Rehabilitation in Prisons
The next item of business is a debate on motion S2M-2762, in the name of Pauline McNeill, on behalf of the Justice 1 Committee, on its report on its inquiry into the effectiveness of rehabilitation in prisons, which is its third report in 2005.
I thank the Conveners Group and the Parliamentary Bureau for agreeing to a slot for this debate. The Justice 1 Committee believes that our report on our inquiry into the effectiveness of rehabilitation in prisons is a focused piece of work. Although we have debated many times the roles of prison and community service, we believe that our report is a useful reference point on the subject with which it deals.
I should begin by explaining to the chamber that, as a result of a bit of a constituency crisis, I will have to leave the debate to meet the minister, which cannot be avoided, so I offer my apologies.
I thank the clerks to the committee and Laura Piacentini, who has been our adviser on the report. Her help was welcome.
The terms of reference of the report related to the fact that prison systems around the world have been undergoing profound transformations as some countries have adopted alternatives to custody and other countries have experienced an upward trend in their prisons' populations. Of course, the background to the report was the Scottish situation relating to prison conditions, particularly overcrowding. As we debate today, we have a prison population of 6,500—one in nine men from our most deprived communities, many in their early 20s—so the issue is a serious one for us.
The committee began its inquiry by trying to define what was meant by "rehabilitation". We spent many hours on that. The concept of rehabilitation has traditionally focused on reforming through treatment the characteristics of an offender, with the aim of returning offenders to the community in a better state than they were in when they arrived in prison. Our first conclusion was that rehabilitation is now a much wider concept and that there is focus on the changing and diverse circumstances that might predispose a person to lawbreaking.
The Scottish Prison Service says:
"We do not do things to people but try to facilitate change in them."—[Official Report, Justice 1 Committee, 15 September 2005; c 1068.]
The committee knows that rehabilitation will not work for everyone, but we have concluded that it is that process which ideally provides offenders who are sentenced to custody with opportunities to resist any further involvement in crime. We know that that is an ideal goal, but it is worthy of exploration. In many ways, rehabilitation is just a word that is used to describe what we are trying to achieve with offenders. Rehabilitation will be different for each offender because circumstances change, but it might include integration into a community from which the person has been excluded, developing their employability where they have been unemployed, and providing assistance with broken relationships when they have suffered from that. Those are some of the ingredients that must be part of the rehabilitation process.
The essence of our current goals is to assist offenders with their personal ambitions to reduce their offending behaviour, which is why it is worth our while to continue investing in rehabilitation in the widest sense. If we do not believe in that, we would have to say that it is not worth our spending the vast sums of money that we spend on rehabilitation programmes—although we have difficulty in quantifying those sums.
The Justice 1 Committee's report suggests that rehabilitation is not just a set of treatment programmes but is much wider. For my part, I have always been interested in the debate about whether community programmes are more effective than prisons in achieving our goals. We have heard that debate many times, and the committee's report is useful in pinning down the comparison. In my view, it is not realistic to compare an offender who has been locked in the prison system and taken away from their community with an offender who is undertaking a community sentence and is starting from a different position. With community sentencing, we are often dealing with different offenders, anyway. It is important to conclude that once we send a person to prison it is, in most cases, far harder to rehabilitate them.
I will draw to Parliament's attention some of the key recommendations in the report; I start by talking about short-term sentences. The Justice 1 Committee, ably assisted by our witnesses, wants to overturn the notion that nothing can be done to assist people through rehabilitation programmes if they are on short-term sentences. That is not to say that we should decide as a matter of policy to end short-term sentences, but the committee is clear that it wants immediate action from the Scottish Prison Service to address what can be done during short-term sentences. We know from our work that the official definition of a short-term sentence is that it is a sentence of four years or less, but references to short-term sentences can mean anything down to two weeks, or even less, in some cases.
We want the system to be flexible enough to ensure that rehabilitation fits into short-term sentences. We want the work to assess offenders and their history in its entirety to continue. Glasgow City Council social work services made the point that offenders who have started on a community service programme but have committed another crime often end up in the prison system, but no one asks them what work they have done in the community. We know that the SPS has moved forward in that regard, but we want greater continuity. We are calling for a radical rethink.
One minute.
My goodness, how time flies.
In my last minute, I will comment on the role of families and relationships. The committee emphasises that prisoners' relationships with the outside world are fundamental and that more needs to be done to connect them to the outside. The role of prison officers and the question whether they should have a dedicated role in rehabilitation need to be examined. It is fundamental to the strategy that prisoners do real work that relates to the skills that they will need outside prison.
We must also consider the role of the prison service in relation to literacy and numeracy. No one is saying that it is the prison service's job to ensure that it deals with literacy, but there is clearly a role for it in doing so. The role of the open estate is also crucial to prisoners making the transition to the community. We know that the criteria have changed and we think that that is important.
The Presiding Officer is about to nod at me to wind up, which I will do. There are a number of recommendations in the committee's report; I know that members will speak to them in greater detail than I have. I hope that members—especially members of the Justice 2 Committee, which is undertaking stage 1 of the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill—might get some useful information from the report, which is a focused piece of work. I recommend that members look at the report and at the useful work that has been done.
I move,
That the Parliament notes the recommendations contained in the Justice 1 Committee's 3rd Report 2005 (Session 2), Inquiry into the Effectiveness of Rehabilitation in Prisons (SP Paper 291).
I thank the Justice 1 Committee for its useful work and for helping to stimulate a significant debate on addressing offending and reoffending.
I will put the subject in context. Last night, we locked up 6,808 offenders in Scotland. Every person in prison brings with them a personal history that is often complex and characterised by a past that can include deprivation and addiction. The prisoner population is not homogeneous in respect of offending or of personal and social circumstances. Those factors make the task of working with individuals in prison extremely challenging. One size does not fit all; we need a range of opportunities in our prisons to encourage offenders to access initiatives that best suit their needs.
We are investing heavily in our prisons and rehabilitative work does not happen in a vacuum, so we recognise that we need to provide decent accommodation and a civilised environment as a backdrop for that work.
How does the minister measure the success of existing rehabilitation programmes?
I refer Richard Lochhead to the extensive discussion of that and other issues in the Justice 1 Committee, which probably addresses the matter more ably than I can in a short time. If any matter is not addressed, he can by all means come back to me.
We want to ensure that our current unprecedented estate development programme has an effect. We are spending £333 million over five years—an average of £1.3 million a week—on improvements to the SPS.
The inclusion of a rehabilitative aim for our prison service is a choice; a delicate balance needs to be struck in running a penal system. International experience suggests that pursuit of a single set of objectives—for example, custody or rehabilitation—can disrupt that carefully struck balance and endanger the calm and safe running of our prisons. I am pleased to say that our prisons have never been as safe as they are now for staff and prisoners. I record our thanks for the dedication and endeavours of our staff, who have made that possible.
