HC Deb 31 October 1961 vol 648 cc145-58

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Whitelaw.]

9.55 p.m.

Mr. George Thomas (Cardiff, West)

The problem of crime amongst our people has for many years been of major concern to the House and to the country. No one with a sense of responsibility can fail to be grieved by the very large proportion of crime committed by young people under the age of 21. The recent lengthy correspondence in The Times, following the challenging letter of the Rev. Dr. Leslie Weatherhead, is evidence of uneasiness about the question of falling standards, an uneasiness shared by responsible people in all parts of the land.

We in South Wales have our full quota of youthful lawbreakers. I do not suppose that in this respect we are any better or any worse than other industrial areas. Unhappily, there is a common feature in every industrial area of a rising curve of crime being committed by youngsters under 21. We have a special problem when it comes to dealing with young offenders. Magistrates in South Wales, denied the proper facilities for dealing with young lawbreakers, are at their wits' end to know how to do the right thing for these young people.

The 1948 Act established new schemes of treatment and punishment for persons under 21 years found guilty of offences against the law. This enlightened Measure specifically forbade imprisonment for youths, unless there was a special reason demanding this course. I recall the debates on the 1948 Act, as will my hon. Friends the Members for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Watkins) and Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon).

Thirteen years have passed, but the Act has not yet been implemented properly. The only detention centre available for the whole of the 14 to 17 age group in South Wales is a centre at Kidlington in Oxfordshire. I understand that this centre became available to the courts in Glamorganshire on 28th March, 1957. I quote from the words of the Clerk to the Justices in the City of Cardiff: In the early days the Cardiff Court obtained three vacancies. Soon the centre became full and immediate vacancies could not be obtained. As it would appear to be illegal to remand a youth to await a vacancy at a detention centre, its use has become impracticable. South Wales has no detention centre at all for the age group 17 to 21. This is a group which, unfortunately, so often features in questions of crime. We have no remand centre for them. This lack of proper facilities has most grievous consequences. First, young lads and lasses who, by a course in a detention centre, might be prevented from embarking on a life of repetitive crime have to be sent to approved schools or borstal in order to be cured. The cost in money and family suffering by the longer separation caused by the lack of detention centres is needlessly increased.

I quote again from a letter I have received from the Clerk to the Cardiff City magistrates: Through the consequent large number of committals to approved schools, the remand homes have become choked with boys awaiting transfer to approved schools.…In Cardiff three-quarters of the accommodation is taken up by boys awaiting transfer to approved schools. It takes two months or more to get a boy transferred to Kingswood Classifying School and three to four months to transfer him to a Roman Catholic School.

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Whitelaw.]

Mr. Thomas

I was saying that it takes three to four months to transfer a lad from the remand home to a Roman Catholic school.

The magistrates in South Wales often have to grant bail to a young person where it would clearly be in the interests of that young person to be under observation. There is no detention centre, and because magistrates do not like to send teen-agers to prison to be observed they put them on bail. Worse still is the fact that some youths have to be sent to prison solely because a detention centre is not available, and I believe this to be a crime against youth. I confess that when I have to visit youngsters of 17 years of age in Cardiff Prison it angers me that society is so casual about this matter.

I recently visited a 17-year-old youth, detained in Cardiff Prison for over two months waiting for the quarter sessions, where he was found not guilty of sitting on the back of a motorcycle that someone else had stolen. It is utterly shocking that that lad should have been kept in Cardiff Prison awaiting the quarter sessions, his mother beside herself with anxiety, and the boy himself bound to suffer from knowing that he was wrongly detained. This sort of thing must be brought to an end.

The absence of detention centres and remand centres also adds to the already heavy burden on our probation officers. No hon. Member can measure the debt that society owes to these dedicated public servants. I regard the probation officer as a life-saver, and I gladly pay tribute to the corps of probation officers we have throughout our country. They are people called to a special vocation; only a sense of calling keeps them in their difficult task, but lack of detention centres means more fines, and, as the courts are naturally reluctant to impose the penalty of imprisonment on young people for nonpayment of fines, the probation officer has his work increased.

The Cardiff magistrates have given urgent consideration to this question and they have the practical proposal that the barracks at Maindy, in Cardiff, should be used for the following purposes for the whole of South Wales at least: (a) as a junior detention centre for the age group 14 to 17 years; (b)as a senior detention centre for the age group 17 to 21 years; (c) as a remand centre, and (d)as a local attendance centre for the age group 17 to 21. This proposal would reduce the pressure on remand homes, approved schools, borstal institutions, and our prisons, and would also relieve the pressure on the probation service. Already, this scheme has the approval of the quarter sessions of Breconshire—

Mr. Tudor Watkins (Brecon and Radnor)

Hear, hear.

Mr. Thomas

My hon. Friend agrees; his wife is a magistrate in the County of Brecon, so he speaks with considerable authority.

