HC Deb 19 April 1973 vol 855 cc708-21

2.0 p.m.

Mrs. Renée Short (Wolverhampton, North-East)

I am glad to have the opportunity to raise an urgent matter that has concerned me considerably during the past few years and to have a chance to speak about it at greater length, and, I hope, to have a better ministerial reply than one can expect at Question Time. The public and the Press have been concerned about these cases.

From my discussions with psychiatrists about women who steal babies it seems to me that they fall into four basic categories. First, there are women with psychopathic problems, with a history of delinquency and a strong desire to have a child of their own, for whom the stealing of a baby is often an attempt to compensate for emotional deprivation in their own lives. Secondly, there are women of low intelligence who regard a baby as a plaything—something that they absolutely must have. Thirdly, there are women who are schizophrenic. Fourthly, there are women whose motive is to try to influence a man by whom they are pregnant, or have been pregnant, where the relationship is insecure and where the offence often follows a miscarriage. They steal a baby and attempt to pass it off as their own, hoping that by having a baby they will win the man back. These are often intelligent and sensitive women. The actual stealing is not premeditated except occasionally in the fourth group. The babies are always well cared for, well fed and well clothed, and they are given a great deal of affection.

I am a mother, and I can well imagine the horror and fear that strike at the heart of a mother when she discovers that her baby has been stolen from its pram outside a shop or supermarket, or wherever she left it. Particularly if the baby is not found for some weeks, her agony must be acute when she does not know whether the baby is alive or dead.

Two cases have exercised me greatly and they illustrate two of the groups. The first case is that of Pauline Jones. This case has aroused more sympathy and interest than any other with which I have been concerned since becoming a Member of Parliament nine years ago. I have had sent to me on her behalf money, cheques, gifts and many offers of hospitality, both short and long term. They come from people who believe, as I do, that she was cruelly treated.

Pauline comes from a comfortably-off family. At the time of the offence she was 23 years of age. She had spent three years in a teacher-training college. She had abandoned the course in order to nurse her mother, to whom she was greatly attached and who was dying of cancer. Soon after her mother's death her father married again. He married his wife's sister, Pauline's aunt.

The marriage was a failure right from the beginning. The effect of the marriage and the fact that the father married whom he did caused great distress to Pauline who had been completely bowled over by her mother's death, although of course it had been expected. It was inevitable that she should find a man whom she thought would give her the love and security that she thought she no longer had in her life. He made her pregnant and abandoned her. She hoped that a child would bring him back but unfortunately she had a miscarriage. This was a great misfortune. She stole baby Denise and kept her for five weeks. After her arrest she told the police: I had no intention of taking the baby. I saw her in the pram. Something came over me. I must have been out of my mind. In the event her lover did not return; he married someone else. In court Mr. Justice O'Connor called her "wicked" and sentenced her to three years in prison, a sentence that was reduced on appeal to 21 months. Lord Widgery, the Lord Chief Justice, said: We would not do this if we thought there was the slightest risk of another child being stolen by this woman. That seems to show complete ignorance of the reasons why unhappy and disturbed women steal babies.

Pauline was sent to Holloway and then to an open prison. She walked out from there, unable to tolerate the conditions and the company, and so she was sent to Styal. At the time she said that she would rather go back to Holloway and that must have been a cry of despair. I went to see her in Styal and I had a conversation with her in a small office with the deputy governor listening in to our conversation.

Pauline was stripped and searched before being brought into the room. I think that that was evidence of the appalling indignity and unnecessary humiliation of the prison regime. Newspapers sent by her father went astray all too often. Letters were not received and her letters out of prison were heavily censored.

She did a soft furnishing course while in Styal. When she could no longer tolerate the physical attacks of other prisoners and the noise and the conversation and bad language, she asked to be put into solitary confinement, and so she was locked in a cell and given work to do on her own. The work was cutting up small pieces of cloth that were used to stuff the soft toys made in the prison. When there was no material available and she had no work to do, she was not allowed to read or knit and, in her own words, she was made to sit "twiddling her thumbs" and looking at the wall and doing nothing for hours on end.

While in Holloway she suffered from eye and ear trouble, probably psychosomatic in origin. She made two suicide attempts while in Holloway. The Minister of State at the Home Office told me last November that the doctors were satisfied that the purpose of those suicide attempts was simply to seek attention and were not genuine attempts on her life. Of course they were to seek attention; they were anguished cries for help. Nobody tried to find out why she had done so and no help was given. At no time was she given proper psychiatric treatment and at no time was anything done to help her sort out her personal problems. The Under-Secretary told me that she did not need psychiatric treatment, but 1 think that this history indicates that that was not so.

I should like the Minister to tell us what good prison did for this girl. This case confounds for ever the notion that prison has any therapeutic value.

The second case is that of Jacqueline Padden, who comes into the first category. She is a girl from an unsatisfactory background. She was 19 when she committed the offence. She has a history of low intelligence and delinquency and she was known to the Southend police as a problem teenager. She had been put in care as a little girl for several years. She had no job and she had been in prison for drunkenness. It is quite a history for 19.

She had an illegitimate baby when she was 17 but the baby was taken from her and fostered. The father of the child was in prison serving a three-year sentence. She had been in a mental hospital on three occasions and on at least one she had run away. Clearly this was a psychologically highly disturbed girl who was mentally unstable.