Against that background, we can consider what supports offenders in choosing a crime-free life on their release. Much of the focus of the committee's report is on offending behaviour interventions, but simply offering offending behaviour programmes is not enough. Available international experience suggests that badly designed programmes that are poorly delivered and which target prisoners with inappropriate risk and need levels can make their situation worse, not better. That is why, since the mid-1990s, the SPS has chosen a programme strategy that is based on having in place a service-wide system of risk and needs assessment that ensures that only offenders who have specific needs and risk levels enter programmes. The effectiveness of that approach is being evaluated and refined in order that it can have a greater impact on risk and offending.
The rehabilitation and care directorate in the SPS has identified 10 intended outcomes for a prisoner on release. When prisoners are released, they will be physically and mentally well, substance free or stabilised and be able to access the most appropriate accommodation. They will be able to read, write and count and will be employable. They will be able to maintain relationships with family, peers and communities, to access community support, to live independently and to stop reoffending. They will not present a risk.
It would be wrong to discuss rehabilitation without speaking of the links between prison and the community. It is essential for successful resettlement that we prepare and support the offender at that vulnerable time. Preparation for release from prison and provision of support in the community are not just a good investment; they are essential. That is why, in the past two years, we have worked with the SPS and local authority criminal justice services groups to improve the arrangements for prisoners on release. Through the tripartite group initiative, we have provided an extra £4 million for throughcare in the past two years. Local authorities are implementing new plans.
The creation of the community justice authorities under the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill will ensure closer working with a joint purpose for all organisations that are involved in offender management, whichever side of the prison wall they happen to be on. We will require the SPS to play its full part in supporting the new arrangements that are set out in the framework document for the SPS, which was published in March, for example, by ensuring that each CJA has a single point of liaison with the SPS. I will also put in place new performance monitoring arrangements for local authorities and the prison service in order to strengthen accountability for the effectiveness of offender management services. The delivery of those new arrangements is critical to reducing reoffending and to giving the people of Scotland the safer communities that they deserve.
The Justice 1 Committee's report is only 151 paragraphs long, but the subject is enormous. The committee's attempts to engage professionals and experts in a debate on the effectiveness of rehabilitation in Scotland's prisons inevitably produced evidence that strayed well outwith what happens within the prison walls, but without the additional understanding of how rehabilitation services inside prisons link—or should link—with services outside, it would have been almost impossible to reach sensible conclusions.
Many of the issues that the report raises—particularly those that relate to short sentences, women prisoners, the burgeoning prison population and persistent reoffending—echo issues that were raised in the chamber debate two weeks ago. Gordon Jackson said that we must remember that persistent reoffending behaviour is usually established long before an individual reaches prison. I hope that I have paraphrased him accurately, as he is in the chamber. We should remind ourselves of that when we consider the report.
I do not intend to address all the issues that the report raises—indeed, I simply could not do so in the available time—but I hope to expand on one or two of them. The first issue that I want to address is what rehabilitation is and what we expect it to deliver. I now know that on that subject at least, professionals and experts are like lawyers—I mention Gordon Jackson again in that context—in that if three professionals or experts are asked the same question, there will be four different answers. The committee found itself in such a position.
In its evidence, Apex Scotland came closest to describing the more traditional understanding of rehabilitation. It said that rehabilitation 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."
Its spokesman also said:
"I prefer the term ‘reintegration'."—[Official Report, Justice 1 Committee, 29 September 2004; c 1140.]
The more traditional understanding of rehabilitation was again exploded by Dr Nancy Loucks, who said:
"I have some difficulty with the idea that someone can be become a changed person through treatment, as if that can somehow change their offending behaviour when they move back into society. Rehabilitation is more about equipping people to cope as well as they can on their release. Equipping them means that we tackle things such as addiction and help them with employment, training and literacy, which can help them to cope in the situation that they were in previously. In that way, we hope that they will be less inclined to reoffend."—[Official Report, Justice 1 Committee, 15 December 2004; c 1365.]
What the committee understood by rehabilitation, and what we expect rehabilitation to achieve, are fundamental to the inquiry and the recommendations. Paragraph 13 of the report states:
"The Committee believes that the ultimate goal of rehabilitation is the elimination of offending behaviour but recognises that there is a positive contribution to be made by reducing such behaviour".
That belief is essential to understanding the committee's recommendations. Once the basics have been established, everything else will flow from that.
I want to say something about short-term sentences and women prisoners, which are intrinsically linked. The official definition of a short-term sentence is a sentence that is less than four years, so I clarify that I will talk about what we have ended up calling very short sentences, of less than three months. We heard from the SPS that rehabilitation for short-term prisoners is "not a realistic objective" in respect of the large number of prisoners who are currently in custody, but the committee passionately disagreed with that sentiment; our view was also the predominant view of our witnesses. The majority of prisoners in our system are serving sentences of less than one year and it is not right to write them off until they return with a longer sentence. We must as a matter of course consider proper compulsory assessment of the literacy and numeracy skills of young offenders, because literacy and numeracy levels in our prisons are woeful.
Finally—this is not mentioned in the report—but we must find suitable alternatives, of which there are many, to the ridiculously short prison sentences that do much to destroy family contacts, children's lives and prospects for rehabilitation, which we all seek.
Although we have only a short time, I welcome this opportunity for members to debate this important issue. The Justice 1 Committee agonised and deliberated long and hard about the definition of rehabilitation, which is essential to understanding the issue. It came up with the crucial recognition that rehabilitation is a process, not an event. Today's debate is too short to cover all the important points that are raised in the report, but the following are those that I believe to be the most important.
Significantly, the report challenges and disputes the commonly held view that nothing can be done with short-term offenders. In fact, the opposite was found to be true. We need to concentrate more on short-term prisoners. In the first instance, we need to sort out the definition of "short term", which can range from six weeks to four years. The committee's recommendation that
"consideration should be given to defining new categories of prisoner in terms of length of sentence"
is, therefore, sensible. Unfortunately, the Scottish Prison Service is still vague in its response to that proposal.
Even in a short-term prison sentence of six weeks to three months, core issues such as basic literacy and numeracy levels can be examined. The statistics on literacy and numeracy among prisoners are alarming, and the committee rightly expressed its concern about the impact that illiteracy and innumeracy are having on rehabilitation. I very much welcome the Scottish Prison Service's commitment to screening all prisoners at induction, but there is still a lack of clarity regarding what is proposed thereafter.
Another key issue is continuity, which is essential to successful rehabilitation. When a prisoner reoffends, information concerning their previous prison experience and any community rehabilitation programmes that they were involved in should be recorded and accessible. It should not be the case that they must start all over again. Flowing from the continuity issue is the issue of resources. Too often, rehabilitation programmes and real work experience are denied to prisoners because of staff shortages: that is not good enough. If the Executive is serious about tackling reoffending, it must ensure that there are sufficient resources to ensure that prisons are adequately staffed and that contingency plans are in place to cover the inevitable staff absences. Real work experience is essential to the rehabilitation process, especially as many prisoners have never worked. The opportunity to learn real skills and to experience the discipline of work could greatly improve their chances of successful reintegration into society.
