Justice Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Official Report 432KB pdf

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Purposeful Activity in Prison Inquiry

Agenda item 5 is our purposeful activity in prison inquiry.

Good morning, Mr McConnell. As I have trailed already, we have had the opportunity to hear members’ feedback from their visits. Now members have questions on purposeful activity in prisons. John Finnie has your starter for 10.

Good morning, Mr McConnell.

Targets can sometimes be a good thing. Do they impact positively on purposeful activity? What about the balance between quality and quantity, for instance?

In a sense, the answer lies in the question. The targets are helpful because they give us a focus and an impetus to ensure that both across the individual prisons and collectively across the service we do as much as we can with the offenders who pass through our care. That is the issue. However, the target that is currently set does not necessarily give us enough direction or enough underpinning of what the content should necessarily be specifically or generally. The question touches on that. However, the target is useful, and I think that we would be in a far worse place without it. It is likely that we will discuss the number of different approaches that we could take to make the target or a series of targets more relevant.

I did not give you the chance to make an opening statement, Mr McConnell. Do you want to do so?

No. I think that the discourse—

You are a man after my own heart.

Setting aside the issues to do with remand and short-term prisoners and the challenges that they raise, which recur in all the establishments that we visited, is there a benefit in having individual, personal targets?

That is undoubtedly the direction of travel. Having overarching targets for the organisation as part of a building-block approach across the 14 public sector prisons is valuable and important, but that needs to be underpinned by what is important for each offender on the journey through custody. You are quite right to touch on the qualitative aspect.

As you know, we have the core assessment and core plus tools, which are mentioned in our briefing. They are beginning to give us a level of granularity and understanding, but I do not think that the service, either through its systems or, for that matter, its ability to respond to that information, is necessarily at a mature enough stage yet to make sense and best use of that information as it is gathered.

I do not think that the public sector supports the Scottish Prison Service in a collaborative way on some issues, although that might be difficult for you to say.

You may be familiar with the getting it right for every child approach.

GIRFEC.

Yes. Can we get it right for every prisoner?

I have said it before, but that is one of those rifle-shot questions that needs to be put into context. There are more than 7,700 offenders in custody today and, as far as the prison service is concerned, the real challenge for the Scottish Government and the people of Scotland is to put in sufficient investment to address every single need or concern that offenders who pass into custody have. We could develop a better approach if there were greater links between a national service such as ours and what is happening locally because, after all, the areas that people come from and go back to are what will make the difference.

Such initiatives are under way. Crucially, the Scottish Government is, as you know, driving an agenda of joined-upness; however, we still have a considerable distance to travel on this journey. If I might say, one of the real positives in Scotland that I have not encountered elsewhere on my travels is the connectivity between justice and education, or indeed learning, that has been put in place under Leslie Evans. There are tremendous advantages in being in that forum as chief executive of the Scottish Prison Service and having the ability to link up with education colleagues. As you rightly say, it is absolutely crucial that we translate the GIRFEC approach into our management of offenders, in particular youngsters in our care. We have to make that work in custody, and then connect it with communities.

Are there international examples that the Scottish Government or indeed the committee could look at of the sort of links between the national and the local that you have described?

Of course, I do not want to downplay anything that colleagues or jurisdictions elsewhere might have achieved or be achieving, but certainly within these islands I am not aware of an approach that is any more sophisticated than ours. I would say—if you do not mind, convener—that the dialogue that we in Scotland are having about joining things up and joining things together to make the whole system work is unique. We are not taking the kind of fragmented approach that one might observe is being taken in other jurisdictions.

I want to ask about three areas, the first of which has been covered reasonably well in John Finnie’s earlier questions. Where will you be applying pressure in the coming years to encourage purposeful activity that has some meaning for reoffending, for example? After all, when one sees the phrase “purposeful activity”, one gets a warm feeling and thinks, “Well, that’s good,” but what is that purpose? The committee, I presume, will be worried about how to prevent reoffending and one would hope that this purposeful activity will go some way towards helping the situation.

I will go right to the end and then explain why.

