PRISONS

HC Deb 02 March 1953 vol 512 cc109-49

7.30 p.m.

Mr. Victor Yates (Birmingham, Ladywood)

I am grateful for the opportunity of opening this debate tonight on the state of our prisons. I had the special privilege of presiding over the Subcommittee of the Select Committee on Estimates which had the responsibility of examining the prisons in England, Scotland and Wales.

I have here the Report which we issued to the House. By and large, the gravest danger which it discloses is the danger that the primary purpose of the training and treatment of prisoners is being very sadly undermined. The primary purpose of the training and treatment of prisoners is to establish in them the will to live a good and useful life on discharge, and to fit them to do so. In the Home Office booklet entitled "Prisons and Borstals" this is very clearly stated, on page 19: It is therefore a primary purpose of modern methods to seek to counter the dangers of deterioration, moral mental and physical, inherent in prolonged confinement. It is impossible for these high purposes, envisaged in the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, which my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) was responsible for introducing to the House, to be achieved under the existing conditions which we can see in our prisons today. We might just as well ask for the moon as to ask for these purposes to be achieved when we have approximately 25,000 to 26,000 prisoners crammed into prisons which should only accommodate half that number.

I want to refer briefly to the five problems which, I think, are facing the prison administration. We can then see how difficult and dangerous are the conditions. First, there is the problem of the buildings. The present prisons, with the exception of the one which was built in 1910, are hideous monuments and relics of a bygone age when the method and manner of dealing with criminals was wrong. I do not hold the present Home Secretary responsible for the buildings today. He has inherited a good deal of difficulty. I do think, however, that the Government and the right hon. and learned Gentleman were very seriously at fault in delaying the putting in hand of a building programme which had been approved by his predecessor. That aspect is brought out in the Select Committee's Report.

We are all pleased to know that the Government, in their reply to the Report of the Select Committee on Estimates, have announced that the building programme is to go forward. I should, however, like to call the attention of the Home Secretary to the Second Report of the Select Committee on Estimates. On page 10, it is mentioned that the building programme is to go forward, and we are told that: Limitation on capital investment will not, so far as can now be foreseen, prevent the Commissioners from carrying out this programme, … What does that mean—" so far as can be foreseen"? Are we to understand that there will be no doubt whatever that this vital programme will proceed?

The second problem is that of overcrowding. The right hon. and learned Gentleman may not have been forewarned about the grave flood disaster, but in this Report of the Select Committee he can note a very grave warning which should be taken fully into consideration. Four thousand five hundred prisoners sleep three in a cell. That figure has been mounting fast. The Lord Chancellor recently announced that the figure had increased to 5,500. I understand that it is now even higher and is mounting towards 6,000. This is an alarming situation. Figures which are mounting in this way must be a nightmare to the prison administrator.

I want to make one quotation on overcrowding from the Seventh Report of the Select Committee. I refer to the evidence which was given by Dr. Murdoch, the Principal Medical Officer of Wandsworth Gaol. I was with the Committee visiting that prison, and, expressing my personal opinion, I was completely shocked and horrified by what I saw. When at Wandsworth I asked Dr. Murdoch about overcrowding. He said, in reply to Question 809, on page 61: I think it is insanitary. It can only be condemned by any doctor. These are cells built to hold one person, by space, cubic capacity and ventilation and heating; everything is arranged for one man. It is supposed to be adequate for one man, and you are putting him into conditions over which he has no control at all; he must stay there. Later he says: I cannot imagine any dwelling-house with one closet to 40 people. The thing is not flushed and filled before the next man has used it. It is a disgusting thing. On the question of epidemic disease, if one man gets a disease the others will get it. I notice that a prison officer who is employed at Wandsworth was quoted in the "Prison Officers' Journal" as having said, at the annual conference at Belfast, in August last: The policy of housing three in a cell could only cause disaster sooner or later. He described the atmosphere when the prison is unlocked for the first time in the morning, and said that not only was this injurious to the staff but also to the prisoners. Whatever punishment is meted out to prisoners, I believe that it is contrary to all principles of justice and humanity that in addition to sentence a prisoner should be thrown into conditions which are a grave danger to health.

If this were an isolated example it would not be so serious, but the Home Secretary will note from the Report that 23 local prisons are overcrowded in this manner. I was equally disturbed when I visited Winston Green Gaol in Birmingham. I ask the Government: How long must we wait before this mounting evil can be overcome? How long must we wait before the figure of more than 5,000 prisoners sleeping three in a cell can be reduced?

The third problem is that of inadequate staffing. The prisoners are not sleeping in their cells all the time, but they are compelled to remain there from 5.30 at night until 7 o'clock in the morning. They are locked in for 13½ hours. When the Home Secretary decided to "freeze" the size of the staff in October, 1951, he was, in my judgment, guilty of a grave offence, because it is impossible for the prison situation to be changed unless at least 500 additional officers are employed so that there can be satisfactory management of those prisons. The number of law-breakers cannot be "frozen," and it seemed to me to be an act, not only of injustice but of economic folly to prevent the Prison Commissioners from engaging as many officers as they could.

To establish a three-shift system in the prisons requires an increase of 500 officers, and that is the only means by which overtime can be reduced. For 25 years before I came to this House I was employed by one of the most efficient firms in the land, who always said that overtime was a great evil, to management as well as to workers. Yet in 1940 my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison) had agreed, in conditions of war, to every officer working an additional hour, which was called the "Morrison hour." I am sure he never visualised that that would last for 10 years. Then there were only half the present number of prisoners. According to the Select Committee, it was expected that overtime pay alone would increase by more than £315,000. If the Government would permit the prisons to be adequately staffed they would be able to save a considerable sum of money, because they would abolish overtime, and they would get greater value for the work that was being done.

That brings me to the fourth problem, that of the working week. The average working week in local prisons is 22 hours. In Parkhurst and Dartmoor prisoners work 17¾ hours per week. What a reflection it is upon us that the hardened criminals, who in the old days were sentenced to hard labour, work less than those who have committed minor offences. If there is one essential it is that the prisoner should at least do a reasonable week's work. New work is required; a new attitude is required. We must abolish for ever the making of mail bags by hand when machines that could make those bags are standing idle.

We hear much about incentives. What incentive can the Home Secretary offer in present circumstances? When visiting one of the prisons I said to a prisoner who was a skilled metal worker, "How do you like the work?" He replied, "The work's all right but the rate for the job isn't very good." What is the rate for the job? A prisoner who is a skilled worker, a Grade A worker, earns an average of 3s. 4d. a week—less than the price of a packet of cigarettes.

When visiting a Borstal institution near Redditch I was interested to find that the instructors were themselves offering prizes of packets of 20 cigarettes for the boys who could do the best work, or those who could lay the most bricks in a day. The Select Committee suggested that the Commissioners might give consideration to this matter. We thought it would be good to offer more incentives for better production and more efficient work in prisons. But the Commissioners are silent about that, although the evidence all went to show that when incentives are offered to prisoners in the way of a reward it produces better and more efficient results.

The last problem is that of illdiscipline. Let me quote from the Commissioners' Report. They say: The Commissioners do not understand the Committee's reference in paragraph 40 to illdiscipline as a problem of major importance. I am amazed that the Prison Commissioners could not see what we meant by "ill-discipline," which was one of the problems that caused the Select Committee to suggest that there should be an independent inquiry into the matters which were outside our terms of reference. They mentioned Parkhurst as the only evidence of ill-discipline being a major problem. Parkhurst was a very grave problem. The evidence about the very serious situation which has given rise to ill-discipline at Parkhurst is very clear.

Ill-discipline in local prisons is increasing, and the evidence shows that where three prisoners are sleeping together in a cell it is constantly leading to quarrels which would never arise if the men were in single cells. Prisoners are crowded in the workshops and there is a perpetual opportunity for prisoners to make trouble among themselves. I have seen them in the prisons working elbow to elbow. If that is not dangerous from the point of view of trying to control prisoners, I do not know what is.

