Justice 1 Committee, 29 Sep 2004

Meeting date: Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Official Report 298KB pdf

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Rehabilitation Programmes in Prison

Item 5 on the agenda is our inquiry into the effectiveness of rehabilitation programmes in prisons. I welcome our first panel of witnesses: Professor Jacqueline Tombs, the honorary director of the Scottish Consortium on Crime and Criminal Justice, and Bernadette Monaghan, the director of Apex Scotland. Thank you for coming before the committee this morning. As we have a number of questions for you, we will go straight to them.

Good morning, colleagues. I will begin with some background questions to set the scene for later questioning. My first question is straightforward. What does each of your organisations do?

The Scottish Consortium on Crime and Criminal Justice brings together a number of the main voluntary organisations that work in criminal justice in Scotland. It also brings together academics who are involved in the field. Our aim is to bring together the knowledge base in research and the expertise in the field to address the issues of major concern in contemporary crime and criminal justice.

Apex Scotland is a national voluntary organisation, which has been going since 1987. We have a staff of 160, who work in 15 units and four prisons across Scotland. Our remit is to work with offenders, ex-offenders and young people who are at risk. We address their employability needs and progress them on to what we call a positive outcome, by which we mean full-time or part-time employment, further training or education, voluntary work or an intermediate labour market placement.

We offer a range of services. We provide employment and guidance to clients on probation or community service. We help people through new futures fund initiatives, which are funded by Scottish Enterprise, and through local enterprise company contracts. We also deliver the progress 2 work initiative—in fact, we are the largest provider of progress 2 work—which is the Jobcentre Plus initiative that is designed to move former drug users or people who have a measure of control over their substance misuse into employment. Our work also includes the delivery of supervised attendance orders on behalf of local authorities.

Our specialised services for young people are mainly about bridging the transition from education to employment. We are a partner with Glasgow City Council and NCH Scotland in the Glasgow community justice and employment project, which provides integrated supervision for 15 to 21-year-olds who are at risk of being put into immediate custody or of progressing into the criminal justice system. The project provides an integrated supervision package that combines work on offending behaviour with employability programmes.

How would each of you define rehabilitation?

I would define rehabilitation as working towards reintegration into the wider society. I say "working towards", because rehabilitation is not an overnight job for any offender—by and large, they have become progressively excluded from all sorts of areas.

I have a slight difficulty—this is a personal opinion—with the term "rehabilitation", which to me is about the 1960s idea that we could treat people and put them through a range of programmes that would cure them of their behaviour in a psychological or medical way so that they would come out the other end and not reoffend. I prefer the term "reintegration". I think that people stop offending when they decide that they want to, for whatever reason. That is usually because they acquire something in their life that is valuable to them and gives them a reason to re-evaluate their situation and resolve their difficulties.

I am not in favour of the notion that we can somehow treat people. As Professor Tombs said, change is not a one-off thing and it does not happen overnight; it is a long, slow process. It is about considering whether an individual's level of offending has become any less serious, whether their time in prison between periods in the community has lessened and whether they feel that they have made progress in addressing aspects of their life and behaviour that have led them into offending. As Professor Tombs suggested, there is a complex picture around what we are trying to achieve.

One of the ways in which to facilitate the process of reintegration is to make people employable, to skill them and to draw out their potential. How far and how fast is that element of reintegration proceeding?

Do you mean how much success are we having?

Yes.

I have left marketing folders with the committee, which give up-to-date statistics for this year on the number of referrals, starters, completers and outcomes that we have had. We have dealt with more than 6,700 referrals and we have worked with about 4,500 people, of whom in the past year 2,206 completed work with us and 50 per cent had a positive outcome. Getting a job enables people to move on because of the structure that the job provides. I do not think that people offend because they are unemployed and need to offend to sort that out; the issue is more that, if they are in employment or are occupied, they have less opportunity to offend. That is the part that employment plays. However, I should add that, in isolation, employment is not enough. People have to be motivated to get a job. Factors such as a significant relationship, family support and, primarily, stable accommodation all have to be in place. Employment alone is not a panacea; an holistic range of needs has to be taken care of.

I take on board what you say about the holistic range of needs. I have a question about opportunities. Apex cites in its submission research that indicates that placing more emphasis on literacy and numeracy skills and helping prisoners to find employment, as opposed to putting them on psychologically based cognitive skills programmes, could be the key to preventing their returning to crime. Do you consider that the Scottish Prison Service places sufficient emphasis on core skills such as literacy and numeracy?

It does and it does not. The way in which the SPS measures what it does is all about outputs. If there is an output that says that education is measured by the number of prisoner learning hours that are delivered, there is pressure on—and a financial incentive for—the contractors to ensure that they keep up the numbers coming into the learning centre. That does not leave scope for one-to-one help.

I know that in Polmont—where I wear my visiting committee hat—some of the young men with whom we have worked could not cope in a group setting such as a classroom. Last year, 149 of our referrals were young men whose level of achievement was that of a primary 3 child—that was quite stark. Education needs to be pitched to individual needs, but the way in which contracts are structured does not allow for that, because the contracts tend to be about the throughput of numbers. A conservative estimate is that something like 25 per cent of people who end up in prison have below-functional levels of literacy and 33 per cent have below-functional levels of numeracy. That is fundamental. Someone cannot do cognitive skills programmes if they cannot read and write because they cannot do the coursework. They cannot go to a work party because they cannot read health and safety notices. There is a whole knock-on effect.

I suppose that what I am saying is that cognitive skills programmes have a value but that they are not enough on their own. We cannot just give someone thinking skills if, when they come out of the door, they are never going to have the opportunity to put those skills into practice because they cannot get a job and do not have support or a roof over their head.

The issue is the balance of how resources are devoted in prison to programmes, training or whatever. There was a wholesale following of cognitive skills programmes in prisons for quite a while—they were one of the great white hopes and a lot of money was spent on them. There has been a good deal of research, but the most solid piece in this country was done by the Home Office and published last year. It found that cognitive skills behavioural programmes make no difference to reconviction rates. Indeed, a substantial and growing body of evidence is showing that things such as basic literacy and numeracy make a bigger impact. That is not to say that cognitive skills programmes are never of any use; it is a question of what the balance has been.

I conducted a study in the throughcare centre at HMP Edinburgh. The level of need for one-to-one basic skills training is very high among prisoners, some of whom are prevented from taking the opportunities that are available to them because they cannot read or write. However, those people are often put on cognitive skills programmes. That does not make a lot of sense.

The way of measuring success in such programmes would not be by the number of hours spent on them.

That is right. Another thing that we should be aware of is that part of the process of going through prison involves getting category upgrades. Doing programmes in prisons helps people to get category upgrades. That issue must be addressed. The key to the success of any measure in which an offender becomes involved is motivation. However, the motivation should not only be to get a category upgrade to make life in prison more bearable, although that is perfectly understandable. Added to that must be some motivation to be able to live a law-abiding life when offenders come outside. That has to be encouraged, too.

