) will tomorrow publish the Government's detailed response to my noble Friend Baroness Corston's report. Today I asked my noble friend Lord Bradley to carry out a review, reporting jointly to the Department of Health and my Department, on diverting more offenders with severe mental health problems away from prison and into more appropriate facilities. Lord Carter has made important recommendations about the operation of the National Offender Management Service [NOMS] and the Prison Service, better to improve the focus on service delivery and offender management. We will streamline corporate service costs in headquarters and regional offices in NOMS and the Prison Service, and we will establish a programme of performance testing.
Contrary to myth, there have been fewer criminal justice Bills in the last 10 years than in the preceding decade. Well, I am happy to give the figures in due course. In the criminal justice field, it is inevitable that measures have to be kept under constant review. Indeterminate sentences of imprisonment for public protection IPPs introduced in the Criminal Justice Act 2003, have proved an effective way of dealing with the most serious and dangerous offenders. However, as my Right Hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr Blunkett), the then Home Secretary, has confirmed to me, those sentences were never intended to target those who would have received tariffs of less than two years. Notwithstanding that, the drafting of the legislation has meant that they have been used for very short tariffs in one case, for a tariff as short as 28 days. As recommended by Lord Carter and by the chairman of the Parole Board, Sir Duncan Nichol, we will introduce amendments to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill to establish a minimum tariff of two years, below which IPPs and extended sentences cannot be given.
I want to make a particular point about sentences for rape. It is very rare indeed for rape offences to receive less than a two-year tariff, which is well below the recommended guideline. Any sentence for a serious offence that is effectively below a two-year tariff will be open to appeal by the Attorney General on grounds of undue leniency. All that will ensure that IPPs are focused on the most serious and dangerous offenders.
In addition, we are accepting Lord Carter's other recommendations to align release mechanisms for offenders sentenced under the Criminal Justice Act 1991, with those sentenced under the 2003 Act. Offenders sentenced for non-sexual, non-violent offences committed since 2005 are now eligible for release at the halfway point of their sentence and remain on licence to the end of that sentence, rather than being eligible for parole at the halfway point, automatic release at two thirds, and being on licence until three quarters only. We propose to introduce a similar regime for prisoners sentenced for non-sexual, non-violent offences under previous legislation.
Decisions about the sentence to be handed down in a particular case must be a matter of judgment for the trial judge or magistrates. Respecting the independence of sentencers to pass the sentence that they believe is appropriate in the individual case is fundamental to the integrity of the judiciary in a free society. But Parliament has a critical role to play in setting the framework for sentencing and in deciding on the level of taxpayers' money to pay for the prison places and probation services that arise from that sentencing framework.
Over the past decade much progress has been made to develop a more coherent and transparent sentencing framework, with the Sentencing Advisory Panel in 1999, and the Sentencing Guidelines Council in 2004. But Lord Carter now highlights the need for a mechanism a sentencing commission that will allow for the drivers behind the prison population to be addressed and managed in a transparent, consistent and predictable manner through the provision of an indicative set of sentencing ranges.
Such a commission would have an ongoing role in monitoring the prison population and reporting on the impacts on the prison population and penal resources of all national policy proposals and system changes. I wish to emphasise that the proposal has nothing to do with linking individual sentences to the availability of correctional resources. The debate relates to the linking of resources to the overall sentencing framework. I am pleased to accept Lord Carter's recommendation to establish a working group to consider the advantages, disadvantages and feasibility of such a sentencing commission, which in our judgment will lead and inform the public debate on these issues.
Prison is, and will remain, the right place for the most serious offenders. Custodial sentences, and therefore prison places, must also be available for less serious offenders when other measures have failed or are inappropriate. And we must have in place a rigorous and effective framework of community penalties where they are the right course.
The measures that I have announced today will fulfil our aims in this important area. They will bring many more prison places on stream with agreed funding and a delivery programme. They will allow for a rational debate on sentencing that recognises that, as with any other public service, resources are finite. Above all, they will fulfil our commitment to provide a modernised prisons system that protects the public from the most serious offenders. I commend this statement to the House.
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