Ultimately, the Scottish Prison Service will become a less distinct organisation. We are broadly recognised as being pretty much a stand-alone organisation—after all, we are an executive agency of the Scottish Government—but we are already on a significant journey to transform ourselves and become more connected with justice and learning, which will really have an impact. We are also really determined to get connected with our partners not only in the third and not-for-profit sector but, crucially, at a local level. Our approach simply will not work unless there is connectivity that can be evidenced with local authorities and their approaches to expenditure on and support for offenders. Those resources will be looked at in a less distinct way, by which I mean that instead of my sitting on my £400 million and saying, “No one can touch this,” we will take a broader look at the resources that are available and how they can have more impact.

To put that in context, it is useful to think through the genesis of purposeful activity. I suppose the Victorian era is still with us in the fundamental design of our prisons. That era was much more about reform or punishment, as opposed to what we are talking about today, which is rehabilitation and reintegration assistance. The design and structure of our prisons and much of our paradigm for construction are still based on the Victorian era, so we are pulling a lot of that forward with us. The concept of purposeful activity has very much been the notion of the day; it is about putting positivity into what we do with offenders.

The tone of Mr Pearson’s question was significant, because purposeful activity does have a soft, unspecific feel to it. That tone is absolutely right, because purposeful activity is a non-specific and general approach, although it is really helpful and important. Deliberately or not, Mr Pearson turned the phrase around and asked about activity with purpose. What we must do is work harder to be clearer about how we must work in a meaningful and impactful way with offenders as they pass through our care, rather than just be triumphant about having half a million hours of purposeful activity, which lacks the qualitative input that we need.

As I said, I was very impressed by the staff. However, my suspicion was that purposeful activity was just about occupying the day rather than having a point or an outcome. To engage prisoners with the ethos of this new life that you indicate is your vision, should it be possible for court reports to take account of prisoners’ commitment in the prison establishment in the event that they reoffend in the future? When someone who has already been a prisoner is being sentenced at a future time on another matter, should prisons be able to feed into a probation report and indicate that while the person was a prisoner they showed some willingness to move forward, or were unwilling to engage? Prisons get a really close look at somebody for a long period of time, but I am not aware of any reports on prisoners coming from prisons for consideration by the justice system.

I will restrain my natural reformist tendencies in answering the question.

Why?

Lots of things happen to people when they are in custody. Of course, some are with us—either thankfully or depressingly—for a very short space of time, while others spend a significant proportion of their lives in our custody and we get to know them really well. However, one of the realities of the current system, not just in Scotland but elsewhere, is that as the custody journey ends, there is a drop-off. However, all the knowledge and information about the prisoner do not necessarily go to waste, because they stay with us and we make use of those as and when the offender comes back in. That said, we must give credit where it is due, because what has been achieved in Scotland is that every prisoner who leaves the Scottish prison service leaves with a community integration plan. Everybody goes out with some sort of plan, although the validity and value of the plan reduce the shorter the time that someone is with us, because we will not have had the time to make links or whatever.

However, to address Mr Pearson’s point entirely, desistance is a journey. Fergus McNeill or Shadd Maruna know about desistance theory and they will tell you that we all understand that desistance is a journey. Sometimes it is a long journey and different things happen. For someone simply to stop offending is very rare. What usually happens is that behaviours change, and those who succeed in that ultimately desist from offending.

It would be useful if we were able to inform the judiciary, as decisions are made, about how far along that journey we think that an individual might be and the sorts of things that judges and sheriffs might want to take into account. Of course, that would not be to constrain judicial independence, which must be retained. However, more information, best placed, would help good-quality decisions.

11:00

Is it feasible that, in the foreseeable future, prisons would be capable of supplying that kind of information to the system, if the system desired it?

I know that, when someone has been given a sentence and spent their time in custody, the whole issue of tracking and retaining contact is a civil liberties issue. However, a genuine case can be made, for the common weal, for our at least offering to retain that relationship and, in some cases—depending on risk—insisting on that. I am sure that members will have heard me speak about the skills and knowledge that exist in the prison service among the men and women prison officers. In my view, they are tremendously skilled and knowledgeable about offenders. However, that knowledge is retained within the walls of the prison. With our community and local authority colleagues, we need to find a way of using that knowledge and experience more widely to do the sort of thing that you suggest.

I will ask my final two questions together. The first is looking for a quick answer. Will you extend the curfew for TV across the prison estate to allow prisoners to get to their beds so that they can get up in the morning and feel okay? I will leave that sticking to the wall and you can let me know.