Professor Tombs mentioned the Home Office research. When the cognitive skills programmes were piloted, there were some successes, although in the pilot phase the programmes would have been properly targeted. Once something is rolled out globally and offered as the holy grail that will sort everything out, there is probably a quality issue, as the targeting may not be on the right people. That reinforces the point about people taking up programmes in prison. A proper assessment has to be done of whether a programme is appropriate for a particular person at a particular time. That is the crucial point.

I want to develop my understanding and, perhaps, that of my colleagues of your views on cognitive skills programmes and their place in the scheme of things. In the Scottish Prison Service, the programmes were introduced largely through prison officer initiative rather than psychologist initiative. However, the programmes tend no longer to involve the prison staff and affect the operation of the whole prison, not just in the classroom, but in residential accommodation; now, they are, in essence, a few hours a week in the classroom. My visits to a Welsh prison showed that the prison as a whole had not changed its attitude as a result of putting people in a classroom for a couple of weeks.

To what extent do you think that the perceived failure, as reported in the Home Office research, relates to the implementation of such programmes in what is now a rather partitioned way? Are the programmes intrinsically not capable of being delivered? In asking that, I make the assumption that people are being pre-qualified with the necessary literacy and numeracy skills to benefit from the programmes. I recognise the validity of what you said in that regard.

Prisons are a very inappropriate place to try to do anything positive. Cognitive skills, properly targeted and integrated with a whole raft of initiatives that are required in relation to the individual prisoner, may have an important place in the reintegration or rehabilitation—whatever word we use—of prisoners. The key factor is that resources are limited.

There are far more important things to do with people in prison, such as linking them to support and agencies outside, which will help them to get trained, to do a job, to run a house, to pay their bills and so on. People in prisons are lacking in basic skills. That is the issue. Programmes such as those for cognitive skills are fine, provided that they are linked with a lot of the other support that helps to sustain a person living in the outside world. No wonder they do not make a big impact when that is not the case.

I would like people in prisons to be taught independent living skills at some point in their sentence. Such skills are seriously lacking.

The role of the prison officer has been mentioned. Prison officers act as key workers to groups of people. Sometimes, that provides the most significant relationship that a prisoner will have in their life. I have seen prison officers coming into work early to write parole reports, for example, and they really engage with the prisoners.

The difficulty about programmes that are started in prison and about the relationships that build up there is that they are often not continued post release. If someone is transferred from Polmont young offenders institution to an adult prison, or if they move from the closed estate to the open estate, there is no mechanism for picking up and continuing the work that they have started. That can be devastating to somebody who has been making really good progress.

I am not sure that social work is linked into the sentence management process. The whole issue of throughcare needs to be linked in better, too, so that, once someone is released, a programme is in place for them and the work that they started in prison will be continued on the outside.

It is not enough to examine the delivery of programmes only in the context of prison; there is an issue over how programmes are being implemented and, more important, how the work will be continued in the community. I am not sure that we have cracked that yet.

You refer to sentence management. For long-term prisoners—which is where my interest lies—a case conference is essentially an annual event. Is that likely to be frequent enough to ensure that the appropriate structure and sequencing of activities leads towards release and towards a higher probability of reintegration into society? Is that likely to be achieved with the relatively hands-off style of sentence management for long-term prisoners that is currently operating in the SPS?

I cannot comment on the detail of that, but I know that not an awful lot of pre-release work goes on for long-term prisoners. There are not many such programmes going on in the open estate, either. We should be concerned about the number of people who go to the open estate from the closed estate and who do not survive there. Some want to return to the closed estate. Indeed, some prisoners do not make it to the open estate in the first place. All those people will have to be released back into the community at some point, but there are not many throughcare arrangements in place.

We are talking about people who have been in prison for quite a long time and who will have been high risk. We have to consider the arrangements for those people. If they start work in a closed prison and then go to the open estate, that work should be continued in the open estate. Again, that is about ensuring that the person is followed around the prison system. People should not be just cut off when they move from one place to another; they should be able to continue the work that they started in one place when they move to the open estate, or wherever they are transferred to.

The committee is interested in the issue of what have been called short-term prisoners and long-term prisoners. Those are probably misleading terms, especially because a short-term sentence is defined as four years or less, whereas we are really talking about sentences of three months or less. Most witnesses have told us that nothing very much can be achieved in that time. Do you agree with that?

What do you mean by "achieve very much"? Obviously people cannot be put on programmes and all that sort of thing if they are in prison for the short term. However, constructive things can be done with people who are in for a short period if that is what is decided; I leave to one side the question whether short sentences are sensible.

Edinburgh prison's throughcare centre, when it was up and running, was a positive development. The research to which I referred earlier showed that even people who were on very short sentences could go to the centre. Apex Scotland was involved with the SPS in setting up the centre, so Bernadette Monaghan might want to say more about that.

That throughcare centre provided a point where outside agencies could come in and work with prisoners, many of whom were serving sentences of only six to nine months. Some long-term prisoners who had hardly ever seen anyone volunteered to go to the centre because they could get access to help with housing, with employment issues, with drugs and other addictions and with the whole range of other problems that they would be going back out to. The centre was like a one-stop shop where people could get help with the practical problems of life. That was a positive development and it could be rolled out in a lot more Scottish prisons.

I come back to the point about short sentences. Most people would agree that a six-month sentence, which means three months in reality, will not achieve much at all. We have to examine why people end up in prison for short periods. My bet is—and it is just a guess—that if people did not breach community sentences and appeared in court when they were supposed to, they would not end up in jail for short periods.

Something seems to be going wrong with the implementation of community sentences. I hear sentencers saying that they are willing to use community-based programmes but, to some extent, there is a postcode lottery. There are specific programmes in different areas but they are not rolled out nationally. Sentencers are willing to give community sentences but they are sometimes told that there is not a place on the programme for someone who is doing three or six months' community service.

The sentencers are therefore left with a dilemma. In considering a sentence, they have to decide between imprisonment and a community sentence. The dilemma is whether to let the person stay in the community until a place becomes available on a community programme when that person might continue offending—and what message that gives them—or whether to send them to jail for a short period.

We have to consider why that is happening. The issue may well be one of resources. We need to consider alternatives in the community to remand. We need to consider what is going wrong with community sentences. People should be able to be put on to a programme or a scheme for a short period as soon as the decision is made, so that it is more intensive and more focused and feels like a punishment. Within that, though, there should be a constructive element that addresses their needs.

We are finding that the breach rate for supervised attendance orders is quite low. That is because it is a constructive penalty. It is a punishment, in that a person has to turn up, but, within that, people work on different issues, such as money management and debt. If they have issues to do with alcohol and drug abuse, they work on those issues and then they do a job placement.

You will see from our annual report that we are meant only to get people through the order, but we have had quite a lot of success with people going on to employment and education. If we had community penalties that took place as soon as the decision was made, and within which people's needs were addressed and they could work on their issues, the success rate could be much improved.

Presumably that would account only for a proportion of offenders; there would be some offenders—repeat offenders—for whom there is no alternative to imprisonment.

Yes, absolutely.

Our inquiry is specifically about rehabilitation—that is the word that we are using at the moment—in prisons.