There are far more prisoners per officer in the workshops than ever before, and the prison officers will say that at all times there is considerable difficulty in maintaining control, with the constant marching of prisoners, locking up and unlocking. What do the Prison Commissioners want? Do they want to wait until the situation develops in local prisons as it has developed in Parkhurst? Do they want to wait until the prisoners set fire to the largest workshop, as they did in Parkhurst, involving the loss of approximately £4,000, with £2,000 worth of damage to material and rebuilding costing over £1,600?

Mr. George Benson (Chesterfield)

My hon. Friend is making charges of ill-discipline in the prisons. Is he aware that the rate of punishment, which is the best guide, was one per 1,000 of the prison population per day from 1931 to 1935 and was exactly the same in 1951, so that there has been no decrease in discipline despite the enormous overcrowding?

Mr. Yates

I say at once that I have the utmost admiration for the prison officers, who are working under considerable difficulties, but it was stated very clearly by the officers in their annual conference last August that they were able to obtain these results only by a firm discipline, and that it was difficult for them to exercise control. I do not want to be alarmist, but I think it must be obvious that, where prisons are overcrowded to this extent it is difficult to maintain discipline.

Indeed, in the prison officers' magazine, in September, 1952, these words appeared: Have we to wait until something so serious occurs inside one of our prisons that the public is aroused from its indifference and clamours for something to be done? We have no wish to be alarmists. What we do emphatically assert, however, is that in the present state of the prison service, the ingredients for transforming an ordinary situation into one which contains danger to life, limb and property are disturbingly near to hand. That is the opinion of prison officers. To sum up, I feel that there is a great danger that our local prisons are becoming almost breeding grounds for criminals. They are the soil in which further evil fertilises and grows. When we look at the other prisons, the regional training prisons, the corrective training prisons and the Borstal institutions, the opposite is the case. I have admiration for the officers in all these institutions and I sometimes find it difficult to understand how they achieve their results in view of the conditions.

I shall always remember seeing a prisoner in Wakefield Gaol—the regional training prison—who had entered the gaol as a youth, had been in for a few years, had been educated in classes and workshops and had become a skilled tailor. I was impressed by the work he was doing. He appeared to be cultured. I asked him, "How long have you to remain here?" and I stood aghast when he said, "For life. For Her Majesty's Pleasure." He had caused the death of a young girl, but since then he had been corrected and educated. The prison officials were proud of the results which they had achieved. He would be one of the 91 out of every 100 passing through that prison who never returned to a life of crime.

We must realise that it costs more. It costs nearly £8 a week to keep a prisoner there, compared with £4 a week in Wandsworth, but when I see the 1948 Act being worked in those prisons I see justice and hope. It is only when I look at the other prisons that I am reminded of the words of Oscar Wilde in his famous poem, "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." In Reading Gaol I particularly thought of those words as they applied to so many of the old prisons outside: This, too, I know, and wise it were If each could know the same, That every prison that men build Is built with bricks of shame And bound with bars less Christ should see How men their brothers maim. Even more significant: The vilest deeds, like poison weeds, Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in Man That wastes and withers there. I want the Government to be able to tell us that these conditions, which make those words true in some prisons today, will be removed more quickly. I pray that a firm and vigorous programme will be adopted and that the right hon. and learned Gentleman will be able to assure us that conditions will be created as a result of a new outlook and a new programme which will make us feel as proud of the buildings in which we house our prisoners as we are of our hospitals, schools and universities.

7.58 p.m.

Mr. John Tilney (Liverpool, Wavertree)

I am sure that the House will have listened with sympathetic interest to the hon. Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates). He has dealt very fully with the acute and grievous problem of overcrowding in our prisons, the legacy from many past Governments and from a major world war. He has dealt well with the healing power of work, but he has touched only lightly on the condition of the prisoner when he is released. I want to take up the time of the House for a few minutes in dealing with those three points.

Is it not time that we should consider the two different types of criminal housed in our prisons? There is, first, the class of prisoner whose escape is likely to frighten the neighbourhood and there is, secondly, the class of prisoner whose escape will not cause any window or door to be bolted or any honourable and law-abiding citizen to lie awake at night. It seems to me that we ought to deal with those two types very differently.

In the second class we find bigamists, homosexuals, confirmed drunkards, those who refuse to pay maintenance and those who commit fraud. There are many others. They are housed in the same building and lead roughly the same type of life in prison as those who have committed robbery, rape or many other worse offences, and they automatically increase the overcrowding of our prisons.

Surely it is time that we considered the way of life of those people, how they are conditioned for their release and what happens to them on release. In prison all is found and they have no responsibility. They get physically soft. They lie for hours on their bunks without thought. Is it surprising, after only two hours out of 24 in the open air, that on release they return to society weakened physically and mentally? They are discharged with little money and they have no job to go to. Very few firms will take them on if they know them to be discharged prisoners. Often they have no home and the lodging house keepers require a week's rent in advance so they drift to some hostel or other.

What they require more than anything else is to get a job, to keep it and to go straight. But to get a job, keep it and go straight requires strength of character and that is exactly what they have not got, and what largely the system of our prisons does not give them. How easy it is, as the hon. Member for Ladywood said, to find themselves once again gravitating back to their old associates and to the breeding ground of crime, and the vicious spiral of crime takes another twist downwards.

It is the responsibility of our community to give a man who has served his sentence a fair chance to make good and I do not believe that at present he gets that. If, however, this responsibility is shouldered by the nation then the nation has a right to expect some return for the large taxes that are paid to keep so many people in idleness. One is appalled at the very small fraction of the prison population able to go outside the prison and do a proper day's work. Why is it? Because, it seems to me, most of our prisons are wrongly situated. If the prisoners go out, they will compete with union labour or with the labour of lawabiding citizens and one does not want that to happen.

Hard work, however, is a good thing and does no one any harm. It toughens the body, it heals the mind and it can be a habit. Why do we not take that second class of criminal into wilder country, into coastal camps or Scottish castles which, through taxes or Estate Duty, have now become redundant and where there is much good work to be done and no other labour with which to compete? Afforestation, drainage and, this year, the reclamation of windfall timber or the building of extra dykes to keep out our seas, are surely works that could be undertaken and could give a prisoner pride in a job once again and get him tough.

If necessary, pay him the rate for the job and deduct from that rate the cost of his clothes, of maintenance, of housing, of pocket money, banking the balance for him so that when he returns he will have something to fall back on. I believe that could well be done. The Home Secretary, during his tenure of office has shown great moral courage in making many a decision. I ask him to make this reform so that temporary evil-doers are not turned into permanent criminals, so that men can learn the joy of doing a decent day's work—indeed, there are some young chaps in prison who boast now that they have never done a day's work in their lives—so that men, on their release no longer feel that they are not wanted by society but are accepted once again and have the power to show that they are worth while. If my right hon. and learned Friend can do that, I believe that his tenure of office will be historic.

8.6 p.m.

Mr. George Benson (Chesterfield)

I have a great deal of sympathy with practically everything said by the hon. Member for Wavertree (Mr. Tilney). I am pleased that he raised the question of after-care because our after-care system at present is entirely obsolete and is based on the local prison in its operation. Fortunately, there is a committee sitting consisting of the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society, the After-care Association and the Prison Commissioners, which is investigating this and will, I hope, produce a drastic recommendation in its report.

I must take up the question of discipline with my hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates). There is not a scrap of evidence of any deterioration in the discipline of our present system. The only method I know of estimating this is by taking the number of offences brought before the governors. They are lower than they were during the war and no higher than before the war. They run at about one per 1,000 per day of the average daily population, which is a very small number.

My hon. Friend said that deterioration in discipline was due to its rigidity. Yet the discipline in our prisons is nothing like as rigid as it was in 1930, and when one realises that a considerable percentage of our prison officers are newly trained and inexperienced men, it redounds greatly to the credit of our prison service, from the governor down to the latest recruit, that they are able to achieve prison discipline in overcrowded conditions. I want to draw the attention of the Home Secretary to the fact that in Scotland they maintain just as good a prison discipline as we do, in spite of the fact that the average punishment imposed for a prison offence by a Scottish prison governor is about one quarter of the weight of the average punishment imposed by an English governor. There is no excuse for that difference. Governors never seem to consult each other as to policy on punishments. A comparison of the punishments of one governor with another in England shows that there is an extraordinary discrepancy in the average weight of the punishment. There is not the slightest evidence to show that the heavy punishments produce better results or better discipline.