My second question is stirring up a hornets’ nest. Low Moss has the capacity to do videoconferencing, but its use still seems constrained. That raises a couple of issues. One is about the economics and the savings for the public purse, but just as important is the disruption to prisons when they constantly have to stream people out in the morning and get them back in at night. That takes time for prison officers, who could be doing constructive work with prisoners, but who instead shepherd people out the door, sometimes at half past 5 in the morning to go hundreds of miles to a court to hardly say a word and then be brought back to the same establishment. Will there be any changes that we can see and measure so that we know that the SPS has got the point and is beginning to use the facilities that we have spent money on?

That was not a short point—Graeme’s short points are quite long—but it is a good point.

I cannot help that—it is too important.

He cannot help it. He is paid by the word.

I will respond to both points, if I may.

On video links with courts and videoconferencing more generally, I return to my time in Northern Ireland, where there is a very successful system. Although the prison system there is much smaller, there are many dispersed courts and probation offices in rural areas. So I have seen a system that works well. As members know, we are pursuing an initiative to link up prisons and courts. Ultimately, that will develop into wider conferencing. If we are to make the desistance journey work, we have to connect up, and information technology infrastructure and videoconferencing are key aspects of that. We have a cross-departmental initiative on that. The approach is being successfully piloted at Barlinnie, and we are on a route to roll it out.

I also want to comment on the question about the telly, which is a thorny issue for me. I am actually a bit of a fan of TVs in cells, and I would go much further. To be a wee bit reformist, I would have telephones in cells as well. Let me explain why, if I may. I know that the idea might stick in the craw certainly of the public and maybe even of some committee members but, generally, we get people to behave normally if we treat them normally and we try to recreate normality.

If I may, let me use a very personal example. My son is in his second year at the University of York, where he is studying law. That is a hard course, and I am one of those grumpy dads who likes him to have his sleep and do his studies and all that sort of stuff. When I texted him last weekend at about 10 o’clock at night, I thought that at that point he would be settling down to get a good night’s sleep to be ready to start off on the Monday—

The parents among us are laughing.

Actually, Victor said to me that he was heading over to his mates’, who had got a few beers in, to watch American football. I subsequently got a text yesterday to say that they were knackered by half past 2, so they went off to bed and gave up. He had a full day of lectures after that. I was a bit grumpy about the situation, but he is actually doing okay. I use that shaggy dog story to make the point.

I watch telly—probably not as much as I would like—sometimes until late at night. I know lots of people who do so. It is a window on the world. It is about keeping informed about what is going on. Actually, it can be a displacement activity as well. If it stops somebody thinking horrible thoughts about themselves or others and encourages discourse about “Coronation Street” or the news or whatever, loads of positives can come from that. Notwithstanding the fact that this is one of those issues that polarises people, I think that there is a place for it.

On whether there should be a curfew, I think that there are pros and cons. I would much rather treat people with respect and decency in the sense of saying, “Please use it sensibly”. Where people do not do that, we might have to curtail the activity for them.

Given that caveat, presumably what they are watching on television is monitored—

Yes, it is controlled.

Obviously, the same would apply to phone calls. We should just put that on the record, so that people do not think that they are in some kind of Marriott hotel instead of in prison.

One of the nine factors that is generally accepted as helping towards reducing reoffending is relationships and family contact. Where there is anything—reasonably and safely—that we can do that can help to sustain or develop family contact, we should give it a go.

Let us move on to the next question, as Graeme Pearson has had a big whack at asking about that issue.

Good morning. As I said in my earlier comments, one interesting thing that I found out about on my visit to Barlinnie is the amount of employment opportunities that are provided. Obviously, those could be even better if we had more moneys or if we did things in a more constructive way. Therefore, I want to ask about improving community links.

I know that we also have long-term prisoners, but I was very impressed by a comment that was made by, I think, the deputy governor. When I referred to the “prisoners”, he said to me, “You are falling into the trap of thinking that everyone in prison is a prisoner. We have bad guys, and we have other people who just happen, in their turn in life, not to have been as lucky as others.” I thought that that was, if not compassionate, at least a very commonsense way of looking at the matter.