We are talking about whether we can do something useful in prison with people who are doing short sentences. A prison's commitment is not only to hold people in humane and reasonable conditions; part of the SPS's vision is that a prison should do something positive as well.

I assume that there is a percentage of prisoners—or a type of prisoner—at any given time who will be responsive and a proportion who will not. There has not been much discussion about that so far; it has all been about which type of prisoner could get this response and which type could get that response. The reality, presumably, is that some offenders will not co-operate, whatever the circumstances. Alternatively, there are, in some cases, offenders who believe that they are innocent and that co-operating would be an admission of their guilt. Can you give the committee any idea of the percentage, or variety, of prisoners in the system who are able or willing to respond to programmes?

What kind of programmes? There are so many different programmes. The sex offender programmes have been shown to have a positive impact on a number of sex offenders, although not all. Some are in the category to which you refer; they are living in denial about their problems and do not want to co-operate for whatever reason. The same applies to anger management programmes and so on. It depends on the offender. It is hard to say whether there is a recalcitrant—

Could I go back at this point?

Yes, go back. The issue is quite complex.

I was interested that you said that most prisoners do programmes to get a category upgrade. Do most prisoners want to do something to address their offending or are you saying that most prisoners see those programmes as a way of having a better life in prison?

Most prisoners whom I have come across do not want to go back to prison. Most of them would prefer to live crime-free lives, although most do not believe that that is possible. We cannot really generalise about all categories of prisoner, but I am talking about the research on persistent young offenders who end up in prison.

Most prisoners want the same lives as everyone else has—they do not have different values—but they do not see a way of making that happen; they do not believe that it will happen. Part of the process is about beginning to make such people believe that they have a chance. It is a question not just of changing attitudes, but of changing capabilities and opportunities. I suppose that that is what I was trying to get at.

Other groups of prisoners, such as the old lags who have been in and out for years and who have had problems with alcohol—in the past, the problem was always alcohol, but now it is drugs, although the users do not live so long—are caught in the revolving-door syndrome. As Bernadette Monaghan said, many of those people have become unable to live in the outside world. They undertake rehabilitation programmes not only to improve their time in prison through getting improved conditions; they would also say that they want something to help them to have a better life. However, the programmes must be broken down by the types of prisoners.

Can I just pick up on that—

No. I want to finish on this subject. It is interesting to get a bit of variety. As you say, there is a huge prison population and we are trying to get into the detail of how groups are responding differently. Is there any indication whether it gets harder to involve people in the programmes as they get older? Some of us were at HMP Barlinnie a few weeks ago, where we met some older prisoners who were being held on remand. You would probably describe them as being caught in the revolving-door syndrome. Is there any evidence to suggest that, as people get older, it is harder to convince them that they have a chance to do something about their lives?

Yes, I think so.

I was interested to hear Professor Tombs say that we should not get into whether short-term sentences are sensible. I would be interested in her comments on that. Bernadette Monaghan went on to talk about the resources issue, which I think is particularly important. To me, a short-term prison sentence is one of less than six months, and a huge number of people serve such sentences. How can we address that problem? Is it just about the Executive throwing money at it?

What problem? Are you talking about the short sentence problem?

I am talking about short-term sentences.

My view is probably different from that of a lot of people.

That is why I asked you the question.

I think that we should keep prison sentences as short as is humanly possible. I am not a sentencer—I am not a judge—but I have just finished a piece of research on sentencers. It is not written up yet, but it seems that their view is that they have tried everything. The fundamental issue is that nobody knows what prison is for, but they have tried everything else and they think that they need to try a prison sentence because of whatever. If that is what happens, I think that prison sentences should be kept as short as is humanly possible, unless it is being used to protect the public from serious crime and seriously disturbed people, who would not be serving three-month sentences anyway.

Offenders in all other categories should be sent to prison for as short a time as is humanly possible. If that means custody plus—for example, three months in prison plus a year's supervision in the community—even better. Prison further isolates people who already are not integrated into society and, as Bernadette Monaghan said, it is more difficult to reintegrate people from prison than it is to do so from a community sentence.

I am not running about saying that we should get rid of all short prison sentences. However, perhaps the short sentences that are given now do not need to be given. For example, people who get two years now could perhaps get six months. I would like the length of prison sentences to be reduced. Over the past 20 or 30 years in Scotland, we have increased the use of custody and our prison sentences have got longer. We do not need that. I know that I am straying outwith the remit.

Yes. We are considering rehabilitation in prison rather than sentencing policy, although I know that that is an interesting issue to explore.

I return to the question of resources. Given what the professor just said about what I would call short-term prison sentences, a three-month sentence could be reduced to almost nothing, but how would we address the problem?

Currently, if someone is sentenced to prison, the Scottish Prison Service has no option but to find room for them somewhere, even though the prisons might be overcrowded. We could implement prison sentences much more creatively. I do not know what structure we would need to do that. Perhaps we could suspend sentences, or we could assess a person's needs and say, "All right, you have been given a short prison sentence, but here is how we are going to implement that. You need to go and learn how to live independently. We need to find you accommodation. We will put you on this programme. If you do all that, we will see at the end whether you still need to go to prison." Scandinavian countries, including Finland, do that. I believe that there are two options: either a fine or custody. When custody is given, a range of other things kick in and the sentence can be implemented in different ways.

We do not have any creativity when it comes to considering how to deal with people on short sentences. We could replicate the idea of the throughcare centres—or the link centres as they are now known—in the community. Why not have such a centre as a focal point, where all a person's needs are addressed and all the agencies are linked in, with somebody managing the person and plugging them into different agencies that can sort out their needs and work with them on their offending behaviour and so on? We could probably achieve more in that way than by putting someone into prison for three months.

We have resources that we could use a lot better. Resources are an issue in relation to being able to implement community sentences properly. We must consider that issue as well.

Another area that the committee should consider is the provision of residential treatment facilities for people with severe alcohol and drug problems—particularly the latter—whose offending is associated with that. Many judges find such provision totally absent from the range of what is available to them. We spend £1.5 million a week on upgrading the prison estate. I know that we are doing that because conditions in prisons have been found to be in breach of human rights legislation, but we must consider resources across the board. Many prisoners should be put into residential treatment facilities.

When Professor Tombs said "seriously disturbed", I presume that she meant societally rather than mentally.

Yes.

Right. Thank you.

Let me move on to the subject of employment. Clearly, there is an expectation that if people are to be reintegrated into society, employment will be part of the ultimate position that they reach. How well is the SPS doing at equipping people with new skills and connecting them to employment opportunities during the time that it has care of them?

In the past, prison industries did not reflect the kind of work that would be available to people on release or did not equip them with the skills and the opportunities to take up work on release. In 2003, the SPS's learning, skills and employability sub-group published a paper that set out its commitment to modernise prison industries and ensure that whatever vocational training and opportunities are available in prison reflect what is available on the outside.

There is a debate about whether we need to examine specific types of work and whether people in prison are learning an awful lot of skills that are valuable to an employer. That is the work that we do with them. If someone is going to join a work party, they have to work as part of a team. They have to be reliable. They have to get up in the morning and turn up to work. They need to learn how to deal with authority and with conflict. If they work in the kitchens, they learn about food hygiene, food handling, food preparation, health and safety and so on. Young people will become involved in community sports leaders awards, youth at risk courses and so on.