Let me give the right hon. and learned Gentleman an example. I do not mind quoting the prison—Manchester Prison, which is one of the most congested in England. It has had two very good governors following each other. One was a heavy punisher and the second was a light punisher. The governors changed over on a certain day. The weight of punishment for prison offences dropped instantaneously, and it did not make a single ripple in the percentage or numbers of prison offences, which shows that discipline can be maintained without the rather heavy punishments in which some of our prison governors quite unnecessarily indulge.

Mr. Yates

The question of ill-discipline was not a matter within the terms of reference of the Select Committee on Estimates. It was because of the many instances given in the Report of officers who had great difficulty in controlling the prisoners that we considered it necessary that there should be an inquiry throughout the prison service; but we were not competent to deal with that. Many examples are given, especially in the evidence regarding Wandsworth, of the difficulty which the officers have in keeping discipline.

Mr. Benson

I am well aware of that, and particularly in Wandsworth, which is one of the most difficult prisons in the country. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating: that is, that the numbers of offences reported to the governors are no higher than in 1930, 1935 and 1936. That is evidence that discipline is being maintained.

There are two specific problems with which I want to deal: one is overcrowding, and the other is prison labour. I want to make what, I think, are practical proposals. I thought that the hon. Member for Wavertree was going to steal my thunder, but I am not quite sure that he did. The latest figures which I have are that the number of prisoners sleeping three in a cell is 5.680.

A maximum security prison costs £3,000 per cell, or very nearly that figure, to build, and it takes four years to build. We cannot look to maximum security prisons to cure overcrowding—that is quite obvious. Five thousand prisoners housed in maximum security prisons means an expenditure of £15 million, and Parliament will not grant that under present circumstances. If we are to cure overcrowding—it is certainly the biggest bugbear in our prison system today— there is only one way to look, and that is to the prison camp.

Hitherto, prison camps have been provided with the idea of making a more reformative régime for the prisoners who are sent there. Prisoners have been carefully selected—selected for reliability, the fact that they were possibly first offenders, selected primarily for the effect of the open prison upon themselves and also with regard to security. We have to look to prison camps for an entirely different purpose, and that is to find a home for as many as we can of the 5,000 prisoners who are sleeping three in a cell. That is an entirely different aim.

There are quite a number of categories of prisoners that could be sent to camps without any danger whatever. I do not suggest that they need be open camps. I do not know whether the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows Manchester Prison——

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir David Maxwell Fyfe) indicated assent.

Mr. Benson

—but possibly he has seen the unclimbable wire fence which has been put round part of the croft. That makes a very formidable barrier to escape. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman requires a greater security camp, that unclimbable wire fence is ideal for the purpose. If he wants double security, all that he has to do is to put in two concentric rings and electrical alarms, and he has a maximum security prison.

Just look at the categories that could be taken out of our maximum security prisons, categories which for the most part are cluttering them up, and be put into camps, possibly open, but certainly camps enclosed in the unclimbable fence. Take the old dodderers. One cannot go into a single local prison, with the exception of Eastchurch, which I cannot understand being classed as a local prison, without finding an old dodderer walking round the prison grounds, with no one looking after him, supposed to be doing a job. He may be doing a bit of gardening or brushing up, but he has probably been in that prison 30 times before, and he is occupying a maximum security cell.

Why cannot all men over 60—possibly over 55, but certainly over 60—be taken out of the prisons and put into camps, made as secure as the Home Secretary wishes with the unclimbable fence? The hon. Member for Wavertree mentioned the next category, civil prisoners, who, for the most part, are in prison for a month or two months. What is the use of putting a civil prisoner in a maximum security prison? It is sheer waste of a cell, which is equal to £3,000 capital.

What about the women? No woman will climb that Manchester fence. The Prison Commissioners have already put up their hands with regard to Holloway for women and have announced that they will get the women out of there as soon as possible. They will not be able to get the women from Holloway, as they had hoped before the war, into one of the cottage prisons, but they could put them into a temporary prison with hutments, and there is no reason why the women should not go there. This would give a completely additional maximum security prison in the heart of London.

I have suggested three categories who are perfectly safe in prison camps, and I am going to suggest a fourth category, which may be more debatable. I would take out of our maximum security prisons all the petty habituals and put them into camps, possibly open, and possibly what one might term the medium security camp. I know that among this type, particularly the younger ones of 30 and 40 years of age, there are escapes, but does it really matter?

Do hon. Members realise that every year 30,000 criminals, some of them dangerous ones, escape from our prisons? [Interruption.] Yes, 30,000, because their sentences end. At any rate, they get out of prison and nobody has a word to say about it. If my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. Turner-Samuels) had been in prison, he would regard it as an escape. Anyhow, 30,000 prisoners, including some of the most dangerous men in England, come out year by year from our prisons and nobody says a word, but if half a dozen people escape one would think that the sky was going to drop. There is no reason why one should not take a good deal more risk with certain types of prisoner than the Commissioners have even dared do before.

We take that risk with Borstal, and Borstal youngsters are far more irresponsible and prone to absconding than a prisoner of 30 years of age. Nobody cares about absconding; it is not a serious matter. What is serious is when a Borstal youngster on the run breaks and enters, but otherwise absconding is a trivial matter. These youngsters bolt home, are picked up the next day, and are brought back. It is the breaking and entering which is serious.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is worried and that is one of his problems, but it is not a problem which affects the Scottish prison authorities. In Scotland they have any amount absconding but no breaking and entering. In Scotland, about 90 per cent. of the Borstal training is at Polmont and the trainees come from Glasgow and Edinburgh which are so near to Polmont that when they abscond they do not break and enter. When a lad makes a bolt he goes straight home—it is simple to get there. Next day he is picked up and brought in and everyone is happy.

We have 30 local prisons in England scattered throughout the country. Prison camps have to be based on local prisons which have administrative machinery, and they have to be reasonably close together. We have local prisons throughout the whole of England and it is not a question of finding work for the prisoners because that is the same whether they are inside or outside the prison. The problem is to get them out of maximum security prisons into camps. There is a population of more than 2,000 in the three maximum security prisons of Manchester, Preston and Liverpool, which are local prisons. The bulk of the population of those prisons comes from the Lancashire area.

If we had several prison camps based on those three prisons and close together, we should have no breaking and entering by those escaping as the men would go straight home. I am not talking of the man with a 10-year sentence, but the average escape is due either to an irresponsible impulse or, frequently, to the fact that the man has had bad news from home and must go to see what has happened.

In one prison the staff coming on duty early in the morning were rather astonished to find one of the best behaved prisoners waiting outside the gates to be let in. A friend coming in had told him that his wife was living with another man. He broke out, rebuked them, and came back to finish his sentence. A bolt from prison may very frequently be due to disturbance at home and if a man is near to his home he bolts there and is picked up again. We really need not treat escapes as very serious.

I would point out to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that there are in prison at present something like 2,000 prisoners who are serving sentences of six months and less. That means four months and less when we take remission into account. No one will bolt from a four months' sentence when he can be hauled up for breaking prison and get another 12 months. We must expand the classes of prisoners which we send to prison camps. That is the only possible solution open to us at present for dealing with this fantastic overcrowding, which seems to be growing steadily and to which there seems no end.

I turn to the question of work. I am not thinking so much of work inside the prisons as work outside. It is very extraordinary that we have confined to local prisons something like 15,000 prisoners working four hours a day and many of them who could be trusted outside are debarred from doing useful national work simply by Treasury obstruction. This is a rather complicated matter. I will not say that this is dead accurate, but it is a clear enough picture. Prisoners can work for Government Departments and the Prison Commissioners are not compelled to charge the full rate for the job. They can provide labour without pay to some extent.

The Forestry Commission employed quite a number of prisoners on afforestation, but, because of the Forestry Commission having had a ceiling put on the number of their staff, they have had to cut down the number of prisoners who may be engaged in forestry. That is by instruction of the Treasury. In other words, the Treasury are insisting that prisoners shall work inside, sewing mailbags for four hours a day, instead of doing useful constructive work in afforestation. [An HON. MEMBER: "Shame."] It is not only a shame, it is insane.