Finally, I welcome the recognition in the report that the support of families—or, where that is not appropriate, the support of a meaningful person—can make a significant contribution to sentence management within prisons and successful reintegration thereafter.
It must be stressed that working towards successful rehabilitation of prisoners will require adequate resources, especially in terms of prison staff numbers, and a radical rethink of what can be achieved in so-called short-term sentences. Those could lead to huge benefits both for the prisoners and, as a consequence, for the public in terms of reoffending rates.
The committee's report is welcome and is part of a suite of work that is being done in Parliament to provide a focus on a crucial area of criminal justice—working towards reducing reoffending. Just as we have to ensure that our justice system is transparent, fair and efficient, we must ensure that it is effective in reducing the number of offenders who commit an offence for the first time and in reducing the number of those who, once punished, reoffend. The complexities of seeking to make the system effective have been ably explored in the committee's report. I will address some of the complex issues that are raised by the report and offer some observations.
I recognise the benefit of the clearer definition of rehabilitation that the committee has put together. Within that definition, we should give greater emphasis to equipping individuals with some of the structure that is missing from their lives and begin to give them the skills and support that they have not had. We sometimes underestimate the impact that chaotic lifestyles have on young people in particular. I will come back to talk about particular issues around youth offending.
On the definition, I was struck by the evidence of Glasgow City Council criminal justice social work services, which stated:
"There is a sense that rehabilitation deals with recent matters … some of the people with whom we work have long-standing problems since their early childhood. The "re" in rehabilitate is not an option for many people who have had long-standing problems." —[Official Report, Justice 2 Committee, 15 December 2004; c 1344.]
I am aware that the committee had to limit the scope of its inquiry, but without a proper and mature debate on earlier intervention, we will not begin to address the problem.
Paragraph 13 of the report states that many
"offenders may never previously have been integrated to society",
but I attest that although many individual offenders have not integrated into society, it is unlikely that those individuals will not have been known to public agencies such as the police, social work departments or the hearings system. Information from the SPS's report "Young People in Custody in Scotland, An Occasional Paper" showed us that 76.2 per cent of all young people in custody had a history of regular truancy, 43.6 per cent had attended special schools, 9.4 per cent reported previous contact with the children's hearings system, 63.3 per cent had close friends who were involved in criminal activity, and 51.9 per cent had at least one member of their immediate family who had served a custodial sentence. Without understanding that such triggers happen very early in people's lives, we will continue to be too late to rehabilitate individuals, and when we begin that rehabilitation work, it will be that much harder.
It is easy to cite arguments for improvements in partnership working and in doing so I also acknowledge the evidence in paragraph 55 about how we have lost the clarity of what we mean by partnership working. However, within a community setting, partnership working can be effective if it is given one additional tool, which could well be the measure within the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill that will allow for home detention curfews. There should be conditions attached to those curfews that ensure that an individual is at home at a particular time, but they should also include compulsion to attend a course or programme or to continue learning in the community.
On learning, I agree with some of the Conservative party's comments to the effect that some of the skills and learning that are experienced in prisons should be real and transferable. I am delighted that Edinburgh prison is moving towards having vocational qualification courses in prison and away from some of the traditional manufacturing courses. That means that some of the qualifications that will be gained in prison will be transferable. If anything will allow for rehabilitation for individuals and for the community, it will be our prison service ensuring that individuals are fit for work, not crime.
I welcome the opportunity to debate the Justice 1 Committee's report and I also welcome the Scottish Prison Service's initial response, which said that the report sets a challenging agenda and is a valuable contribution to the debate.
The committee inquiry was about the effectiveness of rehabilitation in prisons; the committee quickly agreed that to cut recidivism in our society, we have to work to rehabilitate. I believe that we can make a difference and that prison is not just about punishment or revenge, or solely about protecting society by removing a person's freedom. Prison can and should be about rehabilitation of all prisoners, however long they are to be incarcerated. There has been a change in popular culture that reflects that change in attitude; it is now generally accepted that behaviour can be changed, and we have a responsibility to work to make those changes in our prisons. Television schedules are now full of programmes that illustrate positive behavioural changes: "Tiny Tearaways", "Children from Hell" and—my favourite—"Supernanny". That huge culture shift has already reached our prisons and is a massive challenge that the people who work in our prison system are already striving to address. On our committee visits, we saw excellent examples of the work that is being done.
I welcome the fact that the SPS has agreed with our report's recommendation that it review prison officer training to ensure that the training covers the goal of rehabilitation and that it consider the need for continuous in-service training.
Given the great deal that has been said about the inappropriateness of prison for most women, I applaud alternatives such as the 218 time-out centre in Glasgow and I look forward to the time when that system is rolled out. On our visit to Cornton Vale women's prison, I was impressed by the direction that has been taken by the regime there, which is making great strides towards dealing more holistically and in a more caring way with women than was the case in the past. Such an approach is required in all prisons, the vast majority of which are filled with younger men. We need to make a connection with our previous justice debate on violence. Given the seemingly prevalent macho culture on which such violence feeds, male prisoners must be given a similarly holistic regime so that notions of violence and machismo are not perpetuated.
In promoting rehabilitation, we should be concerned not just about the number of programmes that are delivered, but about the availability of a range of support, which should include information, skills training and attention to diet and to health generally, including sexual health. We need a whole package of opportunities, even though we need to acknowledge that, sadly, some people will never take advantage of those chances.
Young men need suitable male role models. I urge establishments not to fall into the habit of recruiting only men as prison officers, but instead to employ women from outside agencies to provide the caring side. Prison is no place to continue to use outdated and damaging stereotypes. When people come out of prison, we want them to have changed and to have had their assumptions challenged.
I will make time to mention the links centres, which are a vital part of supporting people back into the community by providing links to service providers who can help with housing and benefits. The continued development of such centres is crucial; our aim must be to ensure that we help prisoners to return to society in a more fully integrated way.
I finish by quoting Dr Nancy Loucks, who states:
"Imprisonment is a family experience."
Her research into the experiences of prisoners' families—defined in their widest sense—provides an extremely useful insight into how important such work is. If we keep that in mind, it is easier to see how rehabilitation can be made more effective.
I look forward to the discussions on the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill, which I hope will build on the work of our inquiry.
The Deputy Minister for Justice said that maintaining contact with the community is crucial to rehabilitation—but the most important community is family. I am grateful to Marlyn Glen for providing those words to preface my speech, which will also quote from the report and from evidence to the committee from Families Outside.