Those are all valuable skills to employers, but employers are more interested in the quality of the person. They will ask whether someone will be reliable, whether they can be trained, whether they are adaptable, whether they will turn up on time and so on. They will be more concerned about those questions than about the skills, vocational training and qualifications that we give people. There is a debate to be had about that. Large employers, particularly in the construction industry and the hospitality sector, recognise that, in future, they will have a huge number of vacancies, and that the only way they will fill them is if they start considering groups of people whom they excluded before. Ex-offenders are one such group.

I do not know whether members saw during their visit to Barlinnie the construction and training and development initiatives in operation. It is a matter of the SPS training people and of employers recognising that they need people to do certain types of work otherwise they will experience shortages. The idea is to train people up before release and to plug them into jobs in the appropriate sector, but there is a fundamental flaw in that, in that it is not enough to bring employers into prisons, link them up with people who have been trained and say, "Off you go—they'll do the job."

We got funding from Scottish Enterprise to put a key worker in place and, without her, the whole initiative in question simply would not have worked. We are very involved in the Scottish welfare to work task force, which now has an offenders sub-group, which is examining such initiatives. The fact that it is not enough to have a guaranteed job with an income of £380 a week has been forgotten. People need shelter, and they need to apply for community care grants to get the equipment necessary to go and work on building sites, for example. They need to be able to sort out bank accounts.

Once ex-prisoners are in employment, they need support. The Scottish Prison Service cannot provide that, and employers do not know how to do it. The voluntary sector is brilliant at that—if I may sing our praises for a moment. We can stick with people. We can work with them before they are released and we can stick with them afterwards to ensure that they have continuing support once they are in a job. If someone is released under a certain type of licence, they need to know that they cannot walk off the building site, as there will be consequences to that. A whole piece of work has to be done to sort out the issues and to ensure that the person is ready to take up the job in question. There is a huge fear factor among people who have never worked and who have never benefited from the structure that goes with work. Before they are released, they fear what it will mean, and they need support.

That illustrates where the debates are in respect of employment in prisons. It does not work without the support of someone whom an ex-prisoner can phone once they are working or who can phone the ex-prisoner and ask them how they are getting on.

Are we being ambitious enough? All the employment opportunities that you were describing were essentially manual labour. When I visited the Bapaume prison, north of Paris, I found that an entire office was being run from there. One of the prison wings was a women's wing, and it did not strike me as immediately obvious that women would find any of the employment opportunities that you have mentioned attractive or practical. Are we restricting what can be achieved? What do prisoners or, more properly, former prisoners think about the provision that is being made?

I think that we probably are restricting things. The SPS will have a whole lot of other considerations, which I am not aware of. However, I know that discussions are going on with learndirect Scotland about a secure technologies project at Polmont. We need to start bringing in computers. People will be working with them and they need to know how to use them to get a job. Call centres could be based in prisons. Inmates would not handle financial information and so on, but they could be trained to work in that type of setting. There is scope for being a lot more imaginative about what we can do within prisons.

Are you familiar with the United States, where a number of call centres operate commercially inside prisons?

I am not really familiar with it but it does not surprise me. Some of our clients go on to that kind of work. I imagine that it is particularly anonymous.

I agree that we have to get away from the whole manual labour thing and start matching up the skills that people will need with the kinds of employment that are around in the community, which changes over time as well.

How much training in computers is going on in prisons? Are you aware of any? I am certainly aware that quite a lot of computer training is going on in Peterhead prison, which is my local prison. That is partly to ensure that sex offenders do not abuse computers when they leave.

The honest answer is that I do not know.

Not a lot is the answer. One or two places, such as the one Stewart Stevenson mentioned, have specific reasons for doing such training, but by and large very little of it is being done in the prison estate.

What can you tell us about the role of prison officers? I am aware that some restructuring of the job was done a few years ago and some promoted posts were abolished, but I am vague about the detail. Have you any idea about what grade an officer has to be, or is being involved directly with a prisoner's personal development and rehabilitation a basic component of the job?

Officers are different. Some volunteer to be trained to be involved in prisoner programmes. I expect that it will be the same in the link centres as they roll out, but in the throughcare study at Edinburgh prison, officers volunteered and said that they would like to be part of such special initiatives. For sentence management, the longer-term prisoners have personal officers.

From the work that I have done in prisons over the years, I think that prison officers have a key role to play. Establishing good relationships with prisoners can make all the difference.

Is it essential that all prison officers should be involved or is there a case for saying that it should only be those who volunteer?

That is a very good question. Let me think about that one for a minute.

It comes down to the quality of the individual. It is the same for my staff or any other agency working in prison.

But should it be? Our inquiry is examining exclusively what we can do in prisons and not comparing it with anything. If you could make changes, would you make it a more fundamental role? Is it possible to do that, given the prison officer's role as gatekeeper and custody officer? I wonder whether it is practically possible or whether the roles might have to be separated out.

We have to remember that the prison officer's responsibility stops at the point of release. There might be a financial argument for prison officers doing everything and for everything to be done inhouse, but I am not sure that that is the only argument. There have to be links with the voluntary agencies, which can come into prisons beforehand and then continue to work when the prisoners are released. If prison officers try to refer people to our services, they will not go. We have to go in and meet the person and sell what we do, and then we have to pick them up at the point of release.

What makes a person respond is the quality of the individual and how they engage. It is about values. There is a big drive for prison officers to get certain qualifications within set periods of time, but the values and the attitudes of the individual are fundamental. I have seen some examples of excellent work, and I have seen others that have not been so good because people did not have the skills or the ability to engage.

Such work cannot be made compulsory. People cannot be told, "You will do this as part of your job." The function that custody officers at Kilmarnock perform is very different—there is not a lot of engagement with the prisoners there. How can behaviour be challenged and confronted? If there are assaults, how are they dealt with? There must be a level of engagement with prisoners.

It is a very serious issue.

Sorry—could I come in at this point?

Yes—but I would like to add something later, as this is a very serious question.

I would like to clarify something that Bernadette Monaghan said. Am I correct in saying that, in Kilmarnock prison—of which I am no great fan—there is still a role for the personal prison officer? Is it not the case that the ratio of personal officers to prisoners is much higher? From memory, it is 1:10 whereas, in the Scottish Prison Service, it is more like 1:6. There is not a change in principle there, but a change in operational practice.

You may well be right about that. My understanding was that, in the private prison, there are specialists who come in to deliver programmes. The involvement of prison officers in delivering programmes would not be the same at Kilmarnock as it would be in the SPS.

Is it not the case that a lot of specialists come to prisons to deliver or participate in programmes throughout the SPS? I wonder whether we are making an artificial distinction here.

We might well be. There is a view according to which fewer specialists ought to be coming in and prison officers ought to be more involved, but I am not sure that I would entirely agree with that view.