The average prisoner sews rather less than one mailbag per day and the treadle machines which would cut down the labour to one-seventh are standing idle because the Prison Commissioners dare not run out of mailbags. It costs £217 a year to keep the prisoner. That is £4 a week and it costs £1 to sew a mailbag, apart from the cost of the canvas. Yet the Treasury, by their ridiculous obstruction, are quite willing to pay £1 for sewing a mailbag and are not prepared to allow prisoners to go outside and do useful national work.

A little while ago Manchester Prison evolved a scheme whereby they could use prison labour for clearing up the pitheaps around Lancashire; a job which is well worth doing. The National Coal Board said that they quite agreed, but in present circumstances they could not possibly pay for it. The Treasury said, "No, it cannot be done, unless they pay." The result is that there are men in Manchester sitting on their backsides all day, and pit-heaps remain a public disgrace. Had those heaps been owned by a Government Department they could have been cleared by prison labour, and because they are merely national property that cannot be done.

May I give another example? The development of an arterial road is held up because the Treasury will not grant the money. At one end of it is a prison. The road will carry a 100 per cent. grant. The Treasury will pay every penny. But, because the completed road will belong to a county council and not a Government Department, prison labour cannot be employed on it. The Prison Commissioners could put 100 men at work on that road tomorrow, but the Treasury would rather keep them sewing mailbags, at £l a bag.

I think it is time the right hon. and learned Gentleman got tough with the Treasury. He is a tough lad, we can all see that. This silly obstructionism must be dealt with. It is costing the country money, and it is interfering greatly with the task of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. We do not know much about what causes crime, but we know practically nothing at all about why criminals stop their criminal activities. I have a feeling that if men become used to steady work that is half the battle. Employers of prison labour praise the magnificent work which the prisoners do. If they work outside the prison and put their backs into it, then we are getting many of them accustomed to honest work for the first time in their lives.

I said I had a crow to pick with the right hon. and learned Gentleman about Manchester Prison. With the exception of Leeds, it is the most congested prison in England. But there are seven acres of land just outside the prison wall in the possession of the Prison Commissioners which are awaiting levelling. Some of it has been levelled and fenced off with an unclimbable fence, and a weaving shed has been built on it. But there must be at least five acres still waiting to be levelled. Why has it not been levelled by prison labour? Why is not that land being used for recreation in the summer?

I recommend the right hon. and learned Gentleman to observe what happens at Barlinnie, a prison of practically equivalent size. It is the local prison for Glasgow. It takes all the Glasgow prisoners serving sentences up to three years. In other words, it takes the bulk of the young Glasgow razor slashers and gang fighters. Man for man, I think it would be difficult to find a nastier prison population than at Barlinnie. But every prisoner in Barlinnie, after he has been in prison for six weeks, goes on what is known as recreation privilege.

They have 25 acres of completely unfenced land outside the prison. Housing estates are gradually creeping up round this land. Perhaps I am wrong when I say it is completely unfenced. There are the dilapidated remains of a threebarred farm fence. Four nights a week in the summer, 200 men play football on that land. They are in the charge of six prison officers. They are not selected prisoners, but 200 different prisoners each night. The whole prison population, which, as I say, is as nasty as any prison population in this country, goes out playing football or watching football or playing other games four nights a week in the summer.

In the last two years there have been two prison breaks and in both prisoners were brought back within a few days. What preserves discipline is the knowledge that if a man escapes he endangers the privilege of playing football outside. When such a man is picked up he becomes public enemy No. 1. The force which keeps discipline in the compound at Parkhurst is equally operative in the unfenced playing fields outside Barlinnie. It could operate at Manchester croft just as easily.

I apologise for having spoken for so long. I had not intended to take up so much time. I have tried to put before the right hon. and learned Gentleman a few practical proposals for meeting the serious problem caused by overcrowding. I beg him to get tough with the Treasury.

8.35 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sir David Maxwell Fyfe)

Everyone who heard them will agree that we have listened to three most thoughtful and interesting speeches. A number of problems have been raised. Also, a number of practical suggestions have been put forward, and I am grateful for them. I hope that it will be convenient if I take the five points discussed by the hon. Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates) and state the position as I see it. That will enable those who speak after me to know what steps have been taken and say what improvements they can suggest.

I hope that the House will bear with me if I indicate the position in which the prison service has been for the last few years and the steps which have been taken. Everyone who has considered the matter will agree that the prison service since the war has been faced with all the problems adumbrated by the hon. Gentleman. The immediate pre-war population was 11,000. By the end of the war it was 14,000, and in 1949—and I take that year because it was the one in which the Criminal Justice Act came into force—it was approaching 20,000.

The difficulties have rightly been emphasised, but it is only fair that the House should have in mind what has been done. By the end of 1949 the Prison Commissioners had regained possession of and repaired and put into use six additional prisons with cells. They had also established four additional prisons and six additional Borstals of the open type in camps or large country houses. Of course, there was still a serious problem; but that had been done by 1949.

When we consider the question of staff, we must remember that there had been a cessation of recruiting during the six years of war. That cessation had occurred when this increase in the population was beginning. In 1946, the problem with which the Commissioners were faced was that to bring the staff to prewar standard they had to recruit 1,700 men and 170 women. The magnitude of that task must be apparent if one bears in mind that the pre-war figure was 120 men and a handful of women. I will come back to what has been done. I do not think that the House will feel that it is by any means negligible.

Let us take the question of work, which has been rightly insisted upon. During the war, there was no difficulty, because the war-time contracts were there and they supplied the necessity for the work. After the war, there had to be a falling off in war-time contracts and that raised difficulties. In that situation—and I do not think that anyone who knows it will say that I have over-painted the picture, because I have tried to give a completely objective picture of the situation that occurred—the right hon. Member for South Shields (Mr. Ede) will understand exactly what is in my mind when I say that it would not have been easy to carry out the four great tasks of his Act in this field.

That Act meant, first, revising the whole of the statutory rules, the prison cell cards and other documents based upon them and making changes in the system—the abolition of penal servitude and the initiating of the new systems of corrective training and preventive detention for persistent offenders. It also required the initiating of remand centres and detention centres. That is a formidable task, but all these things, except remand centres—and, of course, we have only begun the detention centres—have been done, and that must be counted for righteousness against what it is said should still be done. I do not think it right that those outside this House who do not possess an exact knowledge should view the remaining problems without some realisation of what has been done already.

I want to make it clear that the new rules of 1949 provided the legal framework of a modern penal system. The whole service was recast to its present basis of local prisons, regional training prisons and central prisons, and both corrective training and preventive detention were there ready for the new sentences to be imposed under the Act of 1948 when it was brought into force in 1949.

I admit, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Shields will also admit, the difficulty in regard to remand centres under the capital investment programme, but we have made a beginning with detention centres, and I hope that another will follow Kidlington soon. That was the position in 1949, and, of course, the number of prisoners did not stand still. By the end of 1949, it was approaching 23,000, and, since May, 1952, it has been just under 24,000. Since 1949 there have been opened five additional open prisons and two additional open Borstal institutions, making a total addition since the war of seven prisons with cells, nine open prisons and eight Borstal institutions. That is the position, I shall come back in a moment to the question of camps, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

I should like to point out to the hon. Member for Ladywood, who talked about —I do not complain about it—the purpose of the prison system and who referred to the well-known passage in the publication which he mentioned, that the policy of training prisoners under the rules of 1949 is based on the assumption that all long-sentence prisoners, and all others who by their length of sentence, character or history seem likely to profit by constructive training, and in particular those coming in for the first time, will be removed from their local prisons to serve their sentences in prisons with facilities and régimes appropriate to their category.

That is the basis of the policy, and therefore it is important that these prisons should receive attention first. At the moment there are regional training prisons for those with sentences of not less than 12 months and not more than three years who are selected as suitable for that type of training, and central prisons for those with sentences of over three years.

I should like to have gone into the classes of prisoners, but I do not want to occupy too much time because I know there are other hon. Gentlemen anxious to speak. Therefore, I will not go into the details of the star class and the ordinary prisoners, but I should like to point out, because this is a point that was mentioned by the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benson), that civil prisoners and prisoners of the star class who are not eligible for either regional or central prisons are removed to special local prisons reserved for those categories and which are, as far as possible, open prisons. The open prisons, of course, include camps.

