Offenders (Rehabilitation)
The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-02337, in the name of Alison McInnes, on prisons.
10:26
It is a pleasure to be able to move my motion. It is not often that we talk about reducing crime in the context of the services that are available for those who have committed a crime. I think that that is unfortunate. Scotland’s prisons are overcrowded. Our prison population has increased by 25 per cent over the past 10 years. That is a worrying statistic in itself, but if we delve a little deeper we get to truly startling figures: 62 per cent of Scottish prisoners reoffend within two years of being released and more than one in 10 offenders who went to prison in 2010 had served 10 or more previous prison sentences.
Audit Scotland’s recent report on the criminal justice system identified that the cost per prisoner place is £34,279 per year, which does not include the cost of processing the case through the courts. It is clear that it is time for us to take a new look at the rehabilitation services and programmes that we provide in prisons. That is what our motion is about: the opportunities that we provide for those who find themselves behind bars.
I use the word “opportunities” quite deliberately; of course we do not seek to reward people for committing a crime, but it is only right that we give them the chance to better themselves. It is our responsibility to give offenders the chance to address the issues that led them to prison in the first place and the chance to move past their crime and contribute positively to society. Frankly, if we are not giving offenders that chance, we are failing them and—just as bad—we are failing the society that they are being released back into. Indeed, it is only in giving offenders the chance to better themselves that prison can be said to be working.
At present, our prisons simply do not have the capacity or the facilities that are needed to support properly the rehabilitation of offenders, so what we get instead is a vicious cycle. Existing rehabilitation programmes cannot succeed, at least partly because prisoners have limited access to them in overcrowded prisons. That means that fewer offenders can successfully participate in the programmes, more offenders reoffend, the prison population grows still further and the rehabilitation programmes become still less able to cope.
I am happy to recognise that good progress is being made on the prison estate itself. HMP Low Moss opened its doors just this week, plans for the new HMP Grampian at Peterhead are moving forward and the Government’s recent budget included £20 million to be spent on much-needed improvements to the women’s prison estate. Those are all positive steps. However, when all is said and done, there is only so much that can be achieved by modernising the prison estate. We must also address the rehabilitation programmes themselves. Audit Scotland concluded:
“Funding arrangements are complex and do not always provide a financial incentive to reduce reoffending.”
As I said, the reconviction rate in Scotland is too high but, more worryingly, it is consistent. The reconviction rate today is more or less the same as it was 13 years ago when the Parliament first opened. In that time, the rate has never varied by more than a few percentage points either way, despite the Government having a national indicator to reduce offending.
How can we revolutionise prisoner rehabilitation and finally start to bring down the reconviction rate? We believe that we need help from specialists. The simple fact is that, when ex-offenders get a job after leaving prison, the likelihood of their reoffending is cut dramatically—by as much as 50 per cent. However, figures show that offenders are 13 times more likely to be unemployed than those in the rest of society. The Scottish Prison Service’s latest survey reveals stark numbers on the problems that many offenders face. Forty per cent of prisoners reported that drug use was a problem for them on the outside; a quarter of prisoners reported that alcohol use had affected their ability to hold down a job; and one in five prisoners reported problems with literacy and numeracy.
Social enterprise is well placed to tackle holistically the range of needs of repeat offenders. In Scotland and throughout the United Kingdom, we are blessed with a wealth of voluntary organisations, social enterprises and charities that specialise in providing precisely the sort of support that those offenders need to push them back towards playing a positive role in society. Therefore, why not look to those bodies to do just that?
There are plenty of examples of innovative approaches to tackling reoffending, such as the Foundation Training Company, which is a not-for-profit organisation that provides a through-the-gate mentoring and resettlement service for prisoners. The organisation leads programmes and workshops in prisons that are aimed at equipping offenders with computer skills and which provide literacy and job application training. To date, the Foundation Training Company has helped more than 11,000 prisoners, 95 per cent of whom have achieved at least one nationally recognised award. Research from the Home Office has shown that the likelihood of reoffending is reduced by 7 per cent among those who have completed one of the Foundation Training Company’s courses.
Those are the sort of positive and innovative interventions that we should do everything possible to encourage. The Liberal Democrats believe that using the social impact bond model is the perfect way to do just that.
The member refers to social impact bonds. The RAND Europe report on planning and implementation of the social impact bond at Peterborough prison highlighted the need to understand better the risks of financial transfer, the need for new money, the scalability and the monetised benefit. Although I accept that SIBs might have a place in successful rehabilitation programmes, does the member accept that it might be better to await the further report on the Peterborough project before we proceed to a pilot of our own?
No, I do not accept that. There is good reason to proceed with further pilots to assess the model. The Finance Committee has considered the issue and Audit Scotland has recommended that we have a look at the model. Therefore, we should push forward with it.
I will outline how social impact bonds work and explain why I think that they are a good idea. They are contracts with Government or local authorities, with a commitment to pay for agreed social outcomes. In the case of offenders, that would be lower rates of reoffending. On that basis, investment is raised and used to fund interventions, such as rehabilitation or work programmes. If the interventions succeed, the investors’ initial outlay is repaid by the Government, along with a financial return that is scaled in relation to the degree of success, which in the case of offenders would be exactly how much reoffending has reduced. That contrasts with Audit Scotland’s conclusion that
“The way criminal justice social work services are currently funded does not provide a financial incentive to change offenders’ behaviour”.
That is a reason why social impact bonds are a good way forward.
The payment-by-results approach has a couple of other benefits. First, there is no cost to the public purse unless reoffending is reduced. The Government pays only for the finished painting, rather than simply buying a canvas and a brush and hoping for the best. By bringing new money into the criminal justice system on the basis of repayment that is based on results, the Government can introduce a solid preventative spending initiative even at a time when the budget is stretched.
That leads directly to the second and more important reason why we believe that social impact bonds should be piloted in Scotland. Because the investment risk is kept squarely on private sector investors, there is a motivation for operators of the schemes to ensure that they succeed. That means that high standards are maintained and innovation is encouraged. In turn, that provides us with a further opportunity. As innovative new ideas are developed, spurred on by the payment-by-results model, the Government can monitor progress and, ultimately, adopt the most successful initiatives as examples of future best practice.