The Barlinnie staff talked about trying to improve links with the community, especially for shorter-term prisoners with whom we know we have big problems. One idea was that the experience of prison officers, which you have also mentioned, might be used out in the community. To ensure that prisoners serving a short time are not simply in a revolving door, perhaps short-term prisoners could go to community centres where a prison officer might act as a mentor or contact for them and where they might get training and education within the community. People might then move on much quicker.

How do you see those links with the community, with education and with jobs? Could we take up that governor of Barlinnie’s suggestion about prison officers—retired people or people with experience—going out into the community to be there for people?

Our general approach should be that nothing in itself works but lots of things together help. We often talk about the what works agenda as if it were some sort of fantastic accurate science. Of course, because we are dealing with complex individuals in very difficult circumstances, the science is really difficult to apply. Linking up with the environment to which the offender will return—I know that that term jars with people, but I think that it is meaningful here—is absolutely crucial.

There is no point in having a false environment in prison that is either everything in the garden is rosy or totally depressing and not decent. We need to find a way of working together that ensures that while the offender is looked after properly, the focus is on reintegration and resettlement back into the community, leaving that offender in a far better set of circumstances not to reoffend than when he or she came to us in the first place.

On Barlinnie, like most governors, Derek McGill is a bit of an entrepreneur. He is doing loads of things that are not directed by me or by the SPS but that are part of the overall approach of connecting locally and bringing in the community in order to engage offenders more generally in what is important outside and, potentially, how not to reoffend. The bit of that that is missing is the outreach—the knowledge, experience and support going back out.

As I said in the Sacro lecture in November last year, going straight is not an easy ask. The academics tell us time and again—as if, by experience, we did not know—that desistance is a long and complex journey. The best way to help people not to reoffend is to be there to catch them when they trip up. I might be being controversial again here, but maybe we are sometimes a bit trigger-happy. Someone trips up, they have defaulted, they are back in the system and the merry-go-round starts again. If we were able to connect with the community more broadly, we might catch some people before they fall and keep them on the desistance path rather than back on the prison path.

How would you catch them before they fall? I hear what you say but you probably do not know that they will fall until they do. Bearing in mind the independence of the judiciary, are you suggesting that if somebody defaults, there should be something else? It follows on from Graeme Pearson’s question. You have material that sheriffs can look at to see how that person was progressing in prison. I do not mean that we should go soft, but we should have something that treats that person more as an individual, rather than say, “If you do this, no matter who you are, you’re back.” Is that what you are suggesting?

Primarily, the focus would be on short-term offenders. I heard many of the observations earlier, which, quite rightly in my view, focused on what is, in a sense, the lack of service provision for short-term offenders. Those are the ones that are on the merry-go-round. We all know that.

Regrettably, for a lot of offenders, going straight and staying out of trouble is a really difficult ask. They have no immediate reference points when things start going wrong, despite the best efforts of criminal justice social work—or social work in general—and other professions who are out there. SPS staff—the men and women who, as prison officers, work with offenders day in, day out—have something to add in the community environment. I see it as a 24/7 thing. Going straight is not 9 to 5. Things happen late at night, early in the morning or at weekends. A phone call that generates support or advice, or that makes a connection to another service, might just prevent someone’s relapse back into the system and back into prison. I know that that sounds a bit utopian but if we do not make that journey and try it, we will never know. Huge positives could come from that. That is not a land grab or tanks on the lawn. I see it a bit like empowering, supporting and enabling the community, not replacing.

Convener, may I come back in?

Yes, I was giving you a look, saying, “Do you have another question?”

The conversation started with the example of a prisoner who is released and put in the same environment as before—that happens to a lot of them. The prisoner feels quite vulnerable but cannot get joined-up help. They are in the house and the drug dealers in that environment put drugs through the door. They do not ask for any money but they reappear three or four days later and the whole spiral starts again. What Colin McConnell was saying is what I was trying to get at: prison officers know all of that—they have that connection. If there was some way in which we could feed in those aspects, perhaps we would stop a lot of reoffending. It was an observation rather than a question.

I will move on to Alison McInnes.

11:15

Good morning. You may have heard me earlier mention my surprise at just how many agencies and partners were working in the prison that we visited. On the one hand, I saw that as a positive thing, because lots of experience is brought in. However, I felt that there was a disconnection, in that I did not get a sense that an overarching ethos was driving all the different courses. How do you hope to integrate all the work that is being done?