As I say, the proposal has the approval of the quarter sessions of Breconshire and Carnarvonshire, and of the County Boroughs of Newport, Swansea, and Merthyr Tydvil.

This scheme has the approval of people who are weekly, if not daily, face to face with the problem of dealing with youth. Replies have not yet been received from Glamorganshire, Monmouthshire and Pembrokeshire, probably because they have not yet met to discuss the proposal.

I know that Cardiff Corporation has an interest in the barracks at Cardiff and that since last January it has been trying to obtain from the War Office permission to use the 27½ acres of sports field for housing and recreational facilities. Further, I have with me a copy of the correspondence that has passed between the corporation and the War Office. It is hard to get a definite decision from the War Office. The last letter from the War Office, dated 22nd June, 1961, says: It is not anticipated that any instructions will be given in the near future for the disposal of the whole or part of Maindy Barracks and playing fields. I believe that the proposal of the Cardiff magistrates need in no way conflict with the proposal of the Cardiff Corporation because the playing fields can and will be used by the corporation. There is an undoubted and urgent need for a detention centre. We must bring to an end this business of pushing our young people into gaol as a matter of convenience, because we are not operating the 1948 Act.

Miss Alice Bacon (Leeds, South-East)

It is not only the 1948 Act. We have just passed the 1961 Act and I am afraid that if we are to put up with the conditions such as my hon. Friend has just described we shall not put into operation not only the 1948 Act but the 1961 Act as well.

Mr. Thomas

I appreciate my hon. Friend's observation. I thought that it would be a start if the 1948 Act could be operated so that there would be a chance for the 1961 Act to come later.

The point is that we are not showing the urgency that should be shown towards detention centres that can be remedial centres to save young people spending years in borstal or in other approved schools. At least, there is a prima facie case for the barracks to be used for this constructive work. The War Office, apparently, feels that it may need the barracks at intervals. It should realise that this proposal is for a short-term centre which could be closed for short periods and at short notice. There is ample room in these buildings for the work which the magistrates suggest could be done.

The cost would be negligible, but the value of the centre would be immense. Such a centre would give opportunity for a further specialist study of young people who are detained, so that we might know more of the causes and treatment of crime among youth. It is because we have a special obligation towards these young people and must protect society against their turning sour that I believe we have a right to say to the Home Office that it should be giving very urgent attention to this suggestion.

I have brought constructive proposals before the House. I am glad that the Under-Secretary to the Home Office is in his place to reply and I hope that he will give a sympathetic answer to those proposals.

10.14 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke)

The hon. Gentleman the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. George Thomas) always addresses us with such charm and reason that it is indeed a pleasure to answer him, and I hope that he will regard what I have to say as being constructive, even if I cannot give him all he has asked for tonight.

Of course we accept the immense importance of detention centres and we accept the immense importance, in particular, of keeping young prisoners—in so far as they are on remand and in other ways—out of association with older prisoners. That, I think the hon. Lady the Member for Leeds, South-East (Miss Bacon) will agree, was the theme of the 1961 Act. My right hon. Friend, as she knows, is fully aware of the desire of courts throughout the country for enough detention centres, both senior and junior, to take all the boys whom the courts wish to commit to them.

Our experience of detention centres is, of course, limited—unfortunately and probably wrongly, but it is limited. We shall, no doubt, learn more as we go on. They have had in their short life great praise, and they have had more tonight. I have seen some of them and I dare say other hon. Members have, too. They are very impressive. But, of course, they are not the answer to everything, and it can already be said that detention centre treatment is generally found to be unsuitable for certain classes of boys, notably those who have already undergone long-term institutional training and have appeared many times in the courts.

The most hopeful category is that of the well-developed, undisciplined young offender who has hitherto come off best in his conflicts with authority and, without having developed a bent for crime, requires to be taught through unpleasant experience and enforced discipline that interference with other people and their property will be dealt with firmly and inescapably by society.

As the hon. Member is, no doubt, aware, it is my right hon. Friend's policy that sufficient detention centres to cover the needs of courts throughout England and Wales should be provided as an urgent part of the very big building programme for new penal establishments of all kinds. It is a very large penal programme, as the hon. Member knows, and it has not, in spite of the financial stringencies of the time, been in any way cut.

Everything possible is being done to achieve this object as early as we can, and considerable progress has already been made. One should remember that at the beginning of this year there were in England and Wales altogether only two senior detention centres and two junior detention centres in operation. Since then no fewer than five new senior centres, for which there is a more urgent need than the junior, have come into operation. I shall have a word to say later about two of these five senior centres, namely, those at Medomsley in the County of Durham, and New Hall near Wakefield. The other three are situated at Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, Aldington in Kent and Buckley Hall in Lancashire. We plan to provide at least three more senior centres, two more junior centres, and a centre for girls. The three additional senior centres are already under construction and will be situated at Send in Surrey, Haslar near Portsmouth and Devizes in Wiltshire, and I shall have a word to say to the hon. Member about Devizes. They are expected to be in operation by the middle of next year. A centre for girls is under construction at Moor Court in Staffordshire, and this too will be ready about the same time.

