Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

My Lords, in moving Amendment 175 I shall also speak to Amendment 176. I have been asked to do so by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, who apologises that she cannot be present today. These amendments add new provisions to Clause 61 in respect of sentencing guidelines. I will endeavour to put across the points that the noble Baroness wished to make and to combine them with my own remarks. Amendment 175 would place a duty on courts to ask for a social history of an offender from the probation service when it requests a pre-sentence report. I do not have a legal background, but this issue has been brought to my attention by colleagues who sit on the panel of the independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Stalking Law Reform, whose excellent report was published today. They say that such a provision would be welcome in ensuring that courts were made aware of the history of offending of a particular perpetrator. Sadly, many perpetrators of ongoing, unacceptable behaviour such as domestic violence and stalking are able to get away with it simply because a court examines only individual instances of their behaviour and does not take into account the cumulative effect that long-term patterns of behaviour can have on victims. Similarly, many stalkers and rapists have multiple victims, which can sometimes go unnoticed if the pattern is not recognised. When we also consider that perpetrators of dangerous and obsessive offences such as stalking frequently have a highly manipulative personality and can persuade criminal justice professionals that they are simply misunderstood and deserve a second chance, it is clear that changes need to be introduced to counter this. All too often, that second chance allows the perpetrator to continue his harassment of victims, sometimes even resulting in those victims’ deaths. The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, and I were assisted in preparing for this debate by Napo, the probation officers’ union, which has highlighted key case studies in the recent past where women have been subjected to harassment and stalking over a sustained period of time. In those cases, court reports have concentrated on the immediate offence, thus ignoring evidence that would be vital in determining the risk of reoffending. I draw the attention of your Lordships' House to a case from the East Midlands in which a 44 year-old male was charged with breaching restraining orders three times, all resulting in community sentences. For the index offence on this occasion, he received a 12-month suspended supervision order. The stalking behaviour had been going on for five years, and there had been sporadic periods of harassment. At one time, the victim was reporting breaches daily. He was later convicted for assaults on a new partner, who also suffered harassment for a period after the break-up. He also participated in a domestic violence course in the community, but that was discontinued because of further breaches of restraining orders. The probation officer believes that cases such as this are looked on as low-level domestic violence, yet have the potential to escalate quickly to serious violence and even to the death of women and children. She reports that in her area there is an increase in the number of men being convicted for a breach of restraining orders, but she thinks that they are not being dealt with effectively. Cases are not dealt with consistently even within probation areas. The harassment in this case has being going on sporadically for 20 years, and has been very intense in the past six years. I have been given a dozen similar examples; the same common theme emerges from them all. Professional staff believe that short prison sentences do not allow them to develop and complete offender behavioural work to an extent that makes an impact, and that appropriate sentences must be developed and applied. In some instances, patterns of psychologically harmful behaviour have not been sufficiently recorded, meaning that the offenders in question were not treated. This is partly an issue of resources, since courts are under increasing pressure to settle for a fast delivery report, which means that there is not enough time to investigate previous behaviour. It seems only common sense that a court, prior to sentence, should be required to educate itself as to the history not only of a particular case but of a particular offender. Many lives will be saved if this provision can be accepted, and I therefore urge the Government to accept this amendment. Amendment 176 would require courts, when handing down a sentence, to consider the effect of it on dependants. I know that in tabling this amendment the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, had in mind particularly the high instance of women who are incarcerated for relatively short periods, and the devastating effect this can have on their families. As was well documented in the 2007 report of the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, Women in the Penal System, the demographic fingerprint of women who enter the penal system is staggeringly different from that of men in the same system. Women prisoners are far more likely to be primary carers of young children, so the effect on families of a mother entering prison is far harsher than the effect of a father being incarcerated. Latest statistics show that 66 per cent of women prisoners have dependent children. The Howard League estimates that more than 17,000 children in England and Wales were separated from their mothers in 2010 due to their mothers’ incarceration. Roughly 6,000 of these children were under five years old, a quite staggering figure of 33 per cent of them. Even more far reaching is the likely effect on single-mother families if a mother is put into prison, leaving the children to enter care. The Howard League estimates that only 5 per cent of female prisoners’ children remain in the family home once their mother is imprisoned, which contrasts with 90 per cent of male prisoners’ children. It is often said that prison is not the best answer when handing down sentences for women. On a practical level, Ministry of Justice statistics show that 54 per cent of women jailed are reconvicted within 12 months, rising to 64 per cent if the sentence was for less than a year. Equally, however, many organisations argue that we should be more lenient, particularly when considering the common reasons that lead to women entering into crime in the first place. These include relationship problems and coercion by others. The conditions within prison aggravate underlying problems afflicting many women prisoners: 51 per cent have severe mental illness; 47 per cent have a major depressive disorder; 50 per cent have been subject to domestic violence, and 33 per cent to sexual abuse. Against this background, is it surprising that no less than 37 per cent of women prisoners have attempted suicide? Mental health problems are still far more prevalent among women in prison than men, and self-harm is a significant problem. The effects on their children are equally distressing. Separation as a result of a mother’s imprisonment punishes the children and will nearly always cause psychological, social and material damage. Wherever possible, alternative routes to rehabilitation should be favoured for women, particularly those with dependants. That is why it is so important that courts take into account the fact that women in these circumstances are indeed different from men. Courts should keep in mind, that is, that women tend to be charged with less serious offences and receive short custodial sentences, that one-third of them are single parents and that most of these women could undergo community sentences at one-tenth of the cost of prison, with much lower conviction rates. It is for those reasons that I support the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould. I urge the Government to respond to them and take on board the need for change that has been so graphically outlined by many people outside this Chamber.