Equal Opportunities Committee, 09 Feb 2010

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Official Report 121KB pdf

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Female Offenders in the Criminal Justice System

Good morning everyone and welcome to the third meeting in 2010 of the Equal Opportunities Committee. I remind all those present—including members—that mobile phones and BlackBerrys should be switched off completely, as they interfere with the sound system even when they are switched to silent.

Our first agenda item is consideration of the Scottish Government's response to the committee's third report in 2009, "Female offenders in the criminal justice system". The clerk contacted all the witnesses who gave oral evidence to the committee to ask for their comments. One response was received from Families Outside and it was circulated to members in the meeting papers. Our discussion today will help to inform our plenary debate on the inquiry report, which is scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

Discussion on whether the committee wants to lodge an amendment to the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Bill in line with recommendations in our inquiry report will be taken separately under agenda item 2.

Do members have any comments on the responses to our inquiry report?

I have a question for the clerks. How much time were people given to respond to the Government response? The response from Families Outside is helpful, but I am a wee bit surprised that we did not receive a formal response from anyone else. Also, what procedure will we follow post the plenary debate? Could we recall witnesses such as Families Outside and then invite the Cabinet Secretary for Justice to come before the committee again?

We should consider responses not only from the minister with responsibility for justice. We should also seek a response from ministers with responsibility for equalities, housing and other Government directorates.

That is a possibility.

What is the answer to Elaine Smith's question on the timescale for witnesses to respond?

The clerk will clarify that.

As soon as we received the cabinet secretary's response, we sent it out to all the witnesses who gave oral evidence to the committee. The letter from the cabinet secretary has no date, but I think that we received it about the middle of January.

The Families Outside response is very helpful. Perhaps we should contact the witnesses who have not yet responded to ask whether they intend to respond. Chamber debates often help to clarify minds; we tend to get responses by e-mail in advance of such debates. Responses may yet come in.

I am grateful to Families Outside for its response—at least it responded. I see no need to drag the cabinet secretary or any other minister before the committee again until such time as we have had a chance to review and assess the responses that we have in front of us.

I am sorry; I did not quite catch what you said.

I was responding to Elaine Smith's point on bringing the cabinet secretary and other ministers before the committee again. I see no need for that at this stage. We should assess the responses first.

The minister will respond to the plenary debate. We will then reflect on the debate and see where we want to go from there.

We have done very well in moving the issue up the agenda. For example, there is the report on Cornton Vale from HM chief inspector of prisons for Scotland. Things are moving forward. My question is on the two reports that the cabinet secretary highlighted in his evidence to committee. I have forgotten the titles, but one was on domestic abuse and the other was on female prisoners. Both reports were just under way at that time. We should find out when they will be published. Once that has happened, we should move on the debate.

It is important that we encourage other stakeholders to respond. We should let them know that there is time to do that. We have done a massive piece of work. We must not let go of the issue; our work could make a huge difference.

I agree. I am particularly encouraged by the Government response on mental health issues. The repositioning of the mental health officer role is a positive development.

We could press the Government on its timetable for action and ask for more detail. Much of the Government response to our recommendations is positive and will make a difference. One example of that is the Government's proposals for work in communities, including the involvement of community justice authorities and others.

A grid or table that sets out our recommendations and the Government's response would be useful to members. Some of the Government's responses are of the tick-and-take-on variety, which is good, but others are along the lines of, "Here's the timetable" or "We're waiting for the timetable", or "We're not going to do that."

For example, Families Outside mentioned pet therapy for prisoners and suggested that the public are not ready for that. I am not sure that I agree. The suggestion was interesting. We saw the difference that it has made to the lives of the prisoners whom we met in Belfast. It would be a shame if the suggestion were to become lost. I liked Families Outside's suggestion regarding prisoners becoming involved in the training of guide dogs, almost as social payback.

I have done such a table. It shows that very few recommendations were ignored or refuted, which is very positive. The only one that has been ignored—perhaps it is an oversight—is recommendation 67, which recommended putting the child's rights first in terms of visiting a mother who has failed a drug test. There was no response to that.

I do not think that anything else we said was ignored, and nothing was directly refuted. The response to paragraph 68 made no mention of family addiction programmes, but that is a minor issue in the scale of things, given that the response to our report was positive. Everyone is swimming in the same direction; it is a matter of implementing the approach.

The fundamental problem is the rising number of women who are being sent to Cornton Vale prison, which is difficult for us to grapple with, because sentencing is not under our control. I do not know what the answer is; I presume that part of it is to ensure that there are good alternatives to prison, whether we are talking about the 218 centre or good, appropriate community sentencing. It is a bit depressing that although policy seems to be moving in the right direction, more and more women are ending up in Cornton Vale. Since we produced our report, the new HM chief inspector of prisons has said that the place is overcrowded and too many women are sent there. I am sure that the issue will come up in the debate on Thursday. The policy direction is right, but how do we make a big shift in what happens?

