Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chief executive of Turning Point, a health and social care organisation. Of our 130,000 clients, 11,000 are associated with the criminal justice system. I put on record my respect for the excellent work done by probation officers up and down the country. In doing so, I support the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles. Turning Point employs nurses, psychologists, forensic psychologists, psychiatrists and GPs—all outside the NHS. We employ people with legal training as solicitors outside the legal system. It is not the context that matters but the client. I believe that this Bill provides a greater context for the appreciation of Probation Service skills and widens the opportunities for those skills to be more effective in reducing reoffending. This is important from a social care point of view—something that has not been referred to much in other speeches. Recent research by the University of Nottingham found that 98 per cent of the prison population had multiple needs. One in three prisoners are without permanent accommodation before their custodial sentence; 78 per cent of people who come into contact with Turning Point's criminal justice services are unemployed; and an estimated 16,000 to 24,000 prisoners in England and Wales, which is 20 to 30 per cent of the population, have a learning disability or difficulty that interferes with their ability to cope. This is not going into the issue of substance misuse, which is often combined with the issues that I have just mentioned to create a complex need. This is not just about bare statistics. If you go into any prison—and I have been into many—you will find people with mental health problems or people who misuse alcohol and other drugs. You will find people who face all of the problems associated with social exclusion, such as poor housing, inadequate education and few employment opportunities. You will find a large number of people with learning disabilities. These figures are frankly shocking. I say that as someone who believes that people who commit crime should do their time; I am not arguing against that. However, the ultimate aim has to be preventing crime in the first place and driving down reoffending rates. To do this we really need to wake up to and address the fact that often we are using our prisons as a dumping ground for some of the most socially excluded groups in our society. I am under no illusion that it is easy to stop people reoffending. The noble Lord, Lord Carter, referred to the Planck Institute. Ten per cent seems like a small reduction but is worth going for; it involves thousands of lives, millions of pounds and safer communities. It is worth changing this system for. At the moment the system fails to remove the many barriers being placed in the way of offenders who have completed their sentences—barriers such as homelessness, unemployment, family breakdown, mental health and substance misuse. Tackling these barriers will reduce reoffending and bring savings to the taxpayer. To reduce reoffending rates, offenders should have access to appropriate social care so they have the opportunity to turn their lives around on leaving prison. Reform of the offender management system, as represented by the Bill, represents a golden opportunity to introduce comprehensive social care services within prison and beyond and to develop properly integrated service provision so that people do not simply drop off the radar when they enter or leave the prison gates. Integrated support services across mental health and substance misuse for offenders within community sentences could revolutionise probation services and improve the health of offenders and improve the communities in which they live. The position of the Government is that mental health and substance misuse services should work more closely together to support people with a dual diagnosis. The Government could go further. Full integration of services to support people with the most complex needs is necessary. A common-sense approach would seek to reduce the number of hand-overs between services. I am sounding like a fan but the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, talked about the evidence base. From my experience and the studies that we have carried out of hand-overs between different offender agencies I say to noble Lords that the evidence base tells you one thing—the more hand-overs, the more likely it is that the person will reoffend; it is simple. In this regard I support the principle and practice of end-to-end offender management in the context of providing social care, as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Scotland. If it is not end to end, it ends in disaster, not just for the offender but for his community. Offender management needs to be joined up with other service provision both at regional and local level. Regional offender managers must be in close contact with other service commissioners. Probation trusts should be required to engage in the local area agreement process and to establish partnerships with key agencies such as the local drug action team, housing authorities and Jobcentre Plus. This would ensure that offender management was embedded in the strategic planning of local services and, crucially, in agreeing shared priorities with the local authorities they will be working with to address reoffending. Many noble Lords talked about this in terms of the centre versus the local, as though it is either/or. The solution is and/and; it is national and local. Why should that not be possible? Alongside the proposals in the Bill the Government should continue to act—to give the Government credit, they have made many efforts in this regard—to increase confidence in community sentences and alternatives to custody for non-violent offenders. The judiciary can also be enabled to provide more coherent support to offenders with complex needs. Drug courts being piloted in Leeds and west London are proven to reduce drug-related reoffending. My own organisation has much experience of this; the evidence is there. Working with the west London pilot has been a very positive experience and we recommend that this approach is rolled out nationally. I welcome the support for review courts in the Government’s policy review, Building on progress, including the development of mental health courts. The Government’s proposed mental health courts should be aligned with NOMS so that offenders get the same level of health and social care support no matter which system they go through. I also welcome the policy direction set out in Building on progress to improve the co-ordination of the resettlement of offenders on leaving prison and the increased availability of social care support in prison. That is what I mean by end to end. I would like to see further indication of the timescales and resources attached to such reforms. Let us see the money; let us see the resources. Let me say a word about the third sector, which a number of noble Lords have mentioned, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. After 20 years working in the not-for-profit sector, I do not recognise the organisation that works for the economics and not for the care; I must have misunderstood him. I have never had a desire to drive a Rolls-Royce or to buy an island. I do the work, and my organisation does it, because there is a social good.