The additional junior centres will come along later, but the position is that by the middle of next year, the great majority, at any rate, of the courts in England and Wales will have enough senior detention centre places available to them, and it was that age group that the hon. Member so rightly emphasised; but I am afraid they will have to wait a little longer for enough places in junior centres.

The hon. Member quite rightly emphasised the attractions of buildings that were already apparently available in Cardiff. He gave a description of Maindy Barracks and urged the case for establishing a senior and a junior detention centre, and, I think, an attendance centre and a remand home in those barracks, to serve the courts in South Wales.

Miss Bacon

A remand centre, not a remand home.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke

I am obliged—a remand centre.

The first difficulty about that suggestion is that the Army authorities have not yet decided on the future of the barracks. They have certainly not declared them to be redundant.

Mr. G. Thomas

They have been empty a year.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke

They may have been empty. That is often the way of military and other public authorities whose needs expand and contract with the international situation only too frequently. The position of the War Office is that these barracks are not immediately available by any means, and they have not been declared redundant. Apart from that, if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, there are strong arguments against having either a senior or a junior detention centre for South Wales alone, The size of detention centres has, as a result of experience, been settled at what one might call a certain optimum. In planning the system of detention centres, the object must be to ensure that each centre serves a geographical area which is neither so large that the needs of the courts included in it cannot be met nor so small that the number of boys committed to the centre is insufficient to maintain the population there at an economic level. The present detention centres are for seventy-five boys, and a centre for a substantially smaller number would be wasteful of staff, which, of course, is an ever-important consideration in all penal establishments at this time, and likely to be so, I fear, for a long time, and it would generally be uneconomic in other ways. Moreover, it is very difficult in a small centre to organise group activities such as educational classes and other activities which are very important.

As hon. Members may know, one of the features of detention centres is that the time of the boys and the girls is always fully occupied, seven days a week. That is a very important part of the training. Therefore, group activities, and the opportunity for group activities, are essential It is found that if one has a population of under seventy-five, one cannot organise those activities all through the seven days in the way that they should be organised

In a centre for seventy-five boys, for example, one can justify the provision of one or more qualified physical education instructors, the provision of a full-size properly equipped gymnasium, and a properly planned programme of evening education staffed by teachers from the local education authority. It would be impossible to justify provision on this scale for a centre designed for a smaller number, and such a centre would inevitably lack, in our view, the effective and balanced regime which should be the essential feature of this kind of treatment.

It is not easy, of course, to judge the size of the area which will support a detention centre for seventy-five boys. As the hon. Gentleman said, in his view—I am sure that he knows more about it than anyone else—Cardiff and its surroundings are no better or no worse in juvenile delinquency than other industrial areas in England and Wales. We may, I think, take it as typical and average. Although it is not easy to judge the right size, since account must be taken not only of geographical size but of the general level of offences of the type for which committal to a detention centre would be an appropriate penalty, the experience at two particular centres which have been able to take virtually all the boys which the courts in their particular areas wished to send to them is instructive in this respect.

These two centres have been running at Medomsley, in Durham, and at New Hall, near Wakefield, since February and April last respectively. In the first case, the Durham one, the detention centre has had a population sometimes reaching the maximum of seventy-five, but commonly a little below.

In the second case, the centre although nearly always above fifty-five in number, has never yet attained the maximum that it could accommodate, namely, seventy-five. In both cases, the catchment area—one can visualise what the catchment area would be—both in population and volume of crime very substantially exceeds the area of South Wales and Monmouthshire.

On this experience, therefore, it is fair to say that it is most unlikely that South Wales and Monmouthshire could be regarded as a sufficiently large area to be served by a single senior centre unless this were so much smaller than the existing centres as to constitute the sort of uneconomic unit which we must try to avoid.

The same argument applies with even greater force to the provision of a junior centre for this area. As far as can be judged, therefore, and without making any firm promises, I must tell the hon. Gentleman that one of the senior centres now being built, namely, that at Devizes, should be able to cater for a sufficiently wide area to enable South Wales to be included. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is not a nationalist in the sense that he feels that no nation is a nation unless it has a detention centre in it and, therefore, will not regard it in any way as a slight on Wales that the delinquent boy should have to go to Devizes. Normally, when we have inquiries into these matters, the neighbourhoods concerned are only too anxious that the places of detention and custodial centres generally should be as far away as possible.