The use of social impact bonds can also help to shift the focus for the expert organisations. Rather than jump through bureaucratic red tape to secure grant funding, they can work co-operatively and move the focus of their efforts much more on to the social impact of their work.
Members might be aware of the pilot that is under way at Peterborough prison in which a number of organisations, including the YMCA and Supporting Others through Volunteer Action—SOVA—are using their expertise to provide support to short-term prisoners. The scheme still has a while left to run, as Chic Brodie said, before we see quantifiable evidence on its success, but the initial reports are largely positive. The report “Social Impact Bonds. The One Service. One year on”, which reflects on the first 12 months of the scheme, is a fascinating read and it highlights another benefit of the social impact bond model—the ability for service providers to identify and target individual needs in a far greater way than the existing programmes. The initial figures in the report suggest that 88 per cent of prisoners who were part of the programme in the first year underwent a successful assignment.
Given the current financial climate, which means that we must carefully evaluate our spending commitments, and the continuing high levels of reoffending in Scotland, this is surely an ideal time to move ahead with our own pilot schemes. Truth be told, I hoped that our motion would receive support from the Government benches, but Kenny MacAskill’s amendment suggests that that will not be the case. That is disappointing, not least because, as recently as last May, we seemed to be in agreement on the issue. Indeed, the following line was in the Scottish National Party’s manifesto:
“We will identify and commence three projects through which we can pilot Social Impact Bonds.”
That commitment is echoed in our motion, yet by lodging his amendment, the cabinet secretary seems to be pulling back from that position. When will he introduce a pilot scheme, and why will he not commit to the use of social impact bonds in prisons?
The use of social impact bonds would encourage greater innovation in our offender rehabilitation programmes. We should not miss this important opportunity finally to make some real progress on reducing reoffending. I hope that the Parliament will support our motion.
I move,
That the Parliament recognises that successful rehabilitation is vital in order to reduce reoffending rates and support ex-offenders to turn their lives around; further recognises the role that voluntary organisations and social enterprises can play in delivering innovative and high quality programmes to address offending behaviour; believes that Social Impact Bonds have the potential to deliver a new approach to investment in rehabilitation, which incentivises innovation and rewards positive outcomes, and calls on the Scottish Government to pilot the Social Impact Bond model as a new approach to prison rehabilitation and reducing reoffending.
10:36
I thank Alison McInnes and my other Liberal Democrat colleagues for highlighting reoffending. I welcome their shared commitment to tackling this difficult issue. As Alison McInnes eloquently narrated, reoffending creates victims, damages communities and wastes the potential of offenders themselves. It comes at a significant cost, it is a waste of talent and it damages our communities. It is something that we must tackle if we are to have the safer and stronger communities that we all want to have.
I will try to say more on this if I have time, but the purpose of our amendment is not to detract in any way from the ethos of what Alison McInnes is proposing. Indeed, we are happy to look at matters, and I give her that undertaking.
Prison will always be the right place for some offenders. Those who have committed the most serious crimes and who present the greatest threat to the public must always go to jail. However, it is the wrong place for many of those who are in our jails today—the low-level, repeat offenders. They are a nuisance in our communities and they are frequently destructive, but they are not necessarily a danger. They need alcohol and drug services and, as Alison McInnes pointed out, they need mentors to show them a better way of life and services that actively address their offending behaviour. Such services need to be available both within prisons, for those who are serving a custodial sentence, and in the community, for those who have been released and those who have been given a community sentence as a direct alternative.
Since we came into government in 2007, we have been working to tackle reoffending, which is probably the single biggest challenge that we face. We introduced the presumption against prison sentences of less than three months and we were grateful for the support that the Liberal Democrats gave at that time. We introduced the presumption for the reason that Alison McInnes articulated in her speech—because such sentences simply do not work. Three quarters of those who are given a custodial sentence of six months or less reoffend within two years, whereas two thirds of those who are given a tough community sentence do not. Given the cost of such custodial sentences, they are simply not economic, and moreover they do not work. They simply produce the churn and cycle of reoffending that harms so many communities.
On that basis, we created the community payback order, which is an effective alternative to short-term prison sentences. We are rolling out nationwide the award-winning whole system approach for young people who offend, and we have improved the information that those who sentence offenders require in order to impose the most appropriate sentence for the individual and the community in which they reside.
Alongside those measures, we have invested in the prison service and, of course, in work to reduce reoffending. Since 2007, we have invested £368 million in the prison infrastructure. As Alison McInnes pointed out, this week sees the first prisoners move into the new, state-of-the-art Low Moss prison, which has been delivered on time and on budget. It is run by the Scottish Prison Service and its staff.
Offenders in the prison will be expected to work or to be involved in other purposeful activity for 35 hours a week. When offenders are expected to be working or to be engaged in another useful activity, power in their cells will be switched off. Prison staff will work with those who are in custody for the first time and those who are persistent offenders to help them to stop offending.
In the spending review, we announced a reducing reoffending change fund of £7.5 million. We intend to use the fund to bring about changes so that services that are effective in reducing reoffending are supported sustainably, are expanded and are embedded in mainstream provision. I do not know the precise detail of the matter that Alison McInnes referred to, but I am happy to look at it. We recognise that much of the work in this area is provided by the third sector, whether by Routes Out of Prostitution, the agency that she referred to, Sacro or others. They provide an outstanding service.
As I said, I welcome the fact that the Liberal Democrats have a shared commitment to tackling reoffending. I agree that we need to be open to looking at all fresh approaches to funding in this area, whether social impact bonds, public-social partnerships or other options. We are working actively with partners, including the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, voluntary organisations and others with relevant expertise, to develop options for a new system of community justice funding. As the First Minister has said, we do not claim to be the fount of all wisdom. We recognise that not everything can be delivered by community justice authorities, local authorities, social work departments or even the SPS. The involvement of other agencies is required. I put on record our gratitude to faith groups, which contribute greatly on a voluntary basis.