The Families Outside report makes it clear that imprisonment is, indeed, a family experience that may involve the prisoner's family losing their home and most of their income. The children's behaviour may deteriorate—bed wetting is common—and, furthermore, the children of those who are in and out of prison are themselves more likely to offend. Family members may become ill, either physically or mentally, and they may be shunned or ostracised by neighbours and may be disowned by their own family. Thus, the breakdown of the relationship between the prisoner and the family extends beyond the four walls of the family home.
One of the most interesting parts of the Families Outside annual report for 2003-04 is the section entitled "Can you help me get to prison?" Not many of us want to go to prison, but people need to be able to do so for visiting purposes. Referring to a 2003 survey, the report states:
"The key findings showed that:
46% of visitors relied on public transport
44% travelled with children, nearly half of whom were under five years old …
It took 40% of families between 5 and 12 hours to make an entire journey including a visit. For over 18% it took longer than 12 hours."
Simple things such as the transport of families to prison can be crucial in improving prisoners' morale and in giving them a reason to reform.
Paragraph 65 of the committee's report quotes the following evidence from Families Outside:
"‘the rehabilitation work that needs to be done between families and prisoners is crucial, but it is neglected'".
The paragraph continues with a further quote from Families Outside, which states that rehabilitation
"‘can reduce the likelihood of reoffending by up to six times'".
That position is later endorsed by Dr Loucks. The report goes on to state:
"Families Outside also emphasised the value that families could add to the process by being more involved in sentence management—
‘There is scope for families to be involved in supporting employment and training initiatives. Families should also be made aware of addiction and treatment programmes.'"
Many of us who have been involved in these issues for a long time know that much acquisitive crime is fuelled by the need to buy drugs. Many families, although not all, would like to offer support and be part of the regime that the prison is trying to develop. The problem is that, as is mentioned in paragraph 73 of the committee's report, the role of the family contact officer seems to be de minimis in many prisons, with the notable exception of Cornton Vale. Paragraph 75 states that
"in other prisons, the role is commonly allocated to staff as an additional responsibility, over and above other duties".
I suggest, as does the committee, that that is not good enough. That paragraph quotes Families Outside as saying that its main anxiety is that the prison officers who take on that responsibility often move on, so that improvement, continuity and experience are lost. That concern is reinforced by the Audit Scotland report mentioned in paragraph 78, which describes the
"variation across prisons in relation to the availability of family contact development officers."
I conclude with the committee's recommendation. Paragraph 80 states that
"rehabilitation in prisons is ad hoc, fragmentary and slow … The Committee therefore recommends that the provision of dedicated family contact officers, where it is already available, should be enhanced and protected from redeployment to other services and should be rolled out to other establishments in the prison service as a matter of priority."
That is a simple but telling step. If it reduces the chances of reoffending by so much, we should be doing more to ensure that the breakdown of the individual does not continue as a breakdown of the family. That would be a simple means to reinforcing rehabilitation.
Those of us who have served on the justice committees over the years are well aware that we must answer the question of what prisons are for. Are they to deliver only punishment through loss of freedom, or do they have a role to play in the rehabilitation of the offender? If the latter, what are the realistic expectations of what can be achieved, and can it be achieved only with a long-term sentence or with a short-term sentence too?
The report by the Justice 1 Committee into the effectiveness of rehabilitation in prison is thought-provoking, not least in its discussion of the definition of rehabilitation. What exactly are we hoping to achieve? Apex Scotland said in evidence
"that people stop offending when they decide that they want to".—[Official Report, Justice 1 Committee, 29 September 2004; c 1140.]
How do we persuade them? How do we give them the tools to enable them to want to stop offending, considering the long-standing issues that have led people to offend, including poor anger management, impetuous behaviour, bad role models, poor educational attainment and drug and alcohol abuse?
I have visited not a few prisons over the years with justice committee colleagues, with Her Majesty's inspectors of prisons and even with the Deputy Minister for Justice, and I believe that the Scottish Prison Service is engaging more positively with rehabilitation programmes now than it was five years ago. I have spoken to individual prison officers who have been deeply committed to the work that they were doing on anger management, cognitive behaviour or sex offending, but I have also been told of the pressures that such programmes are under because of lack of space or because other prison business takes priority.
We should be in no doubt that motivating prisoners and trying to address their social, psychological or mental health problems is a difficult job, and we have to ask the SPS questions about the depth of training and the remuneration of prison officers and the supervisory support that they receive. As Pauline McNeill has said, if we are to have short sentences we must also use those sentences to address reoffending.
The committee report also underlines the importance of education provision. I have always been impressed by the dedication and enthusiasm of the teachers I have met in prison classrooms. Again, they are often working in constrained circumstances. We are all now aware of the lack of literacy and numeracy skills among offenders. In many cases, that is a legacy of interrupted education through truancy or exclusion in early teenage years. That was flagged up as a major concern in evidence to the Justice 2 Committee's recent inquiry into youth justice. I am aware from correspondence between the Minister for Education and Young People and the Justice 2 Committee that there is a realisation that we need to keep hold of such youngsters in education, no matter how challenging that is.
I ask the Minister for Education and Young People and the Minister for Justice to consider the latest thinking on how to deal with people who are subject to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and who may make up a large percentage of young offenders. We have no statistics on that in this country, but statistics from other countries suggest that in those countries they make up a large proportion of the young offender population. Early diagnosis and treatment could make a difference to the future prison population and to future offending, but we are where we are. We will have made a start on rehabilitation if a person can leave prison with improved literacy and numeracy skills, with skills that are transferable from the prison workshop to the workplace and with strategies to deal with their impulsive behaviour.
What happens after prison is just as important. Housing was raised as their main issue by a group of long-term prisoners that we spoke to on a Justice 1 Committee visit to Edinburgh prison in the previous session. I imagine that that is still a major priority. There was obviously a high degree of anxiety about how they would cope out there when many of them had lost touch with their families or did not want to be in touch with them.
Drug and alcohol rehabilitation programmes are also required. I spent part of election night flanked by two policemen who wanted to bend my ear about the revolving door of prisons—in particular for drug offenders. They said that they know who the drug offenders are and that those offenders get arrested and go to jail for a few months. They come out again and resume their life of thieving and burglary to feed their drug habit. They are then arrested, go back into prison, come out again and so it goes on. The two policemen wanted to know when that cycle would stop. I hope that the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill, which is being scrutinised by the Justice 2 Committee, will put structures in place that will deliver a seamless transition from prison to community and a consistent standard of engagement with offenders, even those who are serving short sentences.
I welcome the committee's report and commend committee members for their work. They have helped to develop an understanding of what rehabilitation means, which is important.
It is valuable to recognise the ideal goal of rehabilitation, but also the smaller steps in the right direction. I agree with the committee that there is scope for working constructively with shorter-term prisoners, but that should not prevent us from continually questioning the value of those sentences. If prison is used to protect the public from offenders who pose a genuine risk, how realistic is it to achieve that protection by sending someone to prison for a few months? That disrupts their life, their accommodation, their relationships, their employment—if they have any—and traumatises those who, whatever we think of their past conduct, may be unprepared for the reality of prison.