I think that what the hon. Gentleman had in mind was that civil prisoners, for example, should not occupy space in secure prisons.

Mr. Benson

Preston and Northallerton, both maximum security prisons.

Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe

I will check the details, but I want to assure the hon. Gentleman that the principle is to move out civil prisoners to the open prisons so that they will not occupy the space in the secure prisons. I will naturally look into any point which the hon. Gentleman likes to put to me.

Again, I should have liked to say something about the allocation system for corrective training, but I do not think I ought to weary the House with that. However, I should like the House to have in mind that the corrective training prisons may be, as hon. Gentlemen know, separate prisons, such as those at Camp Hill, Chelmsford and Nottingham, or, at the moment, separate parts of local prisons at Durham, Liverpool and Wormwood Scrubbs. I can assure the House that the institution of the threeshift system in those wings at Durham and Liverpool is one of the matters with which we are getting on as quickly as we can. In the corrective training prisons themselves the three-shift system is already in operation.

There is just one other point that I think the House ought to have in mind, and that is the population of the ordinary local prisons. It includes untried prisoners, prisoners of various categories who are awaiting removal, prisoners of the ordinary class who are serving sentences of not more than four years, and a higher proportion, as the hon. Gentleman said, of those serving short sentences. Then there is another group of prisoners who are serving the first stage of preventive detention before they go to Parkhurst.

I hope that the House is not too weary with that account. It is important to know the problem and I have tried to set it out as objectively as possible. I agree about the extent of overcrowding, but I remind the House that since last May—this again is a crumb of comfort —the prison population has been stable. I ask hon. Members to believe me that I only take it as a very small crumb. A prison population of about 24,000 has not been known in this country for 70 years, and I am not going to prophesy or approach that figure on the basis that it is a peak. I must deal with it as an existing fact.

The curious thing is that there has been practically no rise in the number of women prisoners and no significant increase in the number of Borstal inmates. This sensational increase is confined to male prisoners, and the overcrowding to which this gives rise is concentrated in the local prisons. There we have the 5,680 men prisoners—the hon. Member for Chesterfield is quite right—sleeping three in a cell, a state of affairs that nothing but necessity can excuse. That represents a deficiency in accommodation of 4,000 cells. That is a problem which has to be dealt with and, as has been said, it cannot be solved by new permanent building. We must take other steps.

I should like to deal with two points which the hon. Member for Ladywood raised, because it is right that they should be in mind. So far, there have been no epidemics and there seems to have been no effect on health and hygiene at all. Secondly, there is no estimate that there has been any deterioration of discipline traceable to this situation. There has been great difficulty in supervision and I am not under-estimating that at all. But when I have said all that, I agree that the position represents the negation of progressive penal administration. There is not only the difficulty of supervision but the difficulty of constantly moving prisoners, and the situation is something with which we ought to try to deal.

I have said that the restrictions on capital expenditure are only too apparent, but I want to say a word about the longterm programme which has been mentioned in this debate. That consists of two secure training prisons which will hold about 300 men, two secure boys' Borstal institutions for 150, two small Borstals which will hold about 75 girls, and a special psychiatric establishment for mentally abnormal prisoners. As to the last, we could spend a half-day discussing that alone. I want to say only one or two words about that, and I will not be tempted to go along the by-paths. I should like to give my own views because they may interest those who are concerned about this subject.

When I was a young man the new Viennese psychology, with the emphasis on the subconscious, had just broken into this country after the First World War. I, like many of my generation, thought that this revolutionary approach might be of the utmost value in changing what the poet calls "the sorry hearts of men." The difficulty of using it in prisons is that in so many cases it requires the co-operation of the person with whom the psychiatrist is dealing. I say that not only because I do not want hon. Members to feel that we are not alive to the problem, but also because I want them to realise the difficulties that face us. I must hastily pass on lest I am tempted to stray into a subject which interests me very much.

That is the long-term programme, and it is obviously one which will not deal with our present problem. We have a site for one of the prisons. As the House know, we have had some difficulty, on planning grounds, about a site for the psychiatric prison, but we shall go on searching. I want to come to what we must do at the moment. I think that forts and disused camps can make the most effective contribution towards solving the problem, and the Prison Commissioners have recently secured another prison of medium security in a fort at Dover, which will hold about 300 prisoners, and a camp at Grendon, Buckinghamshire, to hold about 125 prisoners. They have also found four other sites for camps, three of which will be in the North and the Midlands.

I would ask for the co-operation of the House in the matter of these camps. Whenever we select a certain situation everyone says, "It is an absolutely grand idea so long as it is not in my constituency." We all understand the first reaction to the suggestion of the establishment of a prison in one's locality; but I appeal to hon. Members not to let it swell into opposition on an ill-informed basis. Let any objectors be represented, if they want to, at the local inquiry and, above all, let them know about the second wave of feeling which has so often taken place when a prison has been established and it has been found that it is not so bad after all. In many cases great help and co-operation have been given by people outside.

I have also in mind the old prison in Lancaster Castle, which will accommodate 250 prisoners. That will be taken over as soon as some other accommodation can be found for its present occupants, the Royal Observer Corps. Plans are also on foot to purchase premises near Rochdale to serve as a small Borstal institution for about 120 boys.

These are the measures on hand. They will not meet the deficiency of 4,000 cells, but I want to point out—because I should not be honest if I did not—that there are limits to the number of persons who can be placed in open conditions with due regard to the general public interest, and there is also a limit to the number of camps and buildings which are suitable for adaptation. We are getting near this limit. However, I promise that I shall look into all the points which have been referred to by the hon. Member for Chesterfield. All I ask in return is the co-operation of the House, when I find a site, in trying to keep public opinion moderate, reasonable and considerate. In view of the shortage of time, there will not be a Government spokesman for Scotland, but perhaps I might assume the responsibility of saying that there is not the accommodation problem there. The old prison for women in Duke Street, Glasgow, which is mentioned in the Report of the Select Committee, will be closed next year, and accommodation for the prisoners who would have been detained there will be found in other establishments. We cannot act quite as quickly as the hon. Member for Bridgeton (Mr. Carmichael) would like, but that is what is proposed.

Mr. James Carmichael (Glasgow, Bridgeton)

I understand that women have already been moved from Duke Street.

Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe

I am very glad to hear it. The information I had was that it was being done.

The subject of work was also raised. I appreciate the interest of all hon. Members in this subject, but I should like to point out one or two difficulties. A prison is primarily a prison and not a factory, and priority must be given to safe custody, discipline and enforcement of rules, among other factors not necessarily conducive to industrial efficiency. Another great difficulty is that the work must be split up among 60 establishments of varying sizes.

There are roughly three kinds of work: there is the work of the prison and agricultural work which goes with it; there is the manufacture of goods for Government Departments and public bodies and the provision of labour for services required by Government Departments and public bodies; and there is the manufacture of goods for the private market and the provision of labour for the services required by private bodies or persons. Hon. Gentlemen will realise that it is only in the case of work in the first class which is within the control of the Prison Commissioners that other difficulties do not arise.

As soon as prison labour is used for manufacturing for other than internal consumption, it is liable to meet the traditional prejudice on the part of outside industrial interests, whether employers or trade unions, against such use of prison labour. One has to recognise that the private sector is not a great deal of help in this field. We must face that. It is only by great tact that we have avoided any trouble; it is not a subject on which one wants to make trouble. I am speaking without party feeling of any kind.

Mrs. E. M. Braddock (Liverpool, Exchange)

In view of the very great shortage of skilled and heavy industrial workers, have any consultations about this taken place between the Home Office and the Trades Union Congress?

Mr. Scholefield Allen (Crewe)

Have there been any consultations with the nationalised industries about this? When we nationalised certain industries some of us hoped that we should find a source of labour here. Are there not standardised products which could be machine made in prison?

Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe

In reply to the first point, the problem has been constantly before us and there have been discussions but, speaking from the prison side, we have always been very careful not to cause trouble as a result of the progress that we have made. I feel sure that those who have dealt with this matter over the years long before I had anything to do with it would say that the problem has been constantly watched, and it is also fair to say that the Prison Commissioners have gone as far as they could without doing more harm than could be tolerated. I do not think that I can go further.