The result of all that work is that reoffending has been falling—one-year reconviction rates are at their lowest in 11 years. That is a tribute to the hard work of the people who work with offenders every day and the measures that we have taken. We are looking to build on those achievements, which is why we have set up the commission on women offenders, which is chaired by Dame Elish Angiolini. The commission is due to report in the next few weeks. I look forward to receiving its recommendations and am hopeful that we can achieve cross-party support in implementing them.
In addition, we are entering a new phase of our programme to reduce reoffending. It will build on the work in phase 1, to ensure that good practice is embedded everywhere and that services that work to reduce reoffending are available across Scotland.
At the start of this Government’s first term in office, Henry McLeish’s Scottish Prisons Commission starkly set out the choice that the Government had to make. With the support of the Liberal Democrats, we chose to build a system of effective community justice. Reoffending has fallen, but we believe that it can fall further.
Let me be clear that the Government is as committed in our second term as we were in our first to reducing reoffending. I welcome the Liberal Democrats’ motion. I am happy to give an undertaking to look at the matters that Alison McInnes raised and to get back to her. I believe that, together, we can continue to make progress, and I look forward to continuing to receive cross-party support when we receive the Angiolini report.
I move amendment S4M-02337.1, to leave out from “; believes” to end and insert:
“, and welcomes that the Scottish Government will explore the potential of innovative approaches to funding, including the piloting of Social Impact Bonds and public social partnerships, to support preventative spend measures.”
10:44
As has been said, an effective justice system must protect communities, support victims and seek to rehabilitate offenders. That means that those who have been imprisoned should be supported to change their behaviour, when they are willing to do so, so that when they come out of prison they can lead better lives and no longer pose a threat to the communities in which they live. That is the focus of the debate, which we welcome. The question is whether new models of support can help to deliver real change in levels of reoffending and how their success in changing behaviours can be measured.
There is cross-party support for exploring the potential of social impact bonds, for example—there was a commitment on that in our manifesto and in other manifestos for last year’s elections—even if it is too early to come to firm conclusions about the longer-term impact of that approach. However, it is important to put new models into the context of what we already know about what makes for the effective rehabilitation of offenders. We know, for example, that prisoners’ ability to access their families can help to reduce reoffending by giving purpose and focus to prisoners’ lives. That is why we believe that local prisons are important and why, for example, we opposed the Scottish Government’s plans to close Aberdeen prison and replace it with HMP Grampian, an hour’s bus journey away in Peterhead.
If families can help with the rehabilitation of offenders, those families will need support as they deal with a wide range of emotional and practical pressures, quite apart from the challenge of keeping in touch with the imprisoned person. That is why organisations that work with prisoners’ families, such as Families Outside, have an important role to play. Whatever new models are developed must recognise and support the good work that is already being done that indirectly supports the rehabilitation of offenders as well as the work that is directly engaged in that task.
We have prison education services in place that can and should make a difference to prisoners’ lives. The basis on which those services are provided in a number of prisons in the east of Scotland has changed recently, and concerns have been raised about the range and quality of education that will be available to prisoners in future. I would welcome the cabinet secretary’s comments on how the standards of prison education services are to be assessed and maintained both under the current arrangements and under any new models for providing rehabilitation.
Working and learning should not be incidental to periods of imprisonment; they should define everyday life in Scotland’s prisons. It is in the classroom and the workroom that prisoners can learn the skills that they need to make real and meaningful changes to their lives. That is why it is disappointing that, even in our most modern and well-resourced jails, too many prisoners are not able to engage regularly in constructive activities. Repeat offenders on shorter sentences—the very people who should be given the chance to change their ways before they go back into our communities—often have no access to work programmes. It is worth saying that people are sent to jail by sheriffs rather than put on community service orders for a reason, and the challenge of rehabilitation applies whatever the length of the sentence.
Too many people come out of our jails with a drugs habit that they did not have when they went in. That is also a challenge for the system.
In that context, it is all the more important that ministers should think again about their proposals to scrap prison visiting committees. Plenty of ex-offenders will confirm that prison visitors were the mentors—the cabinet secretary referred to mentors—who helped to set them on the path to a life without crime.
We need more, not less, independent scrutiny in our prison system, particularly if new models of support for rehabilitation are to deliver better outcomes for local communities rather than simply lower costs for the Government. The evidence on new models is limited to date, but it is generally positive. The pilot project that uses social impact bonds to fund rehabilitation at HMP Peterborough was originally authorised by Labour ministers, and it has been running since September 2010. By definition, it is too early to measure the effectiveness of that approach in terms of the frequency or rates of reoffending. The model has succeeded in drawing in non-Government finance to support rehabilitation, but there are still issues to be resolved around the measurement of outcomes and avoiding very complex contractual arrangements. Those issues can be resolved, and we support further work on how to deliver new models of support for the rehabilitation of offenders.
It is critical that the whole range of Government policies on prisons supports rehabilitation, and we will continue to press ministers to ensure that they pursue the right range of policies for the benefit of those in prison and in the interests of the wider community.
10:49
I thank Alison McInnes for bringing the subject to the chamber and for highlighting an imaginative approach to rehabilitation that is being piloted by the Government down south.
In his last annual report, our chief inspector of prisons noted that, apart from
“punishment ... and the need to secure offenders during their sentence ... the most important reason for sending offenders to prison is to prepare them for release back in to the community; the foremost aim must be to reform and rehabilitate and so reduce the risks of re-offending.”
That view is admirable and was central to the great penal reform debates of the 19th century. We must believe that people are capable of redemption and of turning their lives around, and we must do what we can to assist that process, even if we are often disappointed and frustrated when good intentions come to naught.
As members know, the prisons inspectorate reviewed Cornton Vale prison and young offenders institution this year and concluded that there was not
“sufficient purposeful activity and rehabilitative work available”
for prisoners. I acknowledge that the Scottish Government and the Justice Committee have followed up that comment, but it is right to take the opportunity to examine the challenges and opportunities—we see them from that observation—that modernising the delivery of rehabilitation services presents in the prison estate and in the community.
As others have said, the prison population in Scotland has increased steadily. I whole-heartedly welcome that as a factor in the fall in the crime rate to a 30-year low, even if the Scottish Government refuses to acknowledge that connection. However, I would be the first to say that the debate is not about sentencing policy and that sentencing people to prison cannot be just about locking them up and public safety.
