My Lords, the policy change to increase the release date of prisoners sentenced to more than seven years to two-thirds of the sentence has been brought forward far too quickly and without proper consideration. It is not evidenced-based. Before the election, the Lord Chancellor wound up the rhetoric and gave the reason for ensuring that the most serious violent and sexual offenders would face longer behind bars, as he put it, as restoring “public faith in sentencing”—sentiments that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen repeated. By contrast, the impact assessment attached to this statutory instrument says:
“Research into victims’ views on sentencing and time spent in custody is limited. However, a 2012 study found that victims of sexual offences (who will be more likely to be affected by this policy) were unclear on what the sentences handed down by the court meant in practice.”
There is no other study on which this change of policy is based and, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, pointed out, there has been no public consultation. There have been only newspaper headlines in the popular press.
Before spending £440 million in construction costs and £70 million a year for 10,000 new prison places, as envisaged by the impact assessment, it would have been far better for the Government to take their time to form a proper evaluation of experience to date. In 2014 permission was granted for the Berwyn training prison to be built on the industrial estate of my home town, Wrexham. I know the area well; in my youth I worked on that very site as a member of a railway gang replacing wooden wartime sleepers with concrete ones. I learned how to use a pick and shovel, drink very sweet tea and place a bet—matters of great importance.
As I watched the buildings go up, to open in February 2017 at a cost of £250 million, I noted that it was the largest operational prison in the UK and the second largest in Europe. Here, I thought, was the opportunity, with modern design and facilities, really to do something to tackle attitudes, change people’s lives and turn prisoners away from crime. All rooms, as the cells are called, have integral sanitation, a shower cubicle, a PIN phone and a UniLink laptop terminal. It is designed
to hold up to 2,106 prisoners serving four years or more. There have been criticisms. In particular Frances Crook, the chief executive of the Howard League, told the Welsh Affairs Committee, which reported on prison provision in Wales in April 2019, that it was built in a way that even Victorians would not build. She said:
“It is going to be the most disgusting prison in Europe within 10 years.”
She was concerned in particular that only 30% of the accommodation is single-cell, to save money, in flagrant disregard of the recommendations of the Mubarek inquiry into the murder of a young man by his racist cellmate.
As the prison was going up, a local rugby player, an experienced prison officer from a Merseyside prison, told me that, despite attractive offers, no regular trained officers would be attracted to work there. “It’ll be full of newbies,” he said. “You need to know who you’re dealing with, who’s standing next to you.” He was right: the report of the Welsh Affairs Committee revealed that 89% of the prison staff were in their first two years of training. The Prison Officers’ Association says that the recruitment pool in north Wales is exhausted and that
“we see very young inexperienced officers joining … with very few experienced staff to guide them.”
An inmate released last May told the Daily Post that
“it’s being run like a youth club.”
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A first inspection, led by the Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke, took place unannounced last April. He found that the prison had
“opened with a very clear rehabilitative vision which has faced resistance at times.”
He found that, because of the inexperience of the staff, the number of assaults on them was higher and the use of force by the staff in response was far higher still, with full control and restraint used in 90% of cases. The staff failed to challenge low-level poor behaviour. Although there were sufficient activity places, a substantial number of prisoners were unemployed or failed to attend their allocated education, training or work place. Staff did not do enough to challenge those who chose not to participate.
What is the result? Last September, an inmate was convicted of a sexual assault on a female guard. His mitigation was that he had drunk four litres of jailhouse hooch and was dared by other inmates to touch the guard in return for another litre. A member of my family’s chance meeting with 20 year-old Levi in a Wrexham street in October was instructive. Having just been released after a six-month sentence, he said, “It was a right laugh. You could get ketamine, Spice and any drug you fancied. I had a bit of a bill to pay when I came out. We spent the day stoned, playing video games.”
Indeed, the chief inspector’s report confirmed that drugs were too readily available: 48% of the prisoners had told his team so. He found:
“The substance use strategy was weak and not supported by a plan to coordinate, drive and measure the effectiveness of actions taken.”
The chief inspector further concluded that there were not enough offending behaviour programmes to meet the needs of the population, with enough places in the
coming year for only about one-third of prisoners who met the criteria for treatment. At that time, the prison was only half full. The response to this recommendation by the governor and others last September was that the establishment is limited to the number of programmes the prison is commissioned to provide and the accommodation and resources needed to provide those programmes. Following the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, I take as an example the cohort of 46 prisoners serving indefinite public protection sentences who do not have access to courses that might qualify them for release. That is across the whole estate.
I would like to bring noble Lords up to date by giving the flavour of current conditions. The prison is still not full. Three years after it opened, there are only 1,628 inmates in a prison built for 2,100 because the facilities have not been finished. On 1 November last year, Judge Niclas Parry at Mold Crown Court, said, when sentencing a woman who had smuggled drugs into the prison, that drugs had plunged Wales’s biggest prison into crisis. He said that Berwyn was set up in north Wales with all the best intentions in the world, but had been reduced to a place of indiscipline, violence, attacks on staff and bullying,
“all because drugs are being fought over.”
On 29 November there was a case where a prisoner, a lady in transition, had hospitalised a guard by hitting him in the face with a mug. Judge Parry said:
“It is alarming and worrying how many cases this court in Mold has to deal with involving ill discipline at Berwyn Prison—and involving prison staff. You have to understand the fear of staff that something more serious might happen and the context in which these people work.”
On that same day, 29 November, a coroner’s inquest in Ruthin heard how fake legal letters soaked with Spice and Black Mamba had been sent to inmates. The prison thought it was barred from opening them because of legal privilege. A 22 year-old man from Blaenau Ffestiniog, Luke Morris Jones, died after smoking Spice and the inquest jury concluded that he had suffered a
“drug-related death in circumstances where a systemic failure in HMP Berwyn’s systems for preventing drugs entering the prison contributed. HMP Berwyn were aware of the inefficiency of the system and insufficient mitigation was in place whilst it was addressed.”
The prison has since introduced sniffer dogs and two machines to scan what the head of custody, Rachel James, called “dodgy correspondence”.
On 23 December, a female prison officer was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment for having sex with a prisoner who was serving 12 years for armed robbery. On Monday of this week, two fire appliances were sent to the prison after two prisoners set fire to their cells.
It is utterly feeble for this Government to make dog-whistle gestures with SIs such as these. Their proper function is to administer effectively and efficiently. The history of Berwyn to date indicates that the Ministry of Justice is failing in this basic duty. Do not waste the resources, time and energy warehousing more people for longer in large prisons. Fund the programmes and prevention, recruit the staff and use the resources in such a way that the outcomes are
positive, so that offenders are given not a drug-fuelled holiday but a rigorous training leading to real rehabilitation. That is how public safety will be maintained.