The issue about the role of prison officers in delivering programmes is a central one, and I would like to say two or three key things about that. I would be very worried about completely separating off officers' custodian-type function. I would rather that prison officers had a more rounded role, as the convener was indicating, but in the United States, where the custodian function has been separated off, prisoners have ended up running the jails—it is as simple as that. That does not have a good effect on prisoners or on the relationships that they can form with prison officers. Prison officers should all get involved, working with prisoners in one way or another, but I emphasise Bernadette Monaghan's point about the need for agencies from outside to come into prisons. I do not confine that to the delivery of programmes; I think that there is more need for agencies to come into the prisons and work there, helping people as they get out of prison.

The throughcare centre at Edinburgh was very impressive when prisoners were released. I observed different prisoners, some of whom had been involved in the throughcare centre and some of whom had not. Those who were being released who had been involved in the throughcare centre were met at the door by a representative of one of the agencies involved in the centre. They were brought some clothes to wear outside and they were taken to accommodation that had been arranged for them while they were in prison. They might also have had an appointment with Apex two days down the line. In the case of others being released, the prison gate was opened, and then it was shut. They might have had £55 with them, but who knows where they went. It is imperative to break down the barriers as much as possible and to bring the outside into prisons.

We are getting close to finishing this evidence session, but Marlyn Glen has a question on a slightly different topic.

Do you find that special policy consideration is required to assist persons from socially marginalised groups to develop employment skills? Are the needs of specific groups of people addressed while they are in prison in preparation for their release?

Special consideration is given, but I am not sure that those issues are addressed as such. We are only just becoming aware of the high number of our clients who are possibly dyslexic, and of the need to ensure that any training materials that we use are tailored to their needs. We have had some funding from the Scottish Executive to address that. We look into people's needs as far as employment is concerned. If people are dyslexic or have other needs, it might be better for them to become self-employed, and we have been speaking to Scottish Enterprise about that.

The short answer is that our learning is evolving over time. We were not aware of people with different needs and specific needs, but we are becoming more aware as time goes on, and we are certainly trying to do something about it.

That concludes the questions that the committee had for you, although I think that we would all like to continue the session, as it has been dynamic and valuable. I thank both of you very much for giving evidence and for your written submissions. We did not have to ask some questions, as you had already covered the issues, which was helpful. The session has been excellent.

If everyone is sitting comfortably, I welcome our second set of witnesses. Bob Shewan is convener of the Association of Visiting Committees for Scottish Penal Establishments and Moira Graham is convener of the over-21s visiting committee, HMP Cornton Vale. I refer members to the helpful paper that has been submitted by the Association of Visiting Committees for Scottish Penal Establishments. Bill Butler will begin and there will be a series of questions thereafter.

Good morning—it is still morning—and welcome, colleagues. For the Official Report, will you explain the role of visiting committees for Scottish penal establishments?

Yes. Visiting committees are appointed in two ways. Councils appoint committees for adult prisons and the Minister for Justice appoints committees for under-21s. The functions are the same.

There have been visiting committees since the state took over the running of prisons at the end of the 19th century. Before then, they had an executive function, but they have no executive function now. Their role is to consider conditions in prisons and the welfare of prisoners and to hear any complaints that prisoners may have, follow them through and try to find answers to what is requested. The Association of Visiting Committees for Scottish Penal Establishments was formed only in 1988, so we have been running for 16 years. I was not involved back then, but the idea was to support one another, compare notes, share good practice and try to work more effectively on the training of visiting committee members.

In answer to how they define the term "rehabilitation", previous witnesses have said that they prefer the term "reintegration". How would each of you define the term "rehabilitation"?

When I knew that I was coming to the meeting, I looked up the dictionary definition of "rehabilitation", which was interesting. The definition of "rehabilitate" was

"to make fit, after … imprisonment, for earning a living or playing a part in the world".

Visiting committees would agree with that to some extent, but the definition should be much wider than that. The whole prison setting is important. In other words, there should be an holistic approach, rather than a focus on one particular part of the prison experience.

Prisoners should have better coping skills by the end of their sentence. Many prisoners, particularly the women with whom I work, come from chaotic backgrounds and have been traumatised or abused, for example. They need to learn to cope better when they leave prison. We try to provide them with skills that make them employable, if that is possible. We want to reintegrate them into the community and to reduce reoffending, if we can, although as the convener rightly said, that often happens naturally. We often find that when people reach the age of about 30 they stop offending for some reason. It is difficult to know whether that happens because they have gone through a maturing process.

We must remember that the people who come into prison have an identity. They are mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters and they bring that identity with them. It is important to recognise that we are not rubbing that identity out and that the maintenance of emotional support within families is an extremely important part of the rehabilitation process. Of course, that happens through the visits system, so the means of working towards rehabilitation is very wide.

It is important to have facilities that enable visits to be successful. The governor of Cornton Vale prison would agree that the visits room at the prison is inadequate—I think that some members have seen it. The room is very small, compared with the facilities at Greenock prison, which uses a large, open, spacious area that means that families have a good experience. When the visits area at Cornton Vale is busy and there are children around, many women are quite stressed by the end of the visit, because they have not had a good experience. That has an impact on rehabilitation, so there is much work to be done.

Noranside prison has a specific problem with access. Prisoners' families used to be collected by a prison van, which would transport them to and from the prison. That system has ended—I presume for insurance purposes, but I do not know the details—which means that if prisoners' families do not have a car, they must pay about £40 for a round trip by taxi. Members can imagine that that puts off many families. Our colleagues on the visiting committee at Noranside are considering the problem in detail, because it must be addressed.

I listened to the evidence that Professor Tombs and Bernadette Monaghan gave and I think that we need a multiagency approach that brings together local and national Government, the voluntary sector and anyone involved in criminal justice. We must see what we can do to work together on rehabilitation.

That was a full answer.

I am sorry if it was too long.

No, you gave a detailed answer. Does Bob Shewan want to add anything?

I agree with a lot of what Moira Graham said; I will not repeat it.

A very simple definition of rehabilitation is that it is changing people, we hope for the better. If that is to happen, many factors have to work together. Resettlement is a bigger and better concept than rehabilitation. If prisoners are to get back to positive living when they are discharged from prison, all the factors that work together to make for a settled life must be encouraged in the prison; for example, family contact through visits. Visits must be good experiences, but that is not always possible in closed prisons.

Closed visits in our prisons sometimes last for far too long. A prisoner may be put on closed visits because an illegal substance has been passed and received or simply because of suspicion as a result of intelligence that has been received in the prison. When the latter is the case, the situation must be examined rigorously so that closed visits do not continue month after month, as has sometimes happened.

The other part of resettlement is finding somebody a house and a job. Prison interrupts all that, unless a family can cope for the term of a sentence.

Moira Graham said that identity was important and referred to page 1 of the submission, which says:

"in order to survive they mentally occupy a different world, one which allows them to retain a sense of their own identity."

The submission also says that

"An understanding of the impact imprisonment has on the concept of identity, particularly for women, is crucial to a consideration of the notion of rehabilitation".

Will you elaborate on that?