Rehabilitation and work programmes are essential, as is an integrated approach, so that no artificial barrier is placed between rehabilitation programmes in prison, rehabilitation’s role in community sentencing and its continuing function of dealing with offenders on completion of their sentences. We must also bear it in mind that an essential part of rehabilitation is assisting prisoners and those who are on community sentences to tackle their problems with addictions and their educational shortfalls in literacy and numeracy, as part of the road to redemption and rehabilitation.
Community payback schemes need to operate not just as an alternative to imprisonment in which the public can have confidence, but as a component that can be bolted on to an on-going programme of support and rehabilitation when a sentence has been completed. A significant number of charities and voluntary and private sector organisations already work on the rehabilitation of offenders, such as Apex Scotland and Sacro. Their contribution needs to be encouraged and supported when positive results are being achieved.
Effective rehabilitation not only benefits the offender and his family but is a sensible investment for society. We have often heard of the £40,000 per annum that providing bed and board for a prisoner costs the taxpayer, but equally disturbing is the cost of an unproductive lifetime that is spent on benefits if we do not help people to turn around their lives and engage meaningfully in our society.
The irony is that, although solid financial savings to society and us as taxpayers can be quantified from the rehabilitation of offenders, funding to achieve the objective is in short supply. That is why investment in social impact bonds is particularly important in financing the role that voluntary organisations and social enterprises can play in such work.
The bonds are flexible on delivery—they can be adjusted for a range of providers to co-operate to try to achieve outcomes and can encourage innovation in service delivery, so long as positive outcomes are met. That is more than just a modern interpretation of philanthropy; it is a vehicle to recognise the genuine benefits that can accrue from money that is injected into and invested in this important area. I will say more about that in my summation.
I support the motion in Alison McInnes’s name. I do not share her pessimistic view of the amendment that the cabinet secretary lodged; I am prepared to accept in good faith his assurances and to support his amendment, too.
10:54
I, too, very much welcome the debate and the consensus across the chamber about reoffending. I will not reprise the figures and percentages, which have been cited. The costs of a prisoner are in the tens of thousands per annum, yet most of that is wasted funding. The prison population has been rising and, if it goes on as it has done, it is predicted to rise to 9,500 by 2019-20. The population has been rising over my entire 12 years—almost 13—in the Parliament. We must look to reduce the waste of public funding and human potential yet retain the element of punishment and, most certainly, public protection. There remains the conundrum of how to deliver those elements along with effective rehabilitation, effective early interventions, diversions from prosecution and alternatives to custody.
We have trod this path before. I take members back to February 2003, when the Justice 1 Committee—I think that Richard Simpson was there, I was a member of the committee and Jim Wallace was the Minister for Justice—held an inquiry into alternatives to custody. It is regrettable that everything that we said then is still valid now.
I even recall a proposal that local alternatives to custody should be available at the touch of the sheriff clerk’s fingertips on a computer, so that the sheriff would have up-to-date information at his or her disposal should he or she be considering options other than custody. I do not know whether that is now the case. I hope to be enlightened later in the debate.
We have talked about the social impact bond that is being piloted in Peterborough. I note that the cabinet secretary is not setting social impact bonds to the side and is prepared to consider them. I think that the Liberal Democrats should therefore be able to accept his amendment.
Programmes are, of course, already funded by a mix of central Government, local government, charitable and corporate funding. For instance, Turning Point is funded by Lloyds TSB, the Robertson Trust, the KPMG Foundation, the Tudor Trust and the lottery. That brings me to a Turning Point programme that I believe is exceptional: the 218 service in Glasgow. Some members of the Health and Sport Committee visited the service earlier this year as part of a preliminary fact-finding task on women in prison. Others went to Cornton Vale and HMP Saughton, where some of the women are held.
Many of the women are, like many prisoners, damaged. I think that it was a senior procurator fiscal who said many years ago—I paraphrase—that in prison there are the bad, the mad and the sad. Indeed, a high proportion of those who are incarcerated have mental health issues. Many have been victims themselves, which may be part of the genesis of their criminality. However, to take that on board does not mean that we are going soft on crime: we are looking to break the cycle.
The 218 service has 12 beds. The women must have a commitment to turn around their lives. Some had been in before, had failed and had come back. We had time to speak to the residents and the discussions were very enlightening. Many of the residents had been in care and, sadly, because of their offending, their children are now in care. That is another cycle that requires to be broken. I observe that that might be one of the factors that contributed—I am not saying that it is, but it might have been—to their criminality. Another contributing factor that surprised me was not drugs but alcohol. Many of the women were in there as a result of excessive abuse of alcohol. That issue was touched on in yesterday’s debate; as I said, that debate could well have been a justice debate rather than a health debate.
Across the chamber, the task is to reassure the public that diversions from prosecution, alternatives to custody and putting money into rehabilitation are not soft options. Those options must be tough and we know that if they are tough, they work. That does not always require public funding and it does not always take funding from the justice portfolio; it must take funding from education, health, housing and employment, which all have a part to play in breaking the cycle.
10:58
I thank the Liberal Democrats for bringing the issue to the chamber so that we can have a serious debate on how we address reoffending in Scotland. Reducing reoffending is a major issue in all countries throughout the world and there have many been many attempts to tackle it.
I will touch on the innocent victims of imprisonment: children. Children of prisoners are a very vulnerable group in society and the facts show that more children in Scotland experience a parent’s imprisonment than a parent’s divorce.
Ensuring that children have the rights that they are entitled to while a parent is in prison can be an effective tool in tackling reoffending among the parents. Brigadier Hugh Monro said that if good contact is maintained between prisoners and families, the risk of reoffending is dramatically lowered. Maintaining good contact between a child and their parent can be good for the child’s development as well as the level of recidivism among parents.
There are no definitive statistics on the number of children who have a parent in prison. However, in the UK alone, there are 17,000 children with mothers sent to prison each year; the total of incarcerated parents is estimated to be two and a half times the number of children in care and six times the number on the child protection register.
