Offender Management Bill

moved, as an amendment to Amendment No. 1, Amendment No. 2: 2: Before Clause 1, line 11, leave out paragraph (c) The noble Lord said: I deliberately oppose Amendment No. 1, as I shall explain, because I stand in agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, about putting the four other principles in the Bill where she proposes. I have to start by saying, as I said on Second Reading, that the Bill is rather strange. Although it is entitled the Offender Management Bill, it is more about the management of the management of offenders and not about the management of the offenders themselves. If the Bill had been about the management of offenders, I would have expected that it would from the very beginning have been all about explaining what NOMS actually is and what NOMS does. The two services mentioned in the Bill—the Prison Service and the Probation Service—are alleged to be part of NOMS. I remind the Minister of a question that I asked her on Second Reading and which has not yet been answered. It was whether NOMS is a service or a system, because they are different things. I also quoted a Written Answer given in the other place by the then Minister, Mr Goggins. He said: "““The establishment of the National Offender Management Service (NOMS) now provides clear leadership and accountability for the performance of all the correctional services and for reducing re-offending””.—[Official Report, Commons, 22/3/05; col. 652W.]" But the NOMS website, which I last looked at two weeks ago, says: "““NOMS is the system through which we commission and provide the highest quality correctional services and interventions in order to protect the public and reduce re-offending””." Which is it? It may be a service giving, "““leadership and accountability for … performance””," but that is a completely separate thing from being a system in which everyone who has anything to do with the rehabilitation of offenders is a member. We need to know which it is. The Bill contains provision particularly for probation and how NOMS will work in the field with its regional offender managers—people without budgets who will be responsible for commissioning. The Bill seems to be more about how the ROMs are to work, and who they are to work with, rather than about the principles of what the treatment of offenders should be all about. We will come in our discussions on the Bill to many other questions about that issue. But the issue of whether ““punishment”” is the right word has very deep roots in the whole ethos of the Probation Service ever since it started. I consulted many members of the Probation Service on the Bill, and the one thing that, as the Scots would say, ““stuck in their craw”” is the inclusion of the word ““punishment”” in the list of what they are supposed to do. I remind the House of the wording of the Probation of Offenders Act 1907, which established the Probation Service. Section 3(1) states: "““There may be appointed as probation officer or officers for a petty sessional division such person or persons of either sex as the authority having power to appoint a clerk to the justices of that division may determine, and a probation officer when acting under a probation order shall be subject to the control of petty sessional courts for the division for which he is so appointed””." In other words, probation and courts march together and they work locally in the areas where the courts are situated. Section 4 states: "““It shall be the duty of a probation officer, subject to the directions of the court ... to visit or receive reports from the person under supervision at such reasonable intervals as may be specified in the probation order or … as the probation officer may think fit … to see that he observes the conditions of his recognizance … to report to the court as to his behaviour … to advise, assist, and befriend him, and, when necessary, to endeavour to find him suitable employment””." I venture to suggest that those principles are as relevant today as they were when they were written. For 93 years, advising, assisting and befriending was the ethos of the Probation Service—a service of which everyone in this country was immensely proud. It was not until 2001 that those principles were thrown away and the new ones which are the subject of the noble Baroness’s amendment were produced, including the words ““proper punishment””. For the first time, the word ““punishment”” appeared. Why do I object to the word ““punishment””? The criminal justice system is not really a system at all. It consists of a number of organisations working together and three in particular: the courts, the police and the Prison and Probation Services. In general terms, the police investigate, the courts sentence and the Prison and Probation Services administer that sentence. The ““punishment”” in that is the punishment that is awarded by the courts because of the crime that has been committed. The first time that I heard that expressed was in a statement by the then Mr Leon Brittan, who, when he was Home Secretary, very clearly said that prison was punishment, it was not for punishment. In saying that, he was not speaking originally, because the phrase originally came from one Alexander Paterson, a famous commissioner of prisons, who in 1922 said exactly the same thing. The fact that prison is punishment, not for punishment, is reflected in the statement of purpose of the Prison Service, which states: "““It is our duty to keep securely those committed by the courts, to treat them with humanity and to help them to lead useful and law-abiding lives in prison and on release””." If we apply the same language and terms to the Probation Service in line with the wording in the Ministry of Justice description entitled, What We Do, issued on 9 May 2007, it should state: ““It is our duty to supervise convicted offenders in the community, those subject to a court order and those released on licence from prison, to treat them with humanity and to help them to lead useful and law-abiding lives””.To my mind, that is a principle and purpose that would knit the two services together. They bothhave a duty to those committed by the courts to treat them with humanity and help them to live usefuland law-abiding lives. That is the work that must be done. I note that there is no mention of punishment in that. I am also interested by the addition of the word ““proper”” in the legislation. I would dearly like to know what ““proper”” means. What is proper punishment? Of course, as the noble Baroness rightly said, if someone breaches their probation they are punished for the breach. In exactly the same way, if someone offends against prison rules while in prison, they are punished for that, but that is an adjudication and punishment for something done during the sentence, it is not to do with the original sentence. That is the punishment awarded by the state. Although I know what the phrase ““proper punishment”” means—basically, it means the supervision of convicted prisoners, but it does not say so—punishment is the wrong word and gives absolutely the wrong impression of what the whole process of probation is about. Therefore, although I entirely agree with the noble Baroness that it is absolutely right in the Bill, which starts with probation, to state the principles of probation at the start, so that they govern everything that follows, I submit that we should remove paragraph (c). Perhaps we should come up with other wording, but please let us exclude the word punishment because it is a very wrong definition of what probation is all about. I beg to move.