On the second point, there is the difficulty, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Chesterfield that nationalised industries have been treated as outside trading bodies and not as Government Departments, and that has been a difficulty which has existed up to now.

Mr. Scholefield Allen

Could not that now be avoided in the case of industries that are nationalised and really part of the Government?

Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe

I will have another look into that question. I do not think that if the matter had been as easy as it appears in debate nothing would have been done about it up to now.

There is one other point which I should like hon. Members to have in mind. That is the high proportion of short-sentence prisoners. It is difficult to put them on to work that goes on continuously. But generally, at the moment, I am glad to say that there is little deficiency of work of the better class for prisoners in central, regional and corrective training prisons and for prisoners serving long terms, and technical training is very fully provided for these special types.

There is a general difficulty as to the tendering which the Report mentioned, but I do not want to go into it at length. With reference to the Treasury circular which the hon. Gentleman had in mind, I want him to know that we are constantly considering that point. But when we try to find an alternative for the tendering procedure it is certainly beyond my imaginative and mental powers at the moment, and has obviously been beyond that of my predecessors, or they would have changed it. I am very glad to have any suggestions, and I promise the hon. Gentleman that it is a point we shall remember. I am sorry that I am taking so long because I had a lot to say about that aspect of the work, but may I leave it for the moment with that assurance?

I want to say a word about staff because on the staff depends the threeshift system which, I think, is of tremendous importance. I am sure that everyone here knows that that system enables the prisoners to have a working week of 35 to 40 hours and also helps from the educational aspect. At present, the threeshift system is in operation in all Borstal institutions, in all regional training prisons and in all prisons devoted exclusively to corrective training. It will be in operation at the prison for young prisoners at Lewes before or shortly after the end of the year and at about the same time, as I have said, in the corrective training wings at Liverpool and Durham.

I would remind the House of what I said about what had to be done to meet the shortage of staff. I am glad to say that in the six years after the war the number of staff increased by 1,684, temporarily, including 84 temporary officers, which more or less covers the 1,700 I said we needed

In addition to the requirements of the three-shift system there are also the recruits to be found for the additional officers I have mentioned, and we are doing our utmost to find them. But again there is one factor which causes difficulty, and that is that the quarters to house the staff cannot be built as fast as we wish. Another factor is that recruitment to the staff varies in different parts of the country. For immediate needs it will be necessary to have about 340 more prison officers by the end of the next financial year than were in post on 1st January of this year, and of these we hope to have 150 more by the end of June. I would point out that during the six years 1947–52 the average net gain in established officers of the basic grade was 267 a year, and in addition there are these 84 temporary officers.

While I take the point made about the limitation on recruitment at the beginning of 1952—I am not going into the financial difficulties at the time—I would observe that it was removed in June, 1952; since then advertising has proceeded in the national and local Press, there has been a steady flow of applications, and I am told that the Commissioners feel that they will be able to recruit the additional staff needed for the 1953–54 programme. I assure the House that they will not hesitate to take additional measures to stimulate recruitment.

Mr. Yates

Do I understand that no limit whatsoever will be placed upon the Prison Commissioners in recruiting all the staff they can obtain?

Sir D. Maxwell Fyfe

Not for all the measures that I have stated. I think I have covered all the immediate needs. I never like giving an absolute blank cheque without having checked the matter. For all the measures I have referred to as aimed at in dealing with these problems, the staff will be recruited.

I felt, as I think did the hon. Member for Chesterfield, that the hon. Member for Ladywood did not give quite a fair picture on the question of discipline. With respect, I think that that part of the Report does not give a true picture of the situation. I hate arguing on statistics, but it is a striking fact that the figure given by the hon. Member for Chesterfield was that for local prisons; that is where the overcrowding is so serious. With an average daily population of 13,273 there are only 13.2 punishments, or one in 1,000—one-tenth of 1 per cent. The figures in the establishments are either comparable or better. I think that young prisoners' centres provide the only instance in which the figures are a little worse, but we are still dealing with an instance only one thousandth worse. In all the others they are better. Well, that is a remarkable record. The number of assaults, whether against warders or against fellow prisoners, is very small. In the last few years the number of cases of corporal punishment have been as follows: 1948, 14; 1949, 9; 1950, 6; 1951, 3; 1952, 1. That does not look like a decreasing discipline. Since the war there has been no award of corporal punishment for an offence of mutiny, although there was a case of inciting mutiny. I think that, too, is a remarkable record.

I listened very carefully to the hon. Member for Ladywood, as did we all, and what it comes to is Parkhurst. This criticism depends upon Parkhurst. I ask the House to look at the position of Parkhurst, where there are 630 prisoners —men with the worst records in the country—serving preventive detention. That is a special régime which has been in operation for the last three and a half years. It calls for different conditions and different associations from those of a sentence of imprisonment. It took the place of the old 1908 system. There were men under the old system but they have been removed. Those are the circumstances—the introduction of a new system, with 630 of the most desperate criminals we have in the country.

Speaking with the greatest restraint I can use, I think too much has been made of the arson incident and some razor slashing which took place in the earlier part of last year. Since then the situation has settled down. It may well be that there will be headlines tomorrow, because whatever happens in Parkhurst—I do not say if somebody blows his nose, but anything further than that—always attracts headlines. If we consider that and consider how the position has settled down in the last few months, I suggest that it is not a sufficient basis for a charge of indiscipline in the service.

I am sorry to have taken up so much time but I wanted to cover all the points which the hon. Member for Ladywood made. Had I had more time, I should have covered them more fully, but the hon. Member will appreciate that that is impossible in a debate of this length. I do not want anyone to think that, because I have tried to put prisons and the prison service into what I consider to be a fair perspective, the Prison Commissioners or anyone connected with the service are satisfied with the conditions which exist. Of course we want to improve them.

As I have said so often, we want to try to get the proper balance between the deterrent and the reformative elements in our prisons. That we shall try to do. Despite the difficulties which still exist, I think the prison service has done a good job and deserves the thanks of this House. I can assure the House that the Prison Commissioners, those in the service—indeed, everyone concerned —will do their utmost to make the improvement which we all desire. Ultimately we shall look to the new, permanent prisons but, in the meantime, we shall strain every nerve to relieve the congestion and at the same time to make the change have the effect of fighting the crime wave and also of giving the people who are put in prison the chance of a better life after their release. That is all we can say, but what we say, we shall do.

9.20 p.m.

Mr. Ede (South Shields)

I am quite sure that the House will be grateful to the Home Secretary for the careful way in which he has gone over all the questions that have been posed to him tonight. The House as a whole will be grateful, but I must be especially grateful because at least two-thirds of his speech were taken up in defending my régime rather than his own. It is the first time I have ever been defended by one of Her Majesty's counsel learned in the law. I do not say that it is a process to which I look forward in the future, but should the right hon. and learned Gentleman, by the time I get into trouble, be relieved of his present office I will see that my solicitor is instructed to retain him.

Prior to the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman we had three most interesting speeches. My hon.. Friend the Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates) spoke with the great knowledge he has acquired owing to his service as Chairman of the Estimates Sub-Committee which inquired into the expenses of the prisons. The hon. Member for Wavertree (Mr. Tilney) dealt in a way that was most constructive and enlightened with the problem as he saw it.

The third was from my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benson), who, for many years has taken a great interest in this matter, has served on numerous committees connected with the prison service at the Home Office and has made many valuable, constructive suggestions, which have been embodied in the improvements that have taken place from time to time.

The five problems posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood made a good foundation for this debate and I do not complain of anything he said except that I felt the Estimates Sub-Committee had been too severe on the present system with regard to the question of indiscipline. The figures given by the Home Secretary at the end of his speech on the practical elimination of flogging for assaults on officers show that the internal arrangements in the prisons have been considerably modified and humanised during the past few years.