The time from the principal arrest of a parent to the court case and subsequent imprisonment can be traumatic for a child, who often does not understand what is happening in the judicial system. The effects are often many and varied, and each child is uniquely affected. Children can suffer a range of emotional, behavioural, educational and financial problems, many of which the average adult would be unable to cope with, and which lead to developmental problems and antisocial behaviour later in life. If such children are not supported, they are left standing outside the revolving door of reoffending, just as many parents are.
Prison visits by children are limited, for a number of reasons, and we need to encourage the use of family visits, but there are also opportunities for video and telephone calls. Those things do not, however, replace the relationship that a parent can have with her children or the relationship that children need if they are to grow and develop.
Before Christmas I had the pleasure of visiting HMP Perth, and was given a tour of the refurbished visiting centre and also the external visitors centre that provides support and advice to families who have a relative in jail. The external centre, which is run by CrossReach, provides emotional support and advice on benefits, health and care. External visitors centres are valuable, and they should be mandatory in Scotland, as they are in England. I commend the Government’s guarantee that all new prisons will have improved centres for family visits.
Yesterday was the most recent meeting of the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on families affected by imprisonment, which works closely with Families Outside. The speaker, Oliver Robertson from the Quaker United Nations Office, gave a fantastic update on the recent day of general discussion with the UN children’s rights committee. The day provided many recommendations for a set of international guidelines on how to handle children with incarcerated parents, with much focus on reoffending. A few examples of good practice were discussed, from countries that are less developed than Scotland. One example from Jamaica was the creation of PrisonBook, a heavily regulated form of Facebook, through which parents and children can have regular contact. In Poland, the police are given guidelines and protocols on how to handle children, and when they arrest a parent they take the child into a separate room. Those are just some of the examples of good practice that were discussed during the UN’s day of general discussion and then raised in the cross-party group.
While we are looking at our justice system and assessing reoffending in Scotland, we must also look at good practice internationally to keep people, especially parents, out of prison and away from a life of crime. If we keep parents out of prison, we have a better chance of keeping future generations out too.
11:03
I thank Alison McInnes for bringing this debate to the chamber, and I hope that she is less disappointed after hearing the cabinet secretary’s reassurances that he is not dismissing the social impact bonds but has an open mind on many of the suggestions and is looking at many different ways of resolving some of the problems of reoffending.
Rehabilitation is extremely important, but so is understanding why people offend in the first instance. Members across the chamber acknowledge, I think, that there are far too many people in the criminal justice system and in prison who, because of the type of offence that they have committed, probably should not be there. Christine Grahame made a valid point about how often it is a cycle that needs to be broken. Too often families engage in the cycle because their parents did, and perhaps their parents before them—it is a life of crime. We need to look at the social impact of crime in our society and to afford people who enter into crime new opportunities to move away from it. That is about giving them self-belief, self-worth and self-respect.
People need to respect not only themselves and the wellbeing of their families, but their communities too. We are some way along that journey thanks to the community payback option, which has led to a reduction in reoffending. Communities are benefiting from that model because they engage with the community payback orders that local authorities implement.
Like others, I extend my gratitude to all the third sector parties involved in tackling reoffending. There are so many organisations that afford people various opportunities through their programmes. Turning Point, which has been mentioned, is a valuable organisation that works throughout Scotland.
If there was an easy fix, we would not have this problem, but there is not. We must consider every aspect of reoffending and look at why people get into the offending mode in the first place. As I have mentioned, that often relates to where people are in their lives, whether they are in employment, their family status and their place in society.
We can point the finger at drugs, alcohol and so many other social problems that occur in communities, but many people do not enter into crime, so we must look at the facts that are before us and ask what makes some people go into crime. The majority of crimes are low level, and prison is certainly not the place for those offenders.
With regard to rehabilitation and prisoners’ visiting rights, Mary Fee made the exceptionally good point that prisoners should be in an environment that is conducive to the rehabilitation programme. There is consensus among members from all parties, I think, that we need not only affordable but effective rehabilitation. I look forward to engaging in a further debate, I hope, once we have seen the results from the Angiolini commission later this year.
11:07
Unfortunately, I must begin my contribution by agreeing with Christine Grahame and acknowledging all that she said about the 218 project in Glasgow. It is an excellent project that tackles reoffending, and it is well worth supporting.
Today’s debate is rightly concerned with rehabilitation. I welcome Alison McInnes’s interest in that area and in particular her efforts in respect of the women’s prison at Cornton Vale. As other members have acknowledged, the purpose of a prison service is to hold prisoners safely in a secure environment, to punish them, to ensure the public’s safety, and—just as important—to address reoffending through education and other programmes.
I have already stated in the chamber my admiration for the work that is carried out across the prison sector in delivering the first two elements of a prison service’s duties. Unfortunately, however, evidence of success in addressing reoffending is thin on the ground and, despite regular pronouncements to the contrary, a great deal of effort is required in that regard.
At the Justice Committee we have heard much about the management of overcrowded prison facilities and the introduction to the system of additional capacity, including the new prison at Low Moss, which is to be welcomed. However, questions on the literacy and numeracy courses that are delivered received broad-brush responses that lacked detail on precisely how the Scottish Prison Service intends to deliver satisfactory courses against achievable targets and to publish results.
The most recent figures show that the rate of reoffending within two years of liberation stands at 42.4 per cent, yet Her Majesty’s chief inspector of Prisons, Hugh Monro, has regularly commented on the significant amount of time that prisoners of all ages spend inactive in their cells, avoiding opportunities for improvement. The challenge for the authorities is to tackle that and to provide the kinds of courses that deliver success. As members have pointed out, that will be no easy task, but it is a prize worth winning. Literacy and numeracy levels across the prison population remain stubbornly low, leaving the majority of prisoners incapable of filling in application forms or dealing with job interviews after release. That is not a good outcome in what is an already depressed employment market.
Much has been said about social impact bonds. If the model can be shown to deliver success while maintaining the necessary security within prisons, why should it not be used? However, that will be a matter for the authorities and I hope that the cabinet secretary will tell us how he intends to encourage results from the initiatives that he announced today and outlined in his speech.
