Criminal Justice: Women

My Lords, I join all those who have thanked the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, for giving us this opportunity to discuss her excellent report, on which I warmly congratulate her. As I said last week, over the past 12 years I have been particularly concerned about the position of women in prison. The position was brought to my notice literally within two minutes of taking over as Chief Inspector of Prisons when I was alerted to the problems in Holloway. On inspecting it 10 days later, I discovered that women in labour were routinely being chained, and all sorts of other things that I simply could not equate with the word ““civilised”” as it is understood in any country. During my years of inspection I was continually alarmed by the fact that the Prison Service resolutely refused to make anyone responsible for women in prison. The noble Baroness, Lady Corston, referred to the fact that no one is in charge and there is no collective memory. When I found that some other prisons were totally and utterly unacceptable—Wormwood Scrubs, Feltham and Wandsworth to name but three—we adopted the procedure that the Prison Service area manager had to produce an action plan which contained a list of our recommendations on what should happen. We named the person who was responsible for doing something about it and stated by when it should be done. That programme was copied to the Home Secretary and to me and it was updated at six-monthly intervals. After about two years I would go in as chief inspector to see what had happened under the plan. A follow-up inspection was essential to ensure that progress had been made and was continuing to be made. In my debate last week I called for a women’s justice board—a word which the noble Baroness rejected in favour of ““commission””, which seems to be the in-word. However, she was asking for exactly the same thing as I have recommended: an action body that has responsibility for ensuring that the recommendations are brought to pass. I have looked back and read the recommendations in my 1997 report Women in Prison, and I find that many of the recommendations are the same. Not only did we recommend small units around the country; we actually gave as an example one such unit in America and described how it worked. But nothing happened. The statistics I produced included the number of women who had been abused, and people were shocked. I concluded that to handle these women properly, the Prison Service should begin with the understanding that every woman might have been abused and to behave accordingly, not the other way round. That applied particularly to male prison officers. When I went, for example, to a women’s unit at Risley prison, I was concerned that it was completely and utterly excluded from everything that could be described as progress or decent humane treatment. It was an island of misery and deprivation which again shamed the Prison Service. I was extremely glad that the women were moved—a move prompted by an extremely concerned member of the board of visitors telephoning me at five o’clock in the evening to say that the arrangement could not go on. I was there with my inspectors by nine o’clock in the morning because I was so concerned to get things moving. I mention that because when I hear from Ministers—who are excellent and of course have something to say—that the action is being devolved to a Civil Service unit, my heart sinks. That is no comment on civil servants, and certainly not on the civil servant I remember doing wonderful work as senior probation officer in charge of the unit in Holloway; there is no question of that. But the arrangement will not work as regards taking action, as we have learnt time and again. When I have seen things happening in the women’s estate, I have often wondered what would have happened had there been a director of women’s prisons who was able to make objections. Would Bullwood Hall have stopped being a women’s prison, when it was in many ways a centre of excellence for dealing with juvenile and young women and there was no other prison like it? Would Brockhill have been re-rolled when it was the only women’s prison in the West Midlands with a mother and baby unit? Would Cookham Wood have been re-rolled the other day when, if anyone had bothered to go there and look round, they would have found marvellous programmes, the result of considerable investment by the voluntary sector? It now feels a very demotivated place because all its efforts have been wasted and the programmes are gone. The trouble with not having a director is that the good practice identified somewhere is not turned into the common practice everywhere. Inconsistency is therefore added to the other problems because no one is ensuring that what happens to women in Lancashire is happening—or not happening, as the case may be—to women elsewhere. I was glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Corston, mentioned training. I have always thought that this training provision is absolutely miserable. I remember asking the staff at Holloway about training during my first inspection. They had not received appropriate training in working with women. Three weeks ago I had to go to Trinidad as an expert witness in an extradition case, and I asked about training. I discovered that in Trinidad women have six months’ training before going to work in women’s prisons—a three-month course followed by three months of supervised on-the-job training. If Trinidad can get that right, why can we not? And we complain about these things. This excellent report is one in a long line. I did mine in 1997. In 2000, there was the Prison Reform Trust report. I published a follow-up, A Call to Action, in 2001. We had the Fawcett Society report in 2004. When this report was announced to us by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, I rather cynically wondered whether, because she is such a senior figure in the Government, there might at last be some hope of somebody taking some notice of it. I am sure she recognises the volume of support that exists for all that she has said, because people have been saying it over and over again. It is therefore disappointing to find that, yet again, the Government seem not to be listening to the one thing that is absolutely needed; namely, to have someone take real action to get it done. I also welcome the number of noble Lords who have suggested that we must have a further debate to follow up on the action plan and to make certain that we maintain the momentum, even if nobody else does. I congratulate the noble Baroness on her report and I hope it will lead to the action we all desire.