I have said that two more junior centres are to be provided. One is already being built. We are seeking a site for the other which will cover the whole of the south-western quarter of England and Wales. A suitable site is in view, but negotiations are in too early a stage for me to say any more. The hon. Gentleman will know the problem of the selection of sites, and the public inquiry that follows, is a most heated and worrying one for the Home Office in general and for the locality.

I now come to the question of the remand centre. The hon. Gentleman suggested that a remand centre and a senior attendance centre should also be established at Cardiff. We are in fact proposing to provide a remand centre in Cardiff for those young offenders who at present have to be remanded to Cardiff and Swansea Prisons. In the first instance, the centres will be provided in a wing of Cardiff Prison at present used for borstal girls. The premises will be extended and adapted and—this is very important—provided with their own gate so that they will be as completely apart from the prison as if they were outside the wall.

The adaptations which we are making will ensure that all necessary facilities are available for adolescents—that is, people under 21 years of age—who hitherto have had to be accommodated in prison if a remand in custody has been thought necessary. We remember the hon. Gentleman's example of that. At the same time, being situated adjacent to the prison, the centre will be able to draw on the prison for administrative and maintenance services which would represent a substantial burden of cost if they had to be provided for the centre separately. These premises will in due course revert to prison use when a remand centre has been provided in new construction.

As for a senior attendance centre, the only one which is in existence at present is the experimental centre at Manchester, which is staffed by officers of Manchester Prison. As the hon. Gentleman may know, junior attendance centres are staffed by the police. It is too early yet to assess the value of this form of treating offenders in the 17 to 21 age group. Experience in Manchester suggests that attendance centre treatment is appropriate for fewer offenders in this group than in the 14 to 17 age group. It is not practicable to run a centre unless there is a sufficient demand for it within the necessarily limited catchment area. Obviously, the offenders have to live very near the attendance centre and, therefore, there has to be a concentration of demand. If consideration were given to the opening of a new experimental centre in Cardiff, we should, as a first step, have to be satisfied that a demand for it existed in this way. It is far from clear that this is so.

Mr. G. Thomas

Demand from whom?

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke

From the sort of people who would go to the attendance centre.

Mr. Thomas

Surely, those who go there will not ask for it. The magistrates are asking for it.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke

I am using "demand" in the rather technical sense of there being sufficient offenders from the ages of 17 to 21 who, it is thought, should have as a punishment attendance at an attendance centre rather than at a detention centre, borstal, or any other form of punishment.

The hon. Member referred to pressure on the available accommodation at remand homes and approved schools, and, of course, he is quite right. It is not intended that offenders suitable for remand homes and approved schools should be sent, because of lack of accommodation in these categories, to remand and detention centres whose purpose is to deal with the types of young offender now remanded to prison or given a sentence of imprisonment. Other measures are in hand for extending the accommodation in remand homes and approved schools. The hon. Member is quite right in saying there is immense pressure, particularly on approved schools and, in a sense, particularly on approved schools of the Roman Catholic denomination.

Again, we have a great building programme going on, particularly for remand homes. It is not in any way put in jeopardy by the present financial stringency as far as I know at present, and I do not think that it will be. From what I have said, I hope that the hon. Member will agree that my right hon. Friend and all in the Home Office are fully seized of the need which the letter from the clerk to the justices shows that the courts in South Wales have for more detention places and for other forms of custodial treatment.

The whole field of the provision of alternatives to shorter term imprisonment for young offenders is one in which we must learn by experience. So far, we have not much experience of our own as a guide, nor is much being done in this direction in other countries which is of direct assistance to us. He would be a bold man who would say that the plans which I have outlined this evening will be found to meet the needs in every respect. We must, however, do our best from our experience and our information.

It can fairly be claimed that the considerable progress which has been made even in the last year in the provision of detention centres and the further centres which will come within the next eighteen months represent a remarkable step forward and a considerable extension of the availability of these facilities to the courts in all parts of the country, including South Wales. It certainly is not our intention that there shall be any sort of discrimination against South Wales. The hon. Member, in his persuasive speech, never suggested that there was any discrimination.

As for the seniors, by the middle of next year we should have broken the back of the task of providing places in detention centres and the courts should have no difficulty in sending seniors there. In the case of the juniors, this will be done a little later. The remand homes and the approved schools are a rather more difficult and intractable problem, certainly the approved schools. We are, however, getting on with the task.

In the light of that and of the fact that the "crash" programme suggested for Maindy barracks on which the hon. Member and those in Cardiff who think like him have their eyes, is out of the question because the War Office, which owns and controls the place, has shown no intention of surrendering it or saying that it is redundant or unnecessary, I hope that the people of Cardiff, and particularly the magistrates, will feel that when the Devizes senior detention centre is available within a short time, all the feeling of misery and wretchedness that the bench feels when it cannot send offenders to the right sort of treatment will soon disappear.

The Question having been proposed at Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at half-past Ten o'clock.