It is also important to address some of the deeper questions. What do people want from the prison system? Is that something with which Governments are comfortable? Helena Kennedy, the Labour peer, argued that
"people are perfectly capable of hearing a … nuanced debate about crime and alternatives to prison, yet the great fear of governments is that they may hand their political opponents a trump card if they are not seen to be punitive".
What does the public really want? We know something about that from research commissioned by Safeguarding Communities-Reducing Offending, by the University of Strathclyde and others. People are, in general, much less punitive than is often thought to be the case. Punitiveness is generally a response based on fear. There is generally support for effective prevention and scepticism about prison.
I think that Patrick Harvie is on the record as having said in previous debates that he does not believe that prisons should be used to punish people. Does he believe that paedophiles should be punished?
I will use the rest of my time to talk about punishment as I have raised the issue before and I would like to expand on it. I have not argued in the past that prison should not be used for punishment: I have said that punishment should not be the objective.
The Executive has argued that there are two reasons to put people in prison: punishment and protection. Mr Henry gave evidence to the Justice 1 Committee as part of the inquiry. He stated:
"There are two aspects to imprisonment: punishment and protection. People who have committed a crime that is deemed to be sufficiently serious need to be removed from the community. … By removing the person from the public domain, some protection is afforded to the community. The wider debate concerns what happens to someone during the time that they are in prison."—[Official Report, Justice 1 Committee, 15 December 2004; c 1378.]
Surely what happens during the time that someone is in prison is absolutely central. If we fail to get that right we fail offenders, victims and society at large. The purposes of prison should be confinement—for the reasons that Hugh Henry explained—but also rehabilitation. Behaviour change does not take place without motivation. No behaviour is without purpose and motivation, and offending behaviour is no exception. Punishment might have a role to play if it is intended to deter or to achieve behaviour change, but punishment that happens merely because of a desire to make people who made others suffer experience suffering themselves—a desire to do bad things to people who did bad things to others—is self-indulgent. Worse still, if, as too often happens, punishment takes place because there is a need to appear to be doing something in a situation in which something needs to be done, it is unethical and represents a response born in fear. Our response should be born not in fear but in confidence and aspiration. The aspiration for a safer society that is freer from crime is inseparable from the aspiration that we should have for offenders to improve their lives.
Like other members, I welcome the Justice 1 Committee's report, which poses many valid questions against a background in which rehabilitation programmes in prison appear to be less than wholly effective. It is a shame that we will not have more time to debate the issues today.
Other members more than adequately outlined the facts and figures in the context of the debate. For me, the most pressing statistic is this: some 70 per cent of people who receive sentences of six months or less reoffend within two years. We should take the opportunity that the debate brings to consider how realistic it is of us to expect great improvements and to consider the help that we give to people in prison, especially people who serve short sentences.
What do we know about effective rehabilitation? As Pauline McNeill said before she left the chamber, we know that there is a lower rate of recidivism among people who serve their sentences in the community. We also know that a person who is sent to prison must overcome several obstacles that they would not face if an alternative to custody was used. They are taken away from family support; there is a greater chance of relationship breakdown; their attitudes to their experience are understandably more belligerent; and they must suffer other people's attitudes towards them when they come out.
The minister touched on a key ingredient of the debate when he talked about who offenders are. By and large, the profile of offenders is clear: young men from poor backgrounds are overwhelmingly represented. The Justice 1 Committee knows that a recent report indicated that people from the 100 poorest wards in Scotland are disproportionately represented in the prison population. Such prisoners' literacy, numeracy and other skills are often underdeveloped and a family member has often been in jail. When I visited Low Moss prison recently, the governor explained why such young men come back into his custody again and again. He said, "We send them back to exactly where they came from—exactly where they faced the problems that led to their offending in the first instance."
Whether a person reoffends after completing their sentence is a key measure of the success of rehabilitation. Maureen Macmillan was right to highlight the contribution to the debate of the witness from Apex Scotland, who said:
"people stop offending when they decide that they want to, for whatever reason."—[Official Report, Justice 1 Committee, 29 September 2004; c 1140.]
The key question is therefore: what help do we give people when they want to change their lifestyles? Criminologists say that it is pointless to believe that the criminal justice system can solve the problem on its own—that is a theme that runs throughout the committee's report. The report recommends multi-agency working and acknowledges that the approach is doomed to fail unless we involve other agencies to do with housing, benefits, education, employment, health and so on, so that those agencies can work in tandem to attack the root causes of offending behaviour. The report says that offenders must return to the community
"better ‘equipped' to cope with the challenges of their lives".
We must ask ourselves how we help people to cope with the poverty that drove them to offend, the violence in the family or community in which they live, and the addictions that they are fighting. Is it realistic to expect reduced rates of reoffending without addressing those challenges? That is the key question.
I will quickly touch on two matters that the report mentions. The report makes a valuable contribution to the debate when it quotes the following statement by a witness in the committee's inquiry:
"we know that officers are recruited essentially for custody and restraint purposes and that they are paid a very low wage."
The report also says that just
"80 prison staff are engaged full-time in the delivery of programmes"
to do with rehabilitation.
That is a signal that we have to ask the Scottish Prison Service to re-examine its systems. Rather than techniques of custody and restraint, techniques of rehabilitation have to be given greater priority in officers' training.
I will finish by asking the minister a question. It seems to me that there may well be a role for mentors in the prison service. Young men can be influenced by other young men, so if young men have come out of prison and been effectively reintegrated into society, can they be used as role models? They may have a bigger influence than the authoritative style of custody that young men in prison presently face.
I came to this inquiry late but I support the Justice 1 Committee's reasons for taking it on. I thank the convener and the committee clerks for helping me to get up to speed quickly so that I could play a part in the report.
Deciding what we mean by rehabilitation is central to the discussion. I agreed—as did Bruce McFee—when Apex Scotland said that the term that we use should probably be "reintegration". I accept that there will be exceptions, but people generally offend because they feel excluded from the society that they live in. They feel no ownership or involvement and therefore feel no responsibility.
If people feel included, they are less likely to offend. I acknowledge that children and families also give us a place in our community, and I will come back to that point, but one way in which most of us feel part of our society is through our work. Work is central to many people's lives—but how much more difficult it is for people to find work if they are illiterate or innumerate. Statistics show that many prisoners have difficulties with reading, writing and numbers. One way of helping them to reintegrate would be to help them develop those skills while in prison.
I acknowledge that it can be difficult to identify prisoners' needs for help with literacy and numeracy. Many prisoners will try to hide their problems. It is therefore important that the SPS increases its efforts in assessing prisoners so that resources can be properly targeted at basic skill needs. I draw members' attention to the recommendations in paragraphs 84 to 86 of the Justice 1 Committee's report.