I am not over-impressed on these matters by the evidence occasionally given by some prison officers. I want to be quite frank on that point and I want to ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman, when dealing with the problem of recruitment, to bear in mind that quality in the men he can recruit is even more important than quantity. Any great reform and humanisation of the prison service must depend upon having prison officers who can use the wider opportunities that we hope will be available to them. There has been recruited into the Borstal service a number of young men of good education and wide social outlook who have gone into that service feeling that it is a vocation. I believe they have steadily improved the service, and as their influence grows they will improve it even more. If we are to get the best out of the reformative part of the 1948 Act, we shall require the same sense of vocation among prison officers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield said that no one worried if a Borstal boy escaped. Let me assure him that Home Secretaries have to worry. The rightful indignation that the chairman of an urban council whose urban district is situated near the Borstal institution can bring to bear in an interview when he comes up to deal with the latest two or three escapes is astonishing.

I hope it will not be thought that absconding can ever be regarded as something that is trivial. It puts the inhabitants of the district near the penal institution, be it prison or Borstal, into a state of serious nervous tension. That is one reason why the prisoners who go to open prisons must always be very carefully selected, so that there shall be no justifiable ground for a belief that dangerously violent people are likely to be at large in neighbourhoods where they can on occasion inflict great damage to property and less frequently, but still on occasion very devastatingly, can inflict injury on persons.

I do not intend to detain the House very long, because the right hon. and learned Gentleman said a great deal that it might have been necessary for me to say about what happened between 1945 and 1951; I am quite content to take his judgment on it. On that he can be judge as well as advocate. I should, however, like to say something about the question of work, because nearly every prisoner is in prison because of the misuse of his leisure.

After all, there are not many people who are now in prison because of their poverty. Anyone who sits at quarter sessions knows that instead of saying, "This man in front of you is here because he had a starving wife and six children," junior counsel now, taking a dock brief and doing the best he can for his clients, says, "He earned such high wages that they went to his head and he lost all sense of proportion." The misuse of leisure is the reason why nearly every prisoner is in prison; young men who could be in good work, and very often are, spending their evenings in petty burglaries in suburban areas. Any hon. and learned Member who is a recorder will know that such is not an infrequent type of prisoner to be in front of them; and when we get them in prison, we provide them with more tedious leisure than they even had when they were outside.

That is the problem which confronts us, and I regret very much that it has not proved possible to provide useful work, hard physical work for most of this particular type, from which they can get a sense of achievement, where they can see something being done, where their muscles will be kept in good trim, and where they feel that when they go out, no matter what hard work they have done before, they will not be coming back to the place for a rest cure. [Laughter.] That is not as humorous as it may sound. It represents, to my mind, the real philosophy that we have to apply to this problem.

I mentioned the other day, and venture to repeat tonight, that over vast tracts of the country we have appalling slag heaps. They are black in the North of England; in Cornwall they are white—the china clay slag heaps. Whether they are black or white they are eyesores that destroy the drainage of the country and immobilise a lot of land that ought to be used for agriculture, for recreation grounds and similar purposes. That is the kind of work that I think this type of prisoner could very well be put on. There are so many hundreds of thousands, or millions, of cubic yards of materials that cannot be conjured away. Every cubic yard has to be transported in some way or other to the site where one proposes to dispose of it, by levelling or in any other way. I would hope that it might be possible, in that kind of occupation and in similar ways, to provide a full-time working week for the type of young prisoner who needs that kind of discipline.

I am very glad to know that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has been able to open one of these centres where quite young men are to get what the hon. Member for Ruislip-Northwood (Mr. F. P. Crowder) described the other day as something approaching a "glasshouse" form of punishment. Strict discipline, hard, continuous work, will, I am quite sure, be beneficial to them.

I was disappointed, during my term of office, by the withdrawal of a great deal of interesting work from women prisoners. During the war they have been used for the assembly of radio sets and that kind of operation where a woman's deft fingers can deal with constructive work for which the type of young man of whom I have been speaking is quite unsuited. It is greatly to be desired, as far as women prisoners are concerned, that there should be an effort to give them some interesting, useful, work from which they can get some feeling of satisfaction when the job is done.

I think we have to bear in mind that both men and women alike will expect to see some reasonably quick achievement from the efforts they put forward. The particular type of mind with which I have been dealing cannot wait a long time to see the achievement that results from its efforts. If for both men and women something on these lines could be done I am sure that it would be greatly to everyone's advantage.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood mentioned the comparative cost of Wakefield and Wandsworth—£8 a week in Wakefield, £4 a week in Wandsworth. If, from my experience, I may be allowed to tender advice to the House I would say they must not expect to get good results from the prison service on the cheap. I managed to get a girls' Borstal started in an old mansion in Kent. While the numbers were low the results were surprisingly good but if the Estimates Committee, or the Public Accounts Committee, had examined the accounts in those years I have no doubt that a scarifying report about expenditure would have been presented to the House.

We must realise this is really an extension of the problem confronting us in the education service. Good results especially from younger people in this branch of the service will come from an intensive study of the character and inclinations of the individual youth or maiden with whom we are concerned. That means, comparatively high costs for staffing. I deplore the recent circular from the Ministry of Education to all local education authorities saying that the amount of money to be spent on the education services in prisons is to be restricted to the amount which had previously been spent. I suppose that in these days one should rejoice that no cut was announced.

I am certain that in short-term and longterm prisons one of the most humanising pieces of work done in recent years has been the co-operation of the local education authority in providing educational classes in the evenings for people willing to participate in them. It has the advantage of bringing people outside into the prisons; in bringing in a fresh face and a fresh voice and a fresh influence. All these help to keep the prisoners in touch with the world outside.

It may at the best stir up in the prisoner some interest in wider things than those in which he has previously been interested and provide him with soul-helping rather than soul-destroying ways of planning his leisure when he comes out of prison. I do not share the view of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield that 30,000 people escape from the prison system every year. Unfortunately, a proportion, which may not be very high but is still too high, feel, when they come out, that it will not be very long before they return. Wherever possible we must try to create in the minds of men and women the determination that when they come out they are not going back.

9.34 p.m.

Mr. Ian Horobin (Oldham, East)

My excuse for intervening in this debate is that for over 30 years I have lived and worked in the dock area of London and in that time many thousands of youths and men have come under my concern. Most of them were perfectly normal ordinary citizens but during that time I have known a substantial number, either before they were in trouble or during their period of trouble or, to use their own wry humour, after they are "demobbed."

I should like to offer some observations on two points of prison policy. I have rarely listened to a debate when I have found myself more in agreement with almost everything said on both sides of the House. I want, however, to say a few words on the problem of deterrents, especially as applied to penal institutions. It is very often supposed that we know a lot more than we do about it, and a good deal of rather dangerous use has been made of figures in this matter. We had an example of it in a recent debate on a Friday.

At this late stage I do not propose to give a lot of figures, but I will put this point to the House. It would be easy on the sort of argument to which we listened for hours the other day to show that prison and the modern longer sentences in prison were to be condemned on the ground that they have completely failed as deterrents. Year by year, since before the war, the number of persons sent to prison has gone up. Year by year they have served longer sentences. That is the reason for the overcrowding we all deplore. Year by year the number of convictions and the number of cases known to the police for the principal crimes, especially against property, have gone up. Therefore, as a deterrent, certainly along the line of statistical argument we heard the other day, the whole prison system, especially in its modern form of avoiding very short sentences, stands condemned. I will not go into details, but I could elaborate the point.

I come to the second aspect of the matter. I was really horrified by some of the arguments we have heard recently, because they would carry people much further than they would wish to go. My mind goes back to the Children and Young Persons Act, 1933. I cannot imagine that anybody who knows anything about the work of the Children's Branch of the Home Office would wish to go back on that Act, but judged by the success of modern penal methods as deterrents, that Act stands hopelessly condemned.

Before it was passed, for older young lads—and this is mainly a problem of boys and men—the actual number of indictable offences was falling. For younger ones up to the age of 14 it was rising, but it never reached 10,000 a year. Immediately after the Act was passed the figures jumped by several thousand. Never at any time in the last 20 years have we succeeded in bringing the figures for indictments against young persons down to the figure at which it stood before the Act. It is now something like double.

The point I am putting to the House is that it is most unwise to attempt to judge our penal methods on their success or failure as deterrents either to those who are actually concerned or to the public generally. Of course, we cannot take the matter to extremes, but I submit that on those sort of grounds to use or to attempt to use penal methods as deterrents is unlikely to succeed and may seriously hinder the proper purpose of our prisons and certainly of our Borstals, approved schools, and so on.