In some ways, that comes back to Mr Finnie’s initial question and the fact that we have focused on the general rather than the specific, important though that is—this has been a journey for us. This is a very crowded playing field. It is crowded because there is a genuine interest, determination and hunger to make a difference, and that has generated lots of possibilities from voluntary agencies and the not-for-profit sector. Actually, I met one of the voluntary organisations yesterday—for the sake of this conversation, I will not say which—just to discuss that very point about how crowded the landscape is.

Specifically, if we look at the PSP for Low Moss, we see that 40 external agencies are engaged through its PSP. On the one hand, the sheer colour of what is going on is fantastic because there are lots of different local—

For the purposes of the record, what is a PSP?

PSP stands for, I think, public social partnership.

Sorry, I did not mean to catch you out, but anyone like me who reads the record will be asking themselves, “What is a PSP?” We came across all this jargon when we went to the prisons as well. We probably need a glossary.

You can determine from my answer that I am used to using the jargon without reflecting on what it means.

You will not be punished if you have got it wrong—you will be on probation.

The point that I was making was that, on the one hand, it is fantastic that there is so much local interest and generation of possibilities and help. However, in a sense, many of the organisations are fighting for the same space. How that translates into the prison environment is that, at times, they are jockeying each other for the same prisoner.

We need to be mature and calm and have a discussion with colleagues out in the community about how we can make better sense of where the needs are and which organisations are best placed to meet those needs. If we look at that as a resource, we know that there is a finite pot of money, which I would like to be spread as effectively and evenly as possible. We need to be careful in case, for the thousand flowers blooming, we do not see any beauty. As I say, I think that there needs to be that calm deliberate dialogue about trying to find out what we need to do and who is best placed to do it.

Do you have a timescale for that sort of review, which would clearly be a significant piece of work?

I think that the Scottish Government is already generating that discussion through justice policy. A number of initiatives are being taken forward by justice policy, particularly on the reducing reoffending programme, that are designed to address that very issue. As you will know, a £10 million change fund has been set up—obviously, I do not run the fund, as that is a policy issue—which is designed to generate the change of direction to ensure that the infrastructure is put in place to support the policy intent. Every effort is being made, so I think that we are on the path to achieving that.

In your written submission, you remind us of the diversity of the prison population, which comprises different groupings, including women, young people, long-term prisoners and remand prisoners. How do you ensure that the purposeful activity that is provided meets everyone’s needs without taking too much of a one-size-fits-all approach?

In truth, not everyone’s needs are met. In the current construct, that is simply not possible and I would not want to sit here and pretend otherwise. Our approach currently is that we can identify those who are most needy—at most risk—and who, by dint of either their sentence length or the risk that they might pose on release, will be the main focus of our attention to ensure that they get the broad range of services that are targeted at the right time to meet their needs. Other than that, more generally we try to do the very best that we can—again, this goes back to Mr Finnie’s question—and to provide the most that we can. That is well intended, but I think that we need to recognise that it is probably lacking in ultimate impact and effect.

On your point about the crowded landscape, we have known for a long time that a well-meaning voluntary sector and public sector are competing. Some organisations are a bit precious about their work. In the chain of command, do you require governors to review how things are operating in the prison and then look at it yourself? Things are happening all over the place, so how is control or accountability provided? Do governors report to you so that you can see how what is happening in their prisons compares with what is happening elsewhere?

As a service, we have not had a distinct approach. There is no policy position on how to do things or on which organisations are badged as acceptable—

I did not mean that. I am just asking how you look at the many voluntary sector organisations involved. For instance, I know that the governor at Polmont is now looking at how everything integrates. As head of the SPS, how do you see that all prison governors throughout the system are doing that?

It is organic. It is exactly that. Currently, the governors pretty much have freedom, within their own situation, to determine which partners they work with. That provides strengths of local connectivity, but it also carries the risk of diffusion and lack of focus on the issues. I would like to be on a journey—I think that this is where we are going—where we give local flexibility to determine what makes the best local connections but also have a distillation mechanism, if you like, that helps the governor and the organisation to identify which organisations in which circumstances are likely to provide the best resource.

Are you that distillation mechanism?

No, I would not be. That probably sits with policy colleagues in justice.

That was what I was trying to get at, so that we can filter things out a bit.