The key demand is that the authorities focus and take steps to deliver on reoffending rates. Prisoner release dates should be linked to successful prisoner participation in education and behaviour improvement courses. Moreover, prisons should be empowered to reduce methadone programmes for each prisoner over the period of their sentence. The return of men and women to our communities with little home support or little evidence of educational improvement and without a new-found independence from methadone creates the fertile circumstances that prepare them for reoffending.
In her motion, Alison McInnes draws proper attention to the issues and challenges that the authorities must respond to. I support the motion and welcome the cabinet secretary’s positive approach in his opening speech.
11:11
First of all, I thank Alison McInnes for lodging a motion on what is an important issue.
When we think about offenders, we find it all too easy to think purely in terms of punishment, public safety and deterrence. However, as far as the individual in question and society are concerned, in this era of preventative spending, rehabilitation in all its forms and reducing reoffending must be priorities. With regard to rehabilitation, I am pleased to note the terms of the Government’s press release on Low Moss.
As we all know, cutting reoffending is a long-term business and, as with minimum pricing, there is no silver bullet for it. As a result, I believe that we should consider the use of social impact bonds. Although they have been welcomed by Conservative proponents of the big society, the idea was embraced initially by the former Labour Home Secretary, Jack Straw, as Lewis Macdonald made clear. The Peterborough pilot raised £5 million from 17 social investors and is expected to involve 3,000 short-term prisoners set to leave Peterborough prison over a six-year period. The voluntary organisations involved, including YMCA and various trusts, aim to concentrate on improving the education skills and confidence of short-term prisoners in jail to make them better able to integrate into the community. Support organisations will provide intensive assistance after prisoner release to help individuals to settle into the community. Early indications are that participation is high; indeed, a key factor of the Peterborough trial is that its participants are volunteers. The fact that prisoners have expressed the desire to seek help and avoid reoffending is welcome and the Scottish Government should certainly be open to innovative schemes that help former prisoners to readjust.
However, the only report so far on the Peterborough project was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice 10 months ago. It states:
“given the early stage of development of the Peterborough SIB, we are unable to draw conclusions about or comment on outcomes.”
My understanding is that the minimum possible period for assessing reoffending rates is two years and nine months from the project’s start and that investors can look forward to a return only after the project’s fourth year. Whatever the merits of the Peterborough project, it is really too early for the Scottish Government to reach a considered view on it.
Moreover, how likely is it that SIBs will attract funding entirely additional to that for the third sector? After all, we might well need a high rate of return in order to attract investors. In addition, to make real savings in cash, significant scale will be required. From the Government’s point of view, savings might not be great, and set-up costs might be high.
Therefore, we should not assume that social impact bonds are a panacea. A more straightforward public-social partnership might have something to teach us, too.
Will the member give way?
I have limited time, so I cannot.
When the Justice Committee was taking evidence on the Scottish Government’s budget, we highlighted the fact that the obligation to produce throughcare plans for offenders was restricted to those offenders serving sentences of four years or more. The committee was keen for consideration to be given to extending that to short-term prisoners. In its evidence to the committee, Sacro welcomed the positive steps that are already being taken to address reoffending and reduce the reliance on short-term custodial sentences. Therefore, when we consider reoffending, we should bear in mind that the SNP Government is already committed to the reducing reoffending change fund and that, although reoffending rates are still way too high, they are dropping, albeit modestly.
In addition, as the cabinet secretary has said, the whole-system approach specifically targets young people who offend.
As I have said, we should be open to new ideas in relation to reoffending. I hope that, when the time is right, the Government will give full consideration to at least one social impact bond pilot project; it should certainly not dismiss the idea out of hand.
11:16
This has been an interesting and useful debate with some excellent contributions. I thank Lewis Macdonald for pointing out that the social impact bond model was conceived by his Government and is now being implemented by mine. It is only fair that credit is given where it is due and that we acknowledge the cross-party interest in the use of the tool as a weapon to tackle a problem that is of concern to us all.
I was impressed by what Mary Fee said about the impact of prison on children and families and the need to address some of the problems that arise in that context if we are to break the cycle that she described. There was a great deal of truth in what she said. It was also instructive to hear from her of the international examples of ways of dealing with that particular problem.
Graeme Pearson was right to highlight the problem of tackling the poor literacy and numeracy levels among prisoners. There is far too much inactivity in our prisons. There needs to be more purposeful direction. There is no shortage of time to devote to tackling the underlying educational deficiencies; what there seems to be a shortage of are the necessary programmes. That needs to be addressed. We need to be able to lever in additional funding to support programmes of that nature. A social impact bond may be the sort of project that can be of benefit to us in helping to tackle that fundamental problem. If that problem is not tackled, there will be no rehabilitation of people once they are out of prison and back in society.
From the discussion, we have seen that investment in social impact bonds can fund the role that voluntary organisations and social enterprises can play in rehabilitation. It is a form of venture capitalism, as it were, with an added social purpose. Depending on how the programmes perform against set targets, Government can pay out to investors on the basis of the economic value to the Government and the taxpayer of the progress that has been made.
Roderick Campbell gave us some additional information and highlighted some fair warnings about how one might assess the value and outcomes of the Peterborough project. He was right to do that because a multitude of factors are involved, and sometimes results can be skewed by factors that are not directly related to the programme, such as the fact that participation is voluntary. On the other hand, I think that the initiative is worth trying. That was the message that came out of today’s debate. There is no magic bullet, but we must try to do something, because we believe in the value of redemption and of turning people’s lives around, as I said in my opening speech. We might be frustrated and sometimes disappointed at the outcome, but that is no reason to write ideas off or to write people off. We all have a moral purpose in government to try to do something.
As we have heard, this is an area in which there can be a great deal of co-operation between Her Majesty’s Government and Scotland in relation to programmes down south and what we are trying to do here. We can learn from one another and I welcome the cabinet secretary’s comments in that respect. We look forward to learning more from him about the innovative approaches to funding that he intends to pursue in the area of rehabilitation.
11:20
Alison McInnes reminded us of the poor outcomes: 62 per cent of prisoners reoffend, and the figure is even higher for young prisoners. Although there has been a little progress, we have a long way to go.