If time had permitted I should have liked to make some observations on the great increase in offences against property, but I cannot do so. I will finish what I have to say on this subject, and I am sure that I shall carry the bulk of informed opinion with me, by stressing that the country cannot get security at home, any more than abroad, on the cheap. There is no alternative to increasing the chance of being caught, and that means more effective police action and more police. The sooner we get back to the aspect of deterrence in our prison policy the better. Part of it is, in my submission—and I am sure that this is how the ordinary young fellow looks at it— as a plain punishment by society. The rest of it must always have as its main object the reform of prisoners.

To that second point I should now like to offer one or two observations. Once a man or boy is inside, any fool can make him feel sorry, but our trouble is in making him feel sorry that he was wrong, and that is not quite as easy as is sometimes supposed. The appalling selfishness of the potential criminal and the actual young criminal has to be seen to be believed. Many of us must remember the case, by no means an extreme case, of the Lord Chief Justice and the young prisoner who was writing home his first letter after being sentenced for a most savage attack on a girl, who was still unconscious and who was even then at death's door and probably never fully recovered, and in which he described his life in prison as being not so bad, without writing a single word of remorse or regret.

I want to deal with this problem of prisons as reforming instruments in the real sense, and here I think I have one advantage over most hon. Members present, because I can draw on another part of my experience in that I am probably the only hon. Member present who has served many years of imprisonment. Admittedly, it was in conditions very different from those of a penal institution in England, and in which the time was enlivened by various forms of corporal punishment, but many of the psychological problems are the same.

I would support everything that has been said by other speakers about the appalling problem of overcrowding and the long hours spent in cells. At this very moment, it is a terrible thing to me to realise that there is quite a number of people whom I know quite well who have already been locked up for five hours and who will remain locked up until tomorrow morning.

My conscience is quite clear about any chosen and more drastic form of punishment, corporal or otherwise, inflicted after fair trial on some types of prisoners with whom we have to deal, but I confess that my conscience is very troubled —and I wish I could trouble still more the consciences of others—as to whether society has any right to imprison men in conditions where precisely, in so far as they have anything good left in them, they are first tormented, then numbed and, finally, in many cases, destroyed. Confinement in circumstances in which every nerve is jarred is a most terrible thing to inflict on anyone.

I support what has been said, and I hope that it is felt strongly in the country that this is a moral issue before the country, and that all possibilities of anything that can be done will be explored quickly to limit this overcrowding, to give a chance of more work, and so on, by letting people out on licence or by any other methods.

I want to take up another point on the use of prisons in their capacity for reform. It is mainly a matter of warning. I think a good deal is sometimes claimed for education in the ordinary sense which will lead us to disappointment in this matter. The statistics are very remarkable. If we take education in its most favourable form—at the youngest and most impressionable age—in full-time compulsory State education, the results are very startling. There is nothing new in this. It was reported by the Children's Branch of the Home Office in 1938, and I will only turn to the report of the Commissioner for the Metropolis in 1951.

A very good case could be made for encouraging, or certainly not avoiding, the closing of schools, and for indicting the N.U.T. as a criminal conspiracy. Every year that a boy stays at school he becomes more liable to break the law. I have here the actual figures. They are laid out so beautifully that I can almost use them as visual aids. I think that is the proper term. In the Metropolitan Police district, and it is exactly the same all over the country, of the boys of the age of about nine 20 are arrested each year. After a year at school, the number goes up to nearly 200. In a couple of years more it has gone up to 400, and, finally, in the last year at school, it reaches the preposterous figure of 700.

The moment a boy leaves school and gets out of the appalling influence of the educational system there is a striking fall in the number, and after two years away from school the figure has fallen to oneseventh of what it was. I do not see how anybody can doubt that these figures are a very serious challenge to our educational system when it comes to producing a sense of social responsibility. However. I am not developing that point.

I am saying that the facts show—and I speak from a life-time of experience— that what turns the actual or potential young criminal into a decent lad is not the schoolmaster, but his first job. The reason I raise that now is that we have to take warning. I am not arguing against extra classes and the rest of it. Anything that can make it a little more civilised is all to the good. But the moral is that merely by having more classes and further revision of those conditions which failed when the boy was at school will not in themselves solve the problem.

I suggest that just as in matters of health when, with all the advances of modern science, the doctor has ultimately to rely on the healing strength of nature, so, in this grave problem, which is a moral problem, all we can do in the prisons, Borstals and approved schools is to work for this curing power of grace. This is a religious and a moral matter. We are not really dealing here ultimately with statistics, with classes or with offences; we are dealing with souls. I could not agree more with the fine words that came from the former Home Secretary, that the crux of this matter is the quality of the men in the prison service. No improvement in mere machinery will by itself solve the problem that confronts us.

Every single one of these cases is a human problem of how a human soul will react to a moral challenge in which he has hitherto failed. It is only if we treat it in that way and in that spirit that, I believe, we shall ultimately find what we all want, a system which will turn these people back from the evil road they have chosen to one on which they will not only earn a living, but will save their souls.

9.55 p.m.

Mr. Michael Stewart (Fulham, East)

I am sorry that the hon. Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Horobin) should have introduced into an otherwise most interesting and attractive speech a preposterous attempt to correlate crime with school attendance. I would suggest that he makes further inquiries into the question of the young people who committed offences and came before the court and find out how many of them have been in regular school attendance and how many were persistent truants. If he inquired into that he would find that there was rather more in this point than he has suggested to the House.

I have had the good fortune to be a member of the Estimates Sub-Committee of which my hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood (Mr. Yates) was chairman. In consequence, I prepared many remarks which I hoped to address to the House, all of which I have been rapidly striking out as the clock has gone round. But there are one or two points to which I should like to draw the attention of the Home Secretary. I believe and hope that our Sub-Committee produced a valuable Report. I am sure that the evidence which was presented to the Committee makes a very valuable record.

Anyone who reads it will know that any suggestion, such as is sometimes made in irresponsible quarters, that prisoners today are molly-coddled or kept in luxury hotels in pure nonsense. I hope that it will go out from this debate that any attempt to preach that kind of doctrine is worse than useless to deal with crime. For prisoners in the best of prisons life is strict, arduous and hardworking, and in not the best of prisons life is gloomy, restrictive and arduous.

The overwhelming majority of people who go to prison once do not go back there. Our problem is with those who go back more than once and whether they will turn into the kind of old dodderer described by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benson). I have never seen anything more pathetic in my life than some of the elderly and middleaged men whom we on the Sub-Committee saw in our prisons, doing repetitive jobs of no use to themselves or anybody else and knowing that they will be doing it for the rest of their lives. That is one road along which a man who has gone to prison more than once will go. But the other road leads through a wellmanaged training institution back to a useful and honest life.

The real problem is which of these two roads the prisoner will travel. That is determined very largely by whether there is sufficient useful work for men to do while in prison. To provide that work is not too easy. It involves problems of buildings, problems particularly of staffing, and problems of careful planning of orders for work. It is very common for the general public—and I confess that I was this way minded before I served on the Sub-Committee—when they hear of new prisons being built and new officers being recruited for service, to ask why we do not do more for people who do honest work and less for those who break the law. That is an attitude not only lacking in humanity but in common sense as well.

I assure the Home Secretary that if he can persuade his colleagues in the Government to give a somewhat higher priority to the needs of prison building and prison staffs, among the many other pre-occupations of any Government today, he will be supported by anyone on this side of the House who has studied the problem and has realised that expenditure of that kind will repay the nation ten times over in the reclamation of men who might have become useless criminals and in turning them into honest citizens.

There is a reference in our Report to the desirability of a special prison for the type of prisoner known as an aggressive psychopath. This was the only constructive recommendation in the section of our Report dealing with discipline, about which there has been so much criticism. I hope that a prison of that type which is to be built in 1954 will, in fact, be built, and that the Home Secretary, if he is still in office, will not allow anything to deter him from tackling that problem.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved, That a sum, not exceeding £898,676,000 be granted to Her Majesty, on account, for or towards defraying the charges for the Civil and Revenue Departments and for the Ministry of Defence for the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1954.