If we are serious about rehabilitation, it must be properly funded. From what the committee saw, and from what we heard in evidence, I believe that the SPS is spending more than the £2.2 million for staff costs that it was able to identify. The Audit Scotland figure of £30 million for "correctional opportunities" is probably closer. However, the disparity in the figures is a problem. How can we ensure that money is spent effectively and is delivering results if we are not sure how much is going in? I urge the SPS to consider Audit Scotland's recommendations on how better to identify spend on rehabilitation. That would allow us to ensure that we do not make unreasonable savings from a budget that we all—from what I have heard today—consider to be important.
I said that I would come back to the issue of families. From evidence given to the committee, it was clear that a prisoner's family has a significant impact on that prisoner's ability to reintegrate. Those who keep family ties are more likely to have a reason to address their behaviour. One prisoner whom I met at Glenochil said that he was looking forward to returning to the outside world. He had developed a new relationship and, for the very first time, was making plans for his future.
Like other members, I acknowledge that distance and transport issues can cause problems. However, the message from the committee's report is that rehabilitation is an important part of the penal process. A message that we have to get across to everyone is that rehabilitation is in the interests of the offender, yes, but it also benefits victims or possible future victims. Furthermore, society and the community at large will not suffer the ill effects of illegal behaviour.
I support the view that rehabilitation is important, as expressed by the committee in paragraph 13 of its report, but I recognise that prisoners are individuals and that rehab packages have to be tailored. I also believe that the packages have to continue when offenders are back out in the community, so that they can be supported in fully reintegrating. Prison services and continuing community services have to be joined up.
The report contains many points that I hope the Executive will take on board and use to make progress on rehabilitation.
I, too, welcome the report. I want to concentrate on the importance of drug rehabilitation in our prisons, which is a subject that I have raised time and again with successive ministers over the past six years.
Drug rehabilitation must be put higher up the political agenda in Scotland because it is an area in which we can make a huge difference to communities and to people's lives. As someone who represents Grampian in the Parliament, I have been closely involved in addressing drug-related crime for the past six years. We must remember that over that period Grampian has had some of the worst drug-related crime statistics. The local police say that between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of crime in the region relates to drugs. The governor of the local prison at Craiginches says that more than 70 per cent of the prisoners are there for drug-related crime. If we really want to make a difference to people's lives and cut crime rates, drug rehabilitation should be much higher up the agenda.
I suggest that delivery should be focused on the prisons, where there is a captive audience. I was very interested in a statistic from a study in England that revealed that 664 addicts had committed 70,000 offences over a three-month period. I would be surprised if equivalent figures north of the border were much different. One can easily argue that in Scotland tens of thousands of offences are committed by a small number of drug addicts in similarly short timescales year in, year out. Why on earth are we not making the task of trying to cure such people of their drug habits while they are in prison a much higher political priority? That would enable us to break the cycle of crime, imprisonment and drugs and get rid of the revolving-door syndrome that we keep talking about.
The case for drug rehabilitation stacks up economically. As I can never get Scottish statistics, I must again refer to statistics from south of the border, which say that it costs £3,500 per prisoner to deliver a drug rehabilitation programme in an English prison. The figure for a Scottish prison might be similar, but I do not know—one can never get such information out of the Scottish Prison Service or Executive ministers. It costs roughly £33,000 per annum to keep someone in prison in Scotland. The economic case for rehabilitation stacks up—that is not to mention the cost of drug-related crime to our communities, which would be cut if we were to cut the number of people who commit such crime.
In my experience, the delivery of drug rehabilitation programmes in our prisons has been plagued—and, in some cases, continues to be plagued—by a number of issues. The report that we are debating is effective in highlighting the lack of availability of resources and drug rehabilitation programmes. That must be addressed, as must the high turnover among staff who deliver such programmes. I have come across statistics that show that addiction nurses leave every few months and have to be replaced, which in some cases leads to a halt in the delivery of programmes. I hope that that situation has improved over the past few months.
Overall staff shortages in our prisons cause problems. I am aware that on several occasions rehabilitation work—not just on drugs, but in other areas—at Craiginches prison in Aberdeen has had to stop because the prison officers involved had to go and do escort duties. The recent report by the chief inspector of prisons for Scotland said that the drug-testing centre at Craiginches had to close for 176 days between 2003 and 2004. For 169 of those 176 days, the closure was due to the fact that prison officers had been diverted to escort duties.
I know that that issue has been addressed by the Government, but there are many other examples of staff shortages causing problems. The fact that we have overcrowded prisons and staff shortages means that adequate rehabilitation programmes cannot be delivered. That is why MSPs such as me bang on about why overcrowding and shortages of prison officers must be addressed if we are to carry out effective rehabilitation.
Drug rehabilitation works. I will again make use of English statistics because no Scottish ones exist. The Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust, which delivers many of the rehabilitation programmes south of the border, says that only 16 per cent of the prisoners who graduate from its programmes are reconvicted, whereas 43 per cent of non-graduates of its programmes are reconvicted. Rehabilitation programmes work, so let us push the issue higher up the political agenda. That would make a significant difference to cutting crime in our communities and would save a lot of misery for the many families who have members who are drug addicts. For goodness' sake, let us have Scottish statistics and information. I ask the Government to start to measure the success of existing rehabilitation programmes so that we can find out how to improve them.
I begin by referring to Colin Fox's speech, which was characteristically thoughtful. I am reminded of the tale of Horatio Bottomley, a well-known MP in the first part of the last century who was eventually imprisoned. Another MP who was on an official visit to the prison found him sewing mailbags and said, "Ah, Bottomley—sewing?" to which Bottomley replied, "No, reaping." In some way, the story typifies the idea of punishment in that era.
I say with respect that, in his speech, Patrick Harvie showed that he may not have thought through his philosophy on the issue. Perhaps in a future debate we should try to define the point at which punishment should come into play. Sad to say, human nature is such that punishment has a role to play. Where the dividing line between punishment and rehabilitation is to be found and how to avoid the revolving door are subjects that we will have to think about again in another debate.
Pauline McNeill cut straight to the chase by saying that the effectiveness of rehabilitation is a moot point. Many members asked why rehab is not available to prisoners on shorter sentences of six weeks to four years. MSPs are elected to the Scottish Parliament for four years; we know that four years is a long time. I therefore find the lack of rehab during those sentences astonishing. Although I was not party to the report, I fully support the recommendation that consideration should be given to rehab for people on shorter sentences.
The minister drew our attention to the improvements that the SPS has made. Indeed, he also alluded to the arrangements for prisoners on release. Again, we will need to look at the matter in greater depth at another time.
Bruce McFee made a good contribution to the debate. He took us back to the 1960s idea that it is only normal that people do not get rehab before they leave prison. He also highlighted the issue of suitable alternatives to short custodial sentences.