For all of us, it is important to know who we are. An attempt to eradicate identity and to make everyone in prison the same will increase prisoners' loss of self-esteem. Their confidence can go and they can begin to feel stressed. Many of the women with whom I work undergo a bad stage during which they feel that they are lost in the prison system. That applies especially to those who are serving long sentences, who realise suddenly that they may be in prison for 10 years, which is horrible to realise. We must work hard with them to ensure that they still appreciate that they have much going for them, and to develop their skills in the prison.

So, it is essential that prisoners retain their sense of self to prepare them for—hopefully—leaving prison and being different in a positive way.

I think that it is.

Moira Graham and Bob Shewan both described the goal of rehabilitation, resettlement or even reintegration. Do prison officers understand that goal clearly?

I will speak about Cornton Vale, because I know that prison best. The prison has about 260 officers. As in any organisation that has a couple of hundred employees, those employees are not all the same and do not all have the same goals or aspirations. Some have been prison officers for a long time so they are bound to have entrenched attitudes to the job, which has changed over the years, as members know. The job now involves care more, and rehabilitation where that is possible. Some officers subscribe fully to rehabilitation and work well with prisoners. We keep hearing about good officers, but some officers do not really feel committed to rehabilitation and might do better to move on.

Do good officers outnumber bad officers or, rather, the officers who have more entrenched attitudes?

I speak only from my own perspective.

I am just asking for an impression.

I have been quite impressed by several officers whom I have come across and with whom I work closely, as have been the women. Many prisoners are supportive of officers and are concerned if the hours that they work are too long or if they work double shifts, for example. Prisoners know which officers they want to work with; they avoid the officers who have entrenched attitudes.

Does Bob Shewan's opinion coincide?

It is impossible to generalise; there is good and bad. The SPS would say that all officers are trained in rehabilitation, but we know that officers are recruited essentially for custody and restraint purposes and that they are paid a very low wage. It takes quite a lot of time to build into them a firm view of the part that they can play in rehabilitation. The training of a social worker takes two years, whereas a prison officer trains in six weeks. I doubt that it is possible to provide all the skills that are required to play an active role in rehabilitation in a six-week training programme.

Beyond that, the in-house training that goes on takes time. Those who will make a difference in delivering the programmes and rehabilitation strategies to prisoners come from the pool of experienced officers, but I would say that they represent a minority rather than the majority of prison officers.

I want to ask about short-term sentences, which we have covered quite well. I note that you say in your submission that not much can be achieved in a short period. You spoke about the problems that such sentences cause for individuals. They might lose their tenancy, for example; their life will be completely disrupted and they will find it very hard to pick it up when they come out. I do not ask you to comment on the policy of short-term sentences, but should there be—in the case of sentences of three months or less—a requirement on authorities to freeze tenancies or a requirement on employers to freeze jobs? In your view, should there be any more radical measures that would allow people on short-term sentences to pick up their lives when they get out of prison?

If we talk about radicalism, there are so many changes that one could think of that would make prisons suitable for the 21st century. I know that the SPS would say that it wants an estate that is fit for the 21st century but, to me, that is not the same as having a prison service that is fit for the 21st century.

All the evidence indicates that short-term sentences—which last for an average of 13 weeks—do not achieve much as regards rehabilitation. Nearly 50 per cent of the people who are released after a short sentence will reoffend and return to prison; that is the revolving door that we talk about. I agree with the chief inspector of prisons when he says that short-term sentences are pretty valueless and that they ought to be served—

I will stop you there. I am not asking for a comment on the policy. I know that there is a widely held view that short sentences might be worthless. Given that they exist—that is the situation that our inquiry addresses—is there anything that could be done? What radical measures could be taken?

I would like to reply to that by providing a little example. The prisoners with whom we deal are real people. I am in and out of Cornton Vale as often as three times a week and the prisoners are real people to me: I know them and I know something about their families. A prisoner who spoke to us the other week—let us call her Mary—had a simple story. She had been caught shoplifting, was brought into the prison on remand for a while and was bailed while waiting to be convicted. She lost her tenancy and her child had to go and stay with Mary's mother. She went to court and was convicted and sentenced. The time that she had spent on remand was taken into account and she went back into Cornton Vale to serve the remaining two weeks of her sentence. Because she has lost her house, she has to go back to the beginning and start again.

What the convener suggested would be most welcome—women in particular are affected by short sentences. Often, when a man goes into prison, there is still someone at home looking after the house and keeping the tenancy going. Women often lose that and their children are taken into care. As you say, they can lose their jobs as well.

They would lose their tenancy because of the remand period. If that is added on to the two weeks, they are in prison for a much longer period.

Yes. A woman would lose her tenancy and, I presume, have to start all over again to get that sorted out. If, as you suggest, a tenancy or a job could be frozen, that would be very welcome.

Do you agree with that, Bob?

I do. That is one instance among many that could be cited. Loss of home, job and sometimes of family contact can follow prison.

I want to challenge slightly what has been suggested. I have a lot of sympathy for the idea of freezing a job; however, I wonder whether the effect of that might be the opposite of what you desire. It is important that people come back out of prison: we have established that in your evidence and in the evidence from the previous panel. It is important that those people go into employment, which provides a stable environment, an income and so on. However, someone who has come out of prison is more likely to offend again, even in that environment. Will not employers be less likely to take on cons when they come out not only because of fear that those people will reoffend but because they will have to hold the jobs open if they do reoffend? Do you not think that there are risks associated with that? Socially, it is a quite reasonable comment that you make, but in the real world what you suggest might have an adverse effect.

It is a huge problem for someone with a conviction record to come out of prison and get a job, but I see the problem of freezing jobs. However, Barlinnie has active links with employers whereby there is a carry-over from prison into work, even when convictions are known. The scheme is in its early days, but if it is successful it could be replicated throughout the country, which would make a difference.

So, honesty and openness on the part of all the parties to employment is vital to someone's having a fighting chance of using employment as part of the rehabilitative process.

Yes.

A lot would depend on the crime—that goes without saying. Research suggests that if someone coming out of prison gets a job and has a supportive family, there is something like a 79 per cent chance that they will not reoffend. That is especially true in the case of men. Employment is important in the whole process, as is family support.

Are you citing specific research?

I will need to look in my papers for the figure. Yes, it was from a piece of research.

In terms of openness and people knowing that an individual has been in prison, we have work experience programmes in the community. One long-term prisoner in our independent living unit is employed by a large garage group. She has already been promised a job at the end of her sentence because her employers are so delighted with her work. She has been completely accepted. Her colleagues know what her position is—it has been well advertised in the press—and they are 100 per cent supportive of her.

Other women have had jobs in local government. In the initial stages, the person in charge of the department was open with the other employees and said to them, "We're bringing in someone from the prison on work experience." Immediately, the other people said, "We'll have to lock up our handbags and hide things away." In fact, the scheme has been an outstanding success. The person has come in, been accepted and become part of the team. It can work; people will be apprehensive to begin with, but that is the kind of thing that has to be tried to see whether it is going to take.

Could I just check which hat you are wearing at the moment? Is this all visiting committee stuff?

Yes.

So your visiting committee extends its remit beyond what goes on inside the prison walls.

In what way do you mean?

You are talking about what is happening after people leave prison, but you are wearing your prison visitor's hat.