There is a gap in provision for women who have mental health problems and are awaiting sentencing, for whom more or less the only options are prison or remand. A holding place for such people would help the numbers.

The rhetoric of the response is positive, but I am desperately keen that there should be a focus on evidence of progress. We all know that Governments, whatever their shade, can make nice mood music, and I would be extremely disappointed if we got a new symphony that did not translate into practical action.

The Cabinet Secretary for Justice said in his letter to the committee:

"Our objectives to reduce reoffending and improve public health are interwoven."

That is entirely appropriate, but what will the Government do to achieve its objectives? We risk our report disappearing under a pile of dust unless we continually revisit it and, at the appropriate stage, ask the cabinet secretary what has been done in practice.

We took such an approach to our report on removing barriers and creating opportunities. We kept track of our recommendations and we brought back the minister to ask about progress. If we do not want committee reports to lie on a shelf after being completed, it is incumbent on us to revisit the issues and ascertain what progress has been made.

We should follow up the report not just with the cabinet secretary, but with the Scottish Prison Service. In parts of the response a little complacency on the part of the SPS was evident.

When I suggested that we invite the cabinet secretary back to give evidence, I did not mean that we should hear from him next week. I want to ensure that Thursday's debate is not the end of the process. As the convener said, the report should not be just shelved; we should review progress and, at an appropriate point in future, revisit the issues to ascertain what has been achieved.

I agree with the convener's point about SPS. A look through the response suggests that the parts of our report that have not been responded to in depth are the parts that SPS has responded to. For example, the response to paragraph 74 says:

"SPS does not currently have enough evidence of need to justify the introduction of a Speech and Language Therapy programme for women offenders at Cornton Vale."

We thought that there was evidence of such a need; some of our witnesses thought so, too. Such issues need to be explored.

Also, in the response to paragraph 68, we are told:

"HMPYOI Cornton Vale offers a parenting programme for women who have a substance misuse problem."

However, Families Outside said that the programme is no longer running, because there is no funding for it. That is worrying. Time and again in the response, SPS talks about resource constraints and priorities. We must return to the issue.

We considered the issue from an equalities perspective, as the Equal Opportunities Committee should do—to have made justice the focus would have been to take the issue out of our remit. Do we therefore need input from other Government departments and perhaps from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Wellbeing, who has responsibility for equalities and housing, or are we happy to accept a response that comes from just the justice perspective?

I was not a member of the committee when it gathered its evidence, but I am trying to pick things up as I go along. The Education, Lifelong Learning and Culture Committee is considering whether to undertake an inquiry into prisoner education. The Scottish Government has been doing work on that, too. Issues such as dyslexia, the need for speech therapy and mental ill health create learning challenges that can affect a person's behaviour. Such matters can be addressed from an education rather than a justice point of view. Offenders can be supported through portfolios other than justice. Some 70 per cent of young men in prison have some form of dyslexia, which is a scary statistic—the proportion of women in prison who have dyslexia must be about the same. Elaine Smith is right to say that this is not just a justice issue; it is a social issue, and a health and wellbeing issue, too.

That ties into issues to do with parenting. When parents who have dyslexia or a mild learning disability or health issue are supported as they learn, they are usually much more able to be constructive and effective parents. The knock-on effect of support is huge. If we get the focus right, we can make progress on all the issues.

The Government's response was encouraging, but I agree with Marlyn Glen and Hugh O'Donnell that we want to track and monitor progress on some of the issues. Two issues stand out. First, there is sufficient evidence that speech and language therapy is needed, as Elaine Smith said. The issue has been highlighted in responses to parliamentary questions that I lodged, and Families Outside makes the point, too. We should return to that.

The second issue is the administration of medication. We learned that when a woman enters prison her medication is sometimes delivered very late. The response on that was not particularly clear or encouraging. We need to pick up such issues.

There is an issue to do with how prisoners' national health service care is taken over. The issues are complex and the timetable seems lengthy, although we can understand why that is. Perhaps we can press a little and ascertain whether medication can be considered before other services.

We will bring up many issues on Thursday. Perhaps the best approach is for committee members to make the points that they want to make in the debate, listen to the minister's response and then regroup. We are all about mainstreaming, and it is clear that a number of issues are relevant to other committees. We look forward to the debate.

Perhaps when we consider our work programme we can allocate time to the matter. I am keen to make it an on-going agenda item, given the forthcoming publications that I mentioned. I understand that research into female offending has been commissioned, too.

We can discuss that under agenda item 3, which is consideration of our work programme.