Mr McConnell, when we looked at a diagram of community justice authorities a few weeks ago—I think that the Public Audit Committee is now looking at the effectiveness of those organisations—it struck us, from the evidence that we received, that there are so many partners around the table that some actions seem to fall through the cracks between partners.

In your answer to the question from my colleague Graeme Pearson, I was struck by what you said about the need for partnership working in education because, at whatever point they leave prison, prisoners will return to their communities. I completely understand and appreciate that, but this is also a time at which local authorities are experiencing harsh cuts to their budgets.

Given, for example, my recent problems in getting Perth prison to speak to Dundee City Council to match up homelessness lists so as to cut down on the abandonment of properties, I would be surprised if local authorities are really in a position, especially in the face of local political pressures, to put resources into the rehabilitation and education of prisoners, which is not their responsibility. In that context, is there not more of an imperative on your service, while you have that captive audience in your care, to deliver rehabilitation and to develop their physical and intellectual skills—skills that will be transferable when prisoners go back into the community—rather than wait for an integrated partnership approach to come together?

The answer to that is twofold—yes and no. I will start with the yes.

I like your style.

Jenny Marra was right to put me on the spot. The Scottish Prison Service is allocated a tremendous resource from the Scottish Government, and the Government and public at large should have high expectations of what we do with the money.

As I said, the Victorian system still underpins what we are doing. We keep people in custody safely and decently. I know that the committee has seen the Audit Scotland report that talked about the four Rs—restriction, reparation, rehabilitation and reintegration. About three quarters of our resource is spent on restriction. It is spent on keeping people in custody safely and decently and ensuring that they can get to all the activities safely and decently.

As I said in the letter of introduction in response to the convener’s invitation, we must not view offenders as a homogeneous group. They are not a homogeneous group. Prison is a tremendously complex environment. I accept the challenge to do what we can do to transform people—we are in the human transformation business—but it is an incredible ask of the committee, the Government or the public to expect the Scottish Prison Service or any prison service to transform every individual who passes through its care in every set of circumstances. I do not think that the Scottish economy could afford to do that and, even if it could afford it, I doubt that I could ultimately produce evidence that it had worked in every case.

As I said, nothing in itself works, but lots of things help. For example, more than 50 per cent of the education resource in the Prison Service deals with numeracy and literacy. That gives us an insight into the prison population. Nearly 60 per cent of the offenders in our care would struggle to compete with the average 14-year-old on numeracy and literacy. Our focus is very much on building people’s capacity to cope. It is not just about education. Some 70 to 80 per cent of offenders who come into custody self-declare alcohol and drugs problems and addictions, much of which is associated with their offending.

I am beginning to set out for the committee the scale of the challenge that we face. We are not trying to distance ourselves from that challenge, but the idea that the SPS is funded in such a way that it can meet everyone’s needs on every occasion and can do so on its own is probably not sustainable. We can do more and better by making links with other professions and particularly the communities that people come from and return to.

I should say, for the sake of clarity, that I am in no way saying that local authorities should sub-fund the Prison Service. However, we need to be clearer about the expectations for and of a custodial service such as ours and about the responsibilities of the communities of the people who are on a journey. We must think about how we bring those two elements together. It is about looking at the whole resource and not looking at resources separately.

11:30

Thank you for your answer. I appreciate that it is a massive challenge and I was not suggesting that you deliver everything on your own. Of course partners have to come in and work together.

The point that I was hoping to make is that we need to strike a balance to ensure that we do not get bogged down in some massive network as a result of which action does not happen and things are not delivered. I think that Rod Campbell alluded to this in his earlier summary but, when I visited Perth prison a few months ago, I thought that there simply was not enough purposeful activity going on. Walking around the prison at 4.30 pm that Friday afternoon, I found a lot of the classrooms and other such areas closed and in darkness. That seemed very early to me. Does Perth have a worse rate of purposeful activity than other prisons in the country and, if so, is anything being done to address that?

Again, there are two elements to my response.