I am building on the fact that, when people are in prison, they are doing external work experience placements with employers.

Thank you for that clarification.

We deal with those women; they talk to us about the jobs that they do outside.

I am sorry. I must have misunderstood. I was not listening carefully enough and I was getting slightly confused.

If you have visited Cornton Vale, you will know that there is no open estate for women. Outside the prison walls however, women have independent living quarters where they learn to live and order their own lives. Being outside is a big change from having everything ordered for them inside the walls. The open estate for male prisoners is a different matter, of course.

The submission from the Cornton Vale visiting committee states that addiction is a huge problem for the majority of prisoners. Can you quantify that? How successfully is the problem being addressed?

I think it is well known that something like 98 per cent of the women coming into Cornton Vale have addiction problems. On one occasion over the past year, the governor asked the prison reception to monitor the situation closely over a period. Of the women who came in during that time, 100 per cent were on drugs—sometimes literally a cocktail of drugs and sometimes just one or two. It is as if once they know that they are coming into prison, they want to take as much as they can to ensure that they have had their share.

We have an addictions team and the governor has done much to put in place an addictions strategy. The seven members of the addictions team work closely with the women. The aim is to reduce the amount of drugs that the women are taking; some may go on to methadone programmes. We should make it clear that drugs are available in prisons. In some prisons, such as the open estate at HMP Noranside, there are very real problems with the amount of drugs that are being used. It is hard to tell whether or not methadone is a satisfactory substitute, because it replaces one addiction with another. The women are aware of that, and they become anxious if they feel that their methadone script has been reduced or if it does not come at the right time. Cornton Vale does its best to deal with the drugs that come in.

Drugs come over the fence or over the wall in all prisons. They come in via visitors, they come in with women who are being admitted and they come in in body cavities—members do not need me to explain all that to them. I am not sure whether the problem will ever be dealt with satisfactorily; I do not know how we can ever deal with that problem in prisons. I am not sure whether the experience at the prison with which Bob Shewan is concerned is different.

I do not think that the percentages for drug addiction and prisoners failing drug tests when they come into prison are quite so high in the male prisons. However, I do not think that we are winning on the drugs issue in our prisons. Failures on mandatory tests still run at about 35 or 36 per cent. If the committee is thinking about rehabilitation, drug taking is one area that you could consider.

We assumed at one time that those who were drug free would move on to open prisons. In fact, drug taking is now as rife in the open prisons as it is anywhere. Prisoners who have been through a drugs relapse programme might tick the box to say that they have done it, as they do with other things, but it is a matter for debate whether those programmes make a real change and whether prisoners can resist taking drugs when they are put under pressure and when drugs are more freely available.

Would staffing levels have an impact? Would it make a difference if more staff were present to detect and prevent drug taking?

Staffing is a big issue in all the prisons. We know that in the larger male prisons, the lack of staff means that classes and programmes are sometimes closed down because staff are needed for escort duties, for example. The Reliance Custodial Services contract will make a difference only if the 5 per cent cuts that prisons are having to bear year on year do not mean that the only way that the governors can meet their budget is by reducing the number of staff. If our prison population continues to rise, the number of staff must also rise if we are going to have the quality involvement of staff with prisoners that will make a difference.

We are not aware of the 5 per cent cut in governors' budgets. Is that in the SPS?

Yes.

Yes. Last year the SPS asked all governors to cut their budgets by 5 per cent, so they all did a major exercise, in the usual way, to reduce their budgets. They were asked to make another 5 per cent cut this year; that has started to impact on staffing, because last year they trimmed back as much as they could in other areas. Perhaps I am out of order in saying this, but there is a rumour that they will be asked to make another 5 per cent cut next year.

You mentioned staffing levels in relation to preventing drugs from getting into prisons. Is there any incidence of officers turning a blind eye to drugs getting into prison, for example because a particularly difficult prisoner is perhaps easier to deal with if they are taking drugs?

I have never come across that.

I do not think that anybody would ever admit that. However, there are occasions on which drugs' route into prison could be through prison officers. That is why in Perth prison, where I serve on the visiting committee, there are random searches of officers as they go on duty.

That is helpful. You mentioned an addiction team and a seven-member harm reduction team to address the problem of addiction. Do you have a general comment on how the SPS is tackling the problem? Is it doing so successfully? Can more be done?

I imagine that the SPS has a policy on trying to reduce the amount of drug taking in prisons, on which it takes quite a rigorous line. Within prisons it would like to be as rigorous and successful as it can. However, it is a fact of life that drug-taking is endemic in the prison population.

It was suggested in your paper that rather than look specifically at drug addiction there is a need to consider its underlying causes. Are alternative programmes addressing the causes as well as the addiction? Alternatively, could organisations in the voluntary sector be brought in, such as Alcoholics Anonymous being brought into deal with alcohol addiction? I noticed that the submission from Cornton Vale visiting committee says there is not enough exchange of ideas with, and use made of tapping into, the voluntary sector, which might help.

You know about the 218 time out centre and its philosophy in dealing particularly with women on drugs. East Port House in Dundee takes a maximum of 16 men and women, some of whom are referred straight from court and some of whom have been in prison and have asked to get in. It has a specific way of working with prisoners. The model of those initiatives, particularly that of the 218 time out centre, should be replicated where possible. It is difficult to say whether that will be available, because it is resource intensive.

The SPS has bought in Cranstoun Drug Services Scotland, which has specialists in dealing with drug addiction. However, engagement with a drug reduction scheme is entirely voluntary. If a prisoner does not want to be involved, he will find ways of having his needs met. Drugs in prison also relate to violence and bullying, so the issue is wider than just the taking of drugs; it is about a way of life that is worrying.

Another aspect of prison life that you touched on is the importance of trying to maintain family links. For example, you highlighted problems in Cornton Vale concerning the inadequacy of the visiting room. Are there other aspects that need to be considered to try to improve family relationships?

I should have mentioned the little cherubs initiative in Cornton Vale. A special area has been set aside and mothers can book it and have their children there. One mother has three young children and she can arrange for them to come in together. They can play together in the little cherubs area for a couple of hours in a way that is not possible in the visits room.

There are constraints on that initiative, however. A family contact development officer must be present with a mother and her children. There are two FCDOs in Cornton Vale, but because of staff illness they have not been available. There are further problems to do with the FCDOs leave time and so on. Because of a recent staff shortage elsewhere in the prison, the FCDOs were redeployed to normal prison officer duties. At that point, the whole thing began to fall apart. They had to cancel prisoners' meetings with their families, which caused a lot of distress to the prisoners and their families.

I am not sure how to deal with that situation, but it seems to me that more people should be trained as FCDOs so that there is no immediate shortfall in which two suddenly become none and the scheme is unable to continue. However, the model is a successful one. Recently, Bob Shewan and I, with some others, saw a scheme in Maghaberry prison in Northern Ireland, where the prison goes out of its way to do a lot of work specifically with fathers and their children. When the mothers or partners come with the children, the women are taken away for a cup of tea somewhere and perhaps a chat with prison officers. Meanwhile, the fathers work closely with the children on things such as reading programmes. For example, they may build a story together; the child goes away and does some more, then comes back on another occasion and works with the father again on the story.