Margaret Mitchell made a thoughtful speech in which she, too, drew attention to issues arising from sentences of six weeks to four years. She spoke about the contribution that support from prison officers can make.
Richard Lochhead advanced the crucial argument that we are not concentrating enough on the issue of drugs. I endorse absolutely what he said. We know that the drug problem is out there: drugs are the cause of much sadness and the reason why people go into prison and prostitution. I do not doubt the figures that Richard Lochhead gave. No doubt he is right to say that it costs £33,000 a year to keep someone in prison. It might be cheaper to send them away to Eton or somewhere like that.
That might be a worse punishment.
It probably would be a worse punishment. We could ask Jamie McGrigor about that.
This speech will be my last contribution to a Justice 1 Committee debate. I have been on the committee but a short time. Next week, a motion will be laid before the Parliament to transfer me to the Enterprise and Culture Committee. I will be back with Alex Neil—already my Justice 1 Committee colleagues are looking very pleased to hear that I am leaving them.
I thank my committee colleagues for putting up with a member who quite often was not at meetings. I pay particular tribute to the clerks for their support. Having never served on a justice committee before, I had to embark on a steep learning curve. Although I did not reach the top, my time on the committee has been useful. I give thanks to committee members, clerks and, indeed, the Deputy Minister for Justice.
Like other members, I compliment the Justice 1 Committee on its comprehensive and thoughtful report. Obviously, a considerable amount of research and work went into its preparation.
Notwithstanding the slightly eccentric contribution from Patrick Harvie, most members agree that custody has three purposes: the protection of society in serious cases, punishment and rehabilitation. The measure of success of rehabilitation is the reduction in overall offending or the cessation of criminality by the individual concerned. None of us in the chamber is happy with the results that we have seen in relation to the effectiveness of rehabilitation. All of us are well aware of and deeply concerned about the fact that the reoffending rate is so high.
Bill Aitken talks about measuring the effectiveness of rehabilitation. I would like to underline the fact that my speech was intended to question the role of punishment and not to rule it out, so will he tell the chamber how we should measure the effectiveness of punishment?
Again, as I said, the effectiveness of punishment has to relate to the frequency or, indeed, the cessation of criminality. Unfortunately, over the past number of years, a bias away from punishment has grown in the system and the overall figures may reflect that.
One of the principal arguments in the committee's report relates to the attitude of the Scottish Prison Service regarding short sentences. The SPS has got it totally wrong. There is room for rehabilitation in all but the shortest sentences. I hope that the minister will lean on the SPS to put some work into that.
The assessment that the committee proposes is interesting. It could be applied not only to the duration of the sentence, but to the type of person involved. Some criminals are professional and incorrigible. However, the vast majority have probably drifted into crime as a result of unemployment and drugs. I have great respect for Apex Scotland and other organisations that do so much to get people who have been convicted and served custodial sentences back into work—some, of course, for the first time, which raises questions about the benefits system, although we cannot explore that matter here.
Will the member give way?
I am sorry, but I am short of time.
As Mary Mulligan pointed out, literacy is another important aspect, on which a lot of work has to be done. However, as has been said in many debates, one of our principal problems is drugs and the drug culture. The Executive must be criticised for not doing enough to reduce the level of drug taking in prison. I remember visiting Barlinnie prison in the first year of the Parliament and seeing a unit to which prisoners could volunteer to go to stay clear of drugs—the existence of such a unit was in itself an indictment of the system. The people there were working hard, but there was a secondary problem—as soon as the prisoners were released from prison, the temptation of drug pushers came their way. Not enough is being done in respect of external rehabilitation. The Justice 1 Committee is correct to point out that external agencies should be doing more.
We will see what happens as time advances, but none of us is happy about the success rate of rehabilitation in prison. There has to be a lot more work and consideration, but the committee is to be congratulated on its efforts.
The report is short, as is the debate, but a considerable number of matters have been raised, including literacy and numeracy skills, the role of families in rehabilitation, tackling drugs and the importance of social work departments interacting with organisations within and without prisons.
We welcome the fact that the report seeks to bring together and harmonise two fundamental issues—prison and rehabilitation. Prison is an unwelcome necessity in our society and—unless we believe in utopia—it is here to stay. Rehabilitation is a by-product of prison, not its primary function. The Justice 1 Committee is to be commended for reviewing the effectiveness of rehabilitation and prison and for seeking improvements. There is no suggestion of an immediate cure for problems, because there is none. We need to enhance and improve what we have and bring in innovative measures, but there is no silver or magic bullet. The report is welcome and worthy and should be treated as such.
Prison and rehabilitation are distinct. I agree with the deputy minister and disagree with Mr Harvie. The primary function of prison is the punishment of offenders and the protection of the public. That is its core value. Following from that is rehabilitation, but rehabilitation is not the primary purpose of prison. People are not sent to prison to be rehabilitated. If we wish to rehabilitate people because they have a drug or alcohol addiction, we should send them to whatever organisation exists to address that problem. The primary reason for sending somebody to prison is that they have committed an offence that our society views as of such magnitude that it can be marked only by a prison sentence and/or that they are such a danger that they require to be confined for the safety and security of the rest of society.
Rehabilitation is important, because we live in a society in which we do not wish prisoners to break rocks, work in the salt pans or simply eat porridge. A democratic, civilised society has a duty to do what it can to reintegrate people who are in prison. The important point that I take from the report is that, in many instances, we need to drive at reintegration, not rehabilitation. Many members mentioned the importance of maintaining family links and dealing with numeracy and literacy skills. We must address those issues, because they go back to the reasons why people are in prison in the first place. In many cases, they are there because of deprivation or addiction.
We must consider how to fine tune the system and ensure that treatments that take place in prison continue outwith it. However, we delude ourselves if we suggest that the aim of prison is to rehabilitate, although prison can assist in that. When we confine people or punish them, we have a duty to do our best to reintegrate them into society, but that can never be the core or kernel, because prison is simply not capable of that. We can ensure that, as far as possible, we have a seamless system, that families can attend and that we provide drug and other addiction services, but, fundamentally, we must recognise that the primary role of prison is to punish and protect. While prisoners are in the care of society, we must do our best to rehabilitate them, but that is a distinct matter. The Justice 1 Committee has done a worthy job in showing how the two issues interact, but we must accept that they are distinct.
I agree entirely with the point with which Kenny MacAskill finished his speech: prison is used to protect the public from the behaviour of individuals. We punish individuals in that way when we deem their offences to be significantly serious, but, while they are in prison, we have an obligation to consider how we can encourage them to change their behaviour and how we can prepare them for reintegration into society. With that in mind, we must get smarter at evaluating the impact that our interventions have on prisoners. I accept that the issue is complex with many interacting variables, but we need to know whether what we are doing makes a difference and, if so, what part makes the biggest difference. I hope that the research will continue to examine the most effective methods.