Christine Grahame reminded us eloquently that we debated the issue back in the first session of Parliament. Indeed, one of the initiatives of which I was most proud as justice minister was the 218 centre for which we got funding. It is a matter of some regret that that unique and successful Scottish centre has not been replicated for men, or for other women. The cabinet secretary might like to take another look at that. We will see what the Angiolini commission comes up with—I hope that it supports the centre.
As Dennis Robertson from the SNP and my colleague Lewis Macdonald indicated, reoffending is a complex issue. We must begin by understanding the needs of each individual prisoner and the barriers that they face in addressing their reoffending. As Lewis Macdonald said, it is clear that being close to home and family is important, as is tackling problems such as drugs and alcohol. We need to address not only illiteracy, which Graeme Pearson mentioned, but communication difficulties more generally. Areas such as education and the acquisition of skills need improvement, and we need to address all the barriers to effective reintegration into the community.
Scotland’s futures forum held a seminar on the innovative impact of social impact bonds, which, as Lewis Macdonald reminded us, was a pilot initiated by Labour at Westminster and continued by the coalition Government. The futures forum noted that prevention was often the first to suffer cuts in times of austerity, so SIBs were a way in which we might leverage in funds. However, it urged caution in that if there is to be a return to investors of between 3 and 13 per cent depending on the outcomes, we need to be very clear about those outcomes. It called for clarity on the goals.
One perceived advantage of the social impact bond is that it can bring together multiple agencies. An individual who has not only the core problems caused by drug or alcohol but literacy and communication problems, housing problems and employment problems can be treated holistically. Under the recovery framework, drug services should really be providing that holistic care, but I accept that the links are not easy to make, particularly in aftercare, out of prison.
Meaningful educational activity in prison is still far too sparse. Hugh Monro said in his annual report that a common theme was
“poor access to activities such as education, employability training, work, PE and programmes.”
David McLetchie reminded us that at Cornton Vale, 65 per cent of prisoners are locked in their cells and that only 35 per cent engage in meaningful activity. Although something has been done to deal with that, we do not go far enough. Glenochil is just as bad. It is unacceptable because we all pay the price when prisoners reoffend. The inspector has said:
“I would like to see increased opportunities and encouragement for prisoners to access alcohol reduction programmes. Too often I see addressing alcohol issues as being ... less important”.
He said that we needed to do more about that, perhaps particularly in Polmont.
Graeme Pearson called for tighter key performance indicators on activity in prisons. I support that call. Mary Fee talked about her commitment to families affected by imprisonment and mentioned the cross-party group on families affected by imprisonment.
We need to consider a charter of rights for the children of those in prison, like the one in the United States, perhaps as part of the children’s rights bill. Families are an important area.
Visitor committees are important. We do not have a programme for those. We need to have one in every prison, and not just Saughton and Perth. I hope that the Barlinnie one opening next month will receive support from the Government.
The Government’s amendment is interesting but I hope that, when he sums up, the cabinet secretary will go a little further in justifying it. As Roderick Campbell said, we should be cautious. However, we also need to be fairly detailed in our approach to the issue.
11:25
Justice debates in the chamber are frequently rumbustious and confrontational, and it is fair to say that, sometimes, they generate more heat than light. However, this has been a remarkably consensual debate. I pay tribute to the Liberal Democrats for bringing the issue to the chamber and to Alison McInnes for setting the tenor of the debate, in which there has been cross-party consensus. Whether it is what Mary Fee said about the specific needs of children or what Dennis Robertson said about the underlying causes of a lack of self-worth among individuals, we recognise that there is an issue. I hope that the Liberals accept that our amendment was lodged not as a wrecking amendment, but in the spirit of seeking to work together.
I do, indeed, welcome the cabinet secretary’s positive comments this morning, but I will press him a little on timescale. In 2009-10, the Scottish Prison Service delivered only 56 minutes of developmental activity per prisoner per day. We need to do better, and SIBs are one way of drawing ethical finance in when times are tight. Can the cabinet secretary give me some reassurance on the timescale?
As Roderick Campbell eloquently said, we must build on the evidence. The only scheme of which we are aware is in Peterborough and I am happy to look at it, although it is fair to say—especially in a justice debate—that the jury is out. I give the member a commitment to look at the scheme with an open mind. I do not want to give a commitment on the timescale, but I am happy to look at the scheme. Given that it was started by Labour and supported by the coalition, we take no ideological view of it; we will look at what has worked, which is why we will also consider the concept of public-social partnerships.
The fundamental ethos of the debate has been about recognising the good reasons for tackling reoffending. There are financial challenges and questions about how best to use our public funds, as the cost of keeping someone in prison is significant and the cost of constructing prisons is even greater. However, as members have pointed out, there is also a moral obligation to deal with people with fundamental problems, whether with dyslexia and literacy, which Graeme Pearson and other members mentioned, or with drugs and alcohol, which Christine Grahame mentioned. We have a moral duty to help people who face challenges, although it is accepted by members around the chamber—perhaps more by some than by others—that prison will always be the right place for some people. Those who pose a danger to our communities must go there, and there must be imprisonment for serious offending. In other cases, however, we must consider other ways.
This is a common cause and there are good schemes out there, which have been commented on. The 218 centre was mentioned, first by Christine Grahame and then by Dr Richard Simpson. I visited the centre a few weeks back and had a cup of coffee with 15 or 18 of the women there. It was quite challenging but very thought provoking. I look forward to Elish Angiolini’s report but, having not seen it, I am not in a position to comment on it. Nevertheless, the Government looks forward to building on it. I have no doubt that Elish Angiolini, Dr Linda de Caestecker and Sheriff Danny Scullion will have given great thought to it. That may mean building on the 218 centre, as I cannot believe that they would take anything other than the same supportive view of it. When I visited the centre, I was told that Elish Angiolini had been there in her role as chair of the commission.
There is a need to reduce reoffending and, as Roderick Campbell said, the reducing reoffending change fund is about working together to do what we can. Some of the work must be in other portfolios, as it is not just prison officers, prison governors and criminal justice social workers who have a role. There is recognition from members around the chamber of the outstanding contribution that the third sector makes—whether through Sacro, the 218 centre or Turning Point, all of which play a great role.