I think that Janice Hewitt referred to a reading scheme somewhere when she gave evidence to the committee, but I am not sure about the detail of that.

While I am on the subject of Northern Ireland, I should mention that women who were being held in Maghaberry prison were about to be transferred to another location. There are only 20 women in prison in the whole of Northern Ireland. If we had the same percentage of the total population of women in prison, we reckon that there would be only 70 women in prison in Scotland. Either we are a much more criminal society, or there is a different sentencing policy. I know that issue is outwith the committee's remit, but the committee might want to consider it in detail at another time.

It seems to me that staffing levels is a huge issue. Holidays do not seem to be built into the equation, with the result that it seems to come as a surprise when people go on holiday. Should there be a strategic view that caters for and anticipates such things and which ensures that resources and back-up exist to allow programmes to go ahead and which ensures proper staffing levels?

There are cost implications in that, as you will know. I do not think that staffing necessarily takes into account holidays, illness or stress-related issues. Moreover, when there is pressure on staff, the security and custody side must take priority while other aspects suffer. There is much more to turning one's life around in prison than simply going through the hoops of certain programmes; prisoners have to develop a whole different way of living and thinking. Being involved in art, drama, education, the chaplaincy service, discussion groups and so on are all material to giving a person a much fuller life. However, if staff shortages continually interrupt such activities, disillusion eventually kicks in and prisoners begin to think that the staff are not really serious about such things and that they are simply a good way of occasionally filling in time.

As far as voluntary sector involvement is concerned, I note that activities such as cookery classes have not really been considered. However, if one, two or three prisoners took part in such activities, would more or fewer staff be needed to police them while representatives from the voluntary sector were present?

I do not think that there is any need to police them in such a way. Obviously, the prison is responsible for ensuring that they are policed because, for example, some of the women might be high-category prisoners. However, that will be laid down by the SPS. More use could be made of the voluntary sector in some of these activities, perhaps in the same way as the learning centre is used for some activities outwith the classroom.

There seems to be an inability to deal with staff shortages in the prison. I should point out that I am not talking about the staff complement, which we feel is satisfactory. However, at the moment, eight officers are pregnant and will then—as they say—go off-line. Because the Reliance contract has not been rolled out, 10 of our officers are still on escorting duties. The recent delivery of two babies means that four officers might be tied up in the hospital. On top of all that, we still have to deal with the usual incidences of sickness and so on. Members will see from that how the situation builds up and becomes very difficult.

At one point, I discussed with the governor of Cornton Vale whether it would possible to have a pool of supply cover similar to that used in schools. I do not know whether members are familiar with that sort of setting, but 20 years ago there were no supply teachers in Scottish schools. Indeed, we were told that such a step would never work. It is now an established part of the school system.

The only problem with introducing such an approach into prisons is finding the kind of people who would be suitable for such supply work. However, I would have thought that retired policemen would have some of the necessary qualifications. After all, they do not need to be completely in the front line; they could carry out off-line work, which would allow officers to move forward and take on other necessary work. People with a social work background who have taken early retirement might be happy to come in. It cannot be beyond us to come up with a model for a pool of staff that could be used in the same way as schools use supply teachers.

But usual matters such as holidays would still be planned for. You are talking about planning for contingencies.

Yes, absolutely.

I should point out that arranging cover sometimes means calling people back from their days off or even from leave. Under the time off in lieu scheme that works in the prison service, an officer who does 40 hours' overtime within six weeks should qualify for time off. Forty hours' overtime would mean four days off. We have heard of an extreme case of a man who worked up 260 hours of TOIL, which is not four days but four weeks off. The service cannot cope with that sort of situation. Our view is that the easy way to resolve a situation like that would be to pay people overtime, but it would appear that that is not possible. TOIL is quite a big issue and it needs to be looked at.

I want to ask about the rehabilitation of vulnerable and difficult groups of prisoners. I am thinking in particular about the difficulties of rehabilitating prisoners who have mental health problems, for example in Cornton Vale, which holds a high percentage of such prisoners.

They say that 80 per cent of the women who come into Cornton Vale have a history of some kind of mental illness—indeed, some of those women are very disturbed and the difficulty is what to do with them. It has to be said that some of the women with mental health problems who come into Cornton Vale should not be in prison; they should be in some kind of hospital or care setting. It is inappropriate for them to be in prison, but that is where they are sent.

Cornton Vale has developed a team of about six or seven mental health nurses and so forth, based in Ross House, whose job it is to work with those people. Many women prisoners at Cornton Vale are vulnerable. From my experience of working with them, I can say that it would be difficult to rehabilitate them to the extent that they could be fully employable in the outside world. The team does its best with some of the women, but others will never be able to cope fully in the outside world. Some of them come in from and return to a homeless hostel setting. It is difficult for those women to reintegrate into the community in the way that we discussed earlier.

I wanted you to expand on that point because I see the drive towards employability as unrealistic for a number of prisoners.

For some of them, yes.

It seems that we are talking about two categories of prisoner, as in addition to mentally disturbed prisoners, there are also those who are physically disabled. Our newer prison blocks cater for physically disabled prisoners, but not always as sensitively as one would like.

I remember an instance of a fellow who had no legs and who was in a wheelchair. Obviously, the decision had been taken that he was self-sufficient enough to be able to cope with prison life. He was put in the disabled cell, which had a shower attached to it. Of course, as he had no legs, he had to sit to have a shower, but the seat had broken away from the wall. I am not sure why that had not been picked up on and seen to before I visited him, but I had to draw attention to the fact that it was impossible for him to have a shower unless the seat was repaired.

That example is symptomatic of the lack of genuine concern in the service. The fact that there is a disabled cell means that there is token concern about disability, but genuine concern is another matter altogether. The individual should get the kind of care in custody that the service says that it offers.

I think that we have covered much of the ground. Only one point on your list of concerns has not been covered, and that is the lack of continuity in top-level management, which can destabilise prisons. Do you mean that there are many changes at governor level?

There are changes at governor level and there are secondments of governors to headquarters for special projects. Our view is that, where that happens very often, as it has done in one or two of our prisons, the delivery of programme services is interrupted. The prison service culture is still that the governor is the top man; if he is not there, people mark time until he comes back. There must be greater awareness of the damage that can be done by the too rapid promotion of people in the service, which we know happens for lots of reasons such as people retiring, going off on long-term sick leave, and so on. The important thing is the delivery of the service at the sharp end, in the prison, and the governor and top-level management are essential to that delivery.

That is very helpful. You have given us some valuable evidence for our inquiry. The committee would probably like to have more to do with your organisation anyway, as you are in Cornton Vale three times a week and have a different, hands-on perspective of the prison system. I would like the committee to have a closer working relationship with the visiting committees.

We would value that, too.

Perhaps we can discuss at another time how we can develop that relationship. I think that we would all benefit from that. I am sure that we will be back in touch to cover some of the ground that we have not covered. I thank you both for coming to the committee and for your evidence, which has been very helpful.

Thank you very much indeed.