First of all, making monochrome comparisons between the number of purposeful activity hours that various prisons generate holds dangers. We need to put such matters in context and bear in mind, for example, the age of the prison, its fundamental design and its mix of offenders. On the evidence that I have, the top performer in this respect is likely to be Low Moss, which is modern and has been designed with such activity in mind. With the older Victorian prisons such as Perth and Barlinnie—Edinburgh has been revamped, but you get the picture—that was never part of the concept. The governors and staff in that difficult group of prisons—one of which, as I have said, would be Perth—face tremendous obstacles just to make the daily routine work and have to deal with unconnected buildings, long routes to work or education and so on. As a result, I urge the committee against making single judgments on numbers and to look more at the degree of difficulty involved. The governor and his team at Perth do a good job with an infrastructure that has not necessarily been designed as efficiently and effectively as it might be—and certainly not in comparison with Low Moss or even Addiewell, which is a reasonably new prison where the connections are far easier to make.

Secondly, going back to community links, I urge the committee to look beyond what prisons in themselves can do. We are beginning to explore the boundaries of what prisons can do on their own—indeed, the Scottish Prison Service has been pretty good at that—and the next major development or leap forward is to open up the service and have in-reach and outreach services on a completely different scale that will really connect communities with offenders and connect offenders with the communities that they are going back to. If we can use the available resource more flexibly on that journey, we can make a far greater impact than we have been able to thus far.

I am conscious of the time, the fact that members are in the chamber this afternoon and the fact that Roddy Campbell has not yet asked a question. Alison, do you want to start a fresh line of questioning?

I just have a follow-up to Jenny Marra’s question.

I will let Rod Campbell in because he has not yet asked a question but, looking at the schedule and recognising that members still have a lot of questions, I note that on 19 February we have pencilled in an evidence-taking session with the Cabinet Secretary for Justice. Might it be useful to bring Mr McConnell back at that time? I do not want to suppress members, but it could be that, by that time, other issues might have arisen. We would then have an evidence-taking session with perhaps two panels on 5 February and another with the cabinet secretary and Mr McConnell two weeks later. Is that all right?

Members indicated agreement.

First of all, following on from Jenny Marra’s comments about Perth prison, I have to say that the figures are certainly disappointing, but my major concern when I was walking around the prison was that, if a member of staff was off sick or on holiday, the facilities were automatically closed down. I appreciate that sickness cover is much more difficult to put in place, but I wonder whether people could be brought in from elsewhere to cover, say, holidays. I simply felt that the facilities were being underutilised as a result.

It would be silly of me to disagree—you are absolutely right. Again, however, this brings us back to the fundamental construct of how the service operates and the fact that the rehabilitative, growth and reintegrative aspects of our work do not receive the same level of funding or protection as the restrictive, custody and safety aspects. We need to think more deeply about that issue as we move ahead.

I have two other questions of clarification. First, in your submission, you suggest using the national directory of interventions and services to have more effective throughcare. What does this directory look like? Is it a book? Why is it so important?

The directory, which is a Government initiative owned by justice policy, sets out all the interventions or services that are available to offenders either in custody or in the community. The concept behind it—which I think is a good one—is to ensure that all agencies, organisations and professionals who work with offenders know what services are available, who is delivering them and how to access them. Part of the intention is not to reinvent the wheel, although, as we have discussed, some of that might well be going on. The directory simply shows what is out there that we believe has a positive impact on the offender journey, who to go to and how to access it.

Who is responsible for preparing the directory and keeping it up to date?

Justice policy.

My second question is about the community integration plan, which is obviously a big thing for an offender coming out of prison. Who else sees and has access to it?

For statutory offenders, it is the criminal justice social workers—if you like, the community side of offender management—who will make the link. We try to make similar links for non-statutory offenders and, where we can, try to involve the offender, the family and the rest of the community-based justice system, but I have to say that the approach does not always work as seamlessly as it does with statutory offenders. Indeed, as I said earlier, the shorter the time offenders are with us for, the less valuable the integration plan will be. It comes back to the question of what constitutes time well spent but, of course, others will have views on that.

You do not have to answer these questions now, but I want to highlight a few points that have not been responded to. First of all, we asked about the earnings policy’s impact on purposeful activity and it would be useful to find out about the SPS’s earnings policy for prisoners. Secondly, the committee might find it useful to see anonymised examples of a community integration plan for a statutory and a non-statutory prisoner coming out of prison.

I will write to you with that information.

That will be very helpful.

Thank you very much for your evidence. I hope that you will be available to come back and give more evidence on 19 February, because I think that we will find it useful.

We now move into private session.

11:38 Meeting continued in private until 11:59.