Equally, we must make common cause across portfolios and we seek to do that at a governmental level. Some of the problems are to do with the lack of educational or work opportunities for individuals, and there are health issues, such as low-level mental ill health, for example. We must tackle those problems.
We know what works in reducing reoffending and getting people back on the straight and narrow. They need a home to go to and some contact with family, whether it be mum, a granny, an auntie or whatever. They need someone who takes an interest in them when they are in prison and when they come out. There should also be, I would hope, some opportunity for employment and, if not, something participatory and constructive that they can do during the day. We have to put in more resources for those things. Questions have been asked and we must check against delivery on literacy, for example. The SPS is putting in place appropriate monitoring of that.
I am grateful to Alison McInnes for raising the issue. I hope that the Liberal Democrats will accept the spirit of the amendment. I am more than happy to undertake to look at the good work that is being tried in Peterborough. If it works and can be replicated here, we will be more than happy to use it. In the interim, whether we are talking about public-social partnerships or the on-going good work that is being done the length and breadth of Scotland, it has the Government’s full support.
11:31
I welcome the opportunity to sum up what has been an important debate that was led very ably by Alison McInnes on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. The debate has been quite consensual. There can be little doubt that we are dealing with a highly important subject. Tackling reoffending is about offering second chances and it is clear that members on all sides think that we are not offering enough of those second chances to the people who need them.
A quick glance at the statistics on reoffending that Alison McInnes highlighted is enough to make the eyes water. The simple fact is that most people who are convicted in a Scottish court have offended before and 62 per cent of Scottish prisoners will reoffend within two years of their release from prison. That is a deeply unhelpful statistic when we consider that Scotland’s prison population has increased by more than 25 per cent in the past decade.
Even more concerning is the fact that more than two thirds of the 9,372 people who received a prison sentence in 2009-10 already had five or more previous convictions. There is clearly a problem there and the Government is simply not getting a grip on it. “An overview of Scotland’s criminal justice system”, a report published last year by Audit Scotland, stated:
“Reoffending is a continuing problem in Scotland. There has been little progress towards the Scottish Government’s national indicator to reduce reconviction rates, which have fallen by less than one per cent in the last three years.”
The cabinet secretary and Mary Fee concentrated on talking about families. Each statistic represents not just a reoffender, but a personal tragedy for friends, family and other concerned individuals. The reoffender might have been brought up in a turbulent environment, might not have been able to enjoy the same educational opportunities as the rest of us, or might have had problematic drug addictions, which Lewis Macdonald addressed.
There are societal consequences from failing to tackle reoffending effectively. Just ask the 825,000 victims of criminal activity in Scotland in 2009-10, many of whom were victims at the hands of reoffenders. Many members, including Christine Grahame, mentioned the cost to society. Although there are no estimates of the cost to the Scottish criminal justice system, the Audit Scotland report highlights UK Government research, which estimates that every prisoner who reoffends costs the taxpayer around £80,000. Interestingly, research commissioned by the Wise Group, a social enterprise that helps unemployed people to move into employment, established that, by factoring in the costs of welfare payments, unemployment benefits and the cost to the criminal justice system, moving one unemployed reoffender into employment could deliver savings to Scotland of £940,000 over a five-year period.
Graeme Pearson mentioned how a reduction in reoffending would deliver significant savings to the criminal justice system. It would result in fewer cases heading into the in-trays of fiscals throughout the country, fewer court cases and fewer recipients of legal aid. A reduction in the case load for fiscals should be a pressing concern for the cabinet secretary in light of the Procurators Fiscal Society’s written submission to the Justice Committee. It revealed that fiscals had 14,000 unmarked cases in October, which was an increase of 7,000 cases in just six months. There would also be a reduction in the costs to the courts and the police of supporting the courts system.
The Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Act 2005 established Scotland’s eight community justice authorities while we were in government. The intention behind the CJAs was to enable a more co-ordinated approach to the delivery of offender services and to target those services towards the reduction of reoffending.
We established both a framework to tackle reoffending and some outstanding projects, such as the Women in Focus service in the south-west of Scotland, which I will touch on later. Sadly, however, no progress has been made and the Government failed to achieve its own national indicator on reducing reconviction rates.
I have spoken of the reasons why we require a new approach to prison rehabilitation in order to reduce reoffending rates in Scotland, and Audit Scotland has stated that there needs to be significant improvement in how services for offenders are delivered throughout the country. As with everything in life, there is no silver bullet, as David McLetchie, Dennis Robertson and others have mentioned, but social impact bonds present an attractive option for policy makers, and the evidence from the pilot in Peterborough seems encouraging, as Roderick Campbell mentioned.
Despite not operating on the basis of a social impact bond, the Women in Focus service, which is being delivered across the south-west of Scotland by Barnardo’s Scotland, is a useful illustration of how such a model could work here. The service works with women offenders who are serving community-based orders in Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway to reduce their levels of reoffending and reconviction, reduce the number of community-based orders and help the women to make positive contributions to their local communities.
The service was commissioned following a highly successful pilot in Ayrshire, the outcomes from which showed that the number of successfully completed community orders among women engaging with the service more than doubled, with significantly lower reoffending levels. Early indicators show that the service is achieving similar results to those the pilot achieved.
Driving down levels of reoffending in Scotland is in all our best interests. As a party, we wish to engage with the Government on the issue, which is why we suggested this debate. To be successful at reducing reoffending, we need to know what does and does not work and what is and is not cost-effective. Audit Scotland states:
“Performance information on both the level of reoffending and the effectiveness of services to reduce offending is limited and inconsistent.”
We need to remedy that and I would be keen to discuss with the cabinet secretary how the Government will assess the effectiveness of the preventative spend measures that he plans to explore, as detailed in his amendment.
As my colleague Alison McInnes mentioned, it is a matter of regret that the Government does not fully support our motion. We appreciate that this has been a consensual debate and will take the cabinet secretary’s words in good faith. However, we are disappointed: the amendment welcomes the fact that the Scottish Government will “explore the potential” of social impact bonds, but we would rather see a pilot set up.
Thank you for this opportunity, Presiding Officer, and I look forward to the rest of the chamber supporting our motion at the end of the day.