Given Dr Loucks's evidence to the Justice 1 Committee that a person is six times less likely to reoffend if they keep up family contact, what steps will the Executive take to have more family contact officers in prisons, following the Cornton Vale model?
I intended to come to that issue. Pauline McNeill, Christine Grahame and others mentioned the importance of family contact, which we recognise. The most recent prisoner survey showed that 91 per cent of prisoners are in regular contact with someone outside the prison and that four in 10 prisoners receive weekly visits. As that contact is important, we are reviewing the role of the family contact development officers. We want to ensure that staff are used correctly and that interventions are appropriate. If we can improve on the service that they deliver, we will do so.
I will touch on the issue of short-term prisoners. The minister, Cathy Jamieson, and I have said several times that there are people in prison who should not be there and that we need to find alternatives for them. We recognise the futility of some very short sentences. Much of our recent work has been focused on those issues. However, it is wrong to say that the SPS does not work with short-term prisoners, although we need to be realistic about what short-term prisoners can obtain from the SPS. The SPS tries to help short-term prisoners who have addictions and attempts to stabilise drug users. It also assists short-term prisoners with health problems, provides help with identifying accommodation and employment opportunities and supports and facilitates family contact.
As some members have said, there are significant issues with literacy and numeracy. However, it is not realistic for us to ask the SPS to undo during a very short sentence the damage that has been done in someone's life. We need to strike a balance and ensure that we deliver what is appropriate whenever we can.
Jeremy Purvis touched on the home detention curfews. The Minister for Justice said in evidence to the Justice 2 Committee on the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill that it is estimated that around 25 per cent of those released on home detention curfews would have additional conditions attached that provide for interventions to reduce offending behaviour.
Margaret Mitchell asked about the definitions of short-term and long-term sentences. The distinction in the legal definitions was drawn in the Prisoners and Criminal Proceedings (Scotland) Act 1993, which the Conservative Government of the time introduced. We all acknowledge that things have moved on and we need to consider not just what is happening with those who are in prison short term, but alternatives to their coming in.
Margaret Mitchell also raised the issue of having adequate staffing levels to allow rehabilitative work, which relates to Richard Lochhead's complaint about prison staff being dragged away to perform escort duties. If my memory serves me right, Richard Lochhead opposed the measures that we took to ensure that prison staff were not dragged away in that manner. That is an example of inconsistency.
In general, the debate has been good and we have heard useful contributions. All of us across the parties in the chamber agree that significant work needs to be done. I hope that we can agree about the purpose of prison and I look forward to the committee's recommendations helping to inform our approach to rehabilitation in prisons in the period to come.
Given that I speak as the deputy convener of the Justice 1 Committee, I will start on a consensual note by highlighting one thing on which the deputy minister and I clearly have exactly the same policy: we both went to the hairdresser this week to let the sun in at the top.
I hope that colleagues will not misunderstand me when I say that I know many people who are currently in prison—of course, they are mainly staff rather than prisoners. On an administrative matter, I know that the convener of the committee, Pauline McNeill, had to leave the debate early. There was no discourtesy intended; she had a long-arranged meeting with a minister. Sometimes parliamentary business fights against such things. I know that she and other members of the committee will read the Official Report carefully. We thank all those who contributed to the debate; everyone has said something worth listening to.
The committee has received responses to its report from both the SPS and the Executive. I will examine those responses and consider the extent to which they address what the committee said in its report and what was said in the debate today. The SPS's initial response—as it is described—states:
"in custodial settings … imprisonment – and particularly short-term imprisonment – tends to make things worse rather than better".
There is broad consensus on that. It also states:
"Rehabilitation requires the willing and indeed consistent co-operation of the offender if it is to make a difference."
The committee's report is about rehabilitation in prison, although it became apparent almost at once that rehabilitation could not, must not and shall not finish at the prison gates. Indeed, prison is merely an opportunity to commence rehabilitation; certainly in only a very few instances is it the opportunity to complete rehabilitation. Therefore, we must not raise overly our expectations about what the Prison Service can do on its own. Indeed, the response from the SPS makes the point that
"offence-specific work is … positive … for a whole raft of reasons, though the impact on subsequent recidivism is likely to be marginal."
That reflects the reality of the situation. As Kenny MacAskill and others have said, prison is not rehabilitation in itself; it is merely an opportunity to start the process of rehabilitation.
The committee's report has a significant number of recommendations, although I might argue with the SPS's belief that there are 35 of them. The SPS makes the fair point that implementing all the recommendations will require the investment of additional money that it does not currently have. Perfectly properly, what the committee has done has been ambitious, but we have not imposed undue constraints by setting timetables for the implementation of all the recommendations. I hope that the recommendations will stand the test of time, will be prioritised and will, over time, be resourced to ensure that they are implemented.
The SPS says that it will need to evaluate the impact of implementing the recommendations to determine the likely value for money of each proposal. We cannot gainsay that. The effect of implementing many of the recommendations—and, indeed, of doing many of the things that we do in the criminal justice system—is extremely long term. We will not know whether we have made real differences for, perhaps, a decade. However, within that decade, we must make decisions that assume that the interventions that we are going to make will have particular effects. We must not draw back from acting on a number of the recommendations in the report if the consensus is that they will deliver value, even if there is currently an absence of objective, factual feedback that says that they will definitely work. We have to go forward on the basis of believing that they will work and we have to test that belief against the information that becomes available over time.
I welcome the fact that—if I have read the SPS's response correctly—the task force of the international round-table for correctional excellence is chaired by the SPS. That shows leadership on the part of the SPS.
The SPS and others will know that I have not always been its firmest friend. However, when I kick lumps off it, I do not deny that many excellent things are done in the service. I welcome the fact that Alec Spencer and Tom Fox are at the back of the chamber, listening carefully to what we have been saying today.
The SPS's response makes observations about the complex interactions that exist in relation to reconviction data. That is absolutely factual and we must be careful in that regard. The response adumbrates a number of reviews.
The Executive's response to the committee's report is perhaps not entirely clear in relation to what we said about literacy and numeracy. It refers to the learning for life programme. I hope that that programme is addressing the committee's concerns in that regard. I think that it probably is.
The Executive makes the rather bold claim that the SPS believes that an outcome of the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill will be the elimination of offending behaviour. Would that I could accept that that is true.
As the minister said, 6,808 people were in prison last night. However, let us not forget that that means that 5 million people were not in prison last night. When we put people in prison, we do so for the benefit of those 5 million others. Furthermore, although most people in our prisons come from our most impoverished communities, we must never forget that the overwhelming majority of people in those communities are law abiding and deserve our support.
I close by repeating the obvious. Rehabilitation can start in prison, but in our efforts we must ensure that there is continuity of rehabilitation from prison, through release and into the community, for as long as it takes.