Public opinion was shocked when she was given 21 months' imprisonment when it was not difficult to see that she had no intention of stealing a baby. She met a friend with her own baby who agreed to go with her to the civic centre to inquire about Jacqueline's baby who was fostered. She set off with the pram and she was found 15 minutes later precisely where the women had decided to go in the first place, waiting for her friend to catch her up. She was gaoled for 21 months—for 15 minutes!

The Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security told me on 10th November in answer to a parliamentary Question that the courts had made no attempt to get her admitted to hospital for further treatment. About that the Minister must be concerned. In a letter of 8th January he said: We would certainly accept the need to look at the provision for such disturbed people. This is clearly a serious gap in hospital provision. There must be proper hostel or other accommodation for psychiatric treatment, possibly on a group therapy basis. Residential care is needed for some of these women although perhaps not for all, but certainly skilled care and guidance there must be, and this is not possible in prison.

I know that the Minister will say that we have a psychiatric prison service, but in the atmosphere of prison these women are treated not like patients but like tough criminals. Where the restrictions of the prison regime remain, the women are subject to physical and mental ill-treatment by other prisoners and sometimes by prison officers—for example, as at Styal where Pauline Jones was and where I saw an example of that sort of treatment—and all that prevents a return to a normal state of mind.

It is clear that Section 3 of the Criminal Justice Act 1961 is too inflexible when it comes to the psychiatric treatment of young people with a background of mental disturbance. If, as the police said in the Jacqueline Padden case, she was too ill to stand trial, then she was certainly too ill to be sent to prison. We must sort out our priorities. Proper care must be provided. I am not making a party point here. Successive Governments and Ministers have been equally guilty of not making sure that there was proper provision for such cases.

We must ask ourselves whether judges are really competent to sentence in these cases. We need to examine our sentencing policy, the effect of the sentence and what it is that society expects from the sentences. I have been looking at cases in which men have been involved in cruelty to babies. One man who beat his baby son, aged two, to death was given an 18-month suspended sentence. Another, who beat his three-and-a-half month-old baby daughter to death, was given seven years. A man who beat a baby boy to death was given an 18-month suspended sentence. A mother found guilty of wilfully neglecting her five children in a manner likely to cause unnecessary suffering or death was given a six-months' suspended sentence. A man and woman who had two children, and who were not married, were found guilty of brutally beating the two-and-a-half year-old boy and severely maltreating the 20-month-old baby girl. The man was given probation for two years and the woman a six-months suspended sentence.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu)

Order. The hon. Lady is tending to criticise the courts rather than the administration of the Home Office. She should beware of that.

Mrs. Short

I am simply trying to point out that there seems to be neither rhyme nor reason in the present sentencing policy. A Home Office committee is looking at this. I await its report with considerable interest.

We must look back to the position in 1967, when the Estimates Committee looked at prisons, borstals and detention centres. I was the chairman of that Committee. We made a large number of recommendations to the then Home Secretary. One recommendation concerned the sentencing of women. We made strong recommendations that there should be more community care and involvement. Nothing appears to have been done since then, although whenever I have asked successive Home Secretaries I have had the pious reply, "Yes, we are doing something about it."

In effect, nothing is being done. The Jacqueline Padden case is a perfect example of the sort of person who could have benefited from the help which my Committee had in mind. Here the mother and her child should have been fostered together in some sympathetic environment so that some attempt could have been made to teach her how to be a proper mother and so that mother and child could make a new start in life together as a normal family.

I hope that we shall not again have cases in which such women are sentenced to prison. I hope that the Minister will look with favour on the case of another 18-year-old girl who also stole a baby. She was ordered to be detained in a mental hospital by a sympathetic Crown Court judge in Burton-on-Trent. This is the kind of treatment which is demanded for some of these cases and I trust that more imaginative and worthwhile attempts at community care will be considered by the Home Office.

2.14 p.m.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Mark Carlisle)

The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Renée Short) has again expressed her continuing concern with this issue. I am glad that she has raised this matter and given me the opportunity to comment on some of the things she has said. She said that she hoped that the length of this debate would allow her to receive a better reply from the Minister than she gets at Question Time. All I can say is that she may get a longer one but it will be a matter for her whether it is better. In the words of the late Lord Birkenhead, even if at the end she is none the wiser at least the House may be better informed.

I want to say something about the comments she made towards the end of her speech about the sentencing policy of the courts. I appreciate that she was not making a criticism of the courts, because that would apparently have been out of order. She commented on the type of sentences passed and suggested that there was no appreciable pattern I am sure she will accept from me that the individual sentences which are passed are, and must remain, matters for the judiciary. This is not an issue for Ministers, and I would be wrong to comment on any individual sentences that have been passed.

I accept that the duty of the administration and of Parliament is clearly to lay down the framework within which the judges act and to satisfy ourselves that there is an adequate choice of sentences available to the courts when dealing with these cases which can often be very difficult. Although I may comment about the cases of Pauline Jones and Jacqueline Padden, to which the hon. Lady referred —and another which the hon. Lady did not name and which I will not name, which occurred in the Staffordshire area— I do not intend to comment on particular sentences.

Instead, I shall attempt to relate my remarks more to the general provisions now available. Is there adequate provision for dealing with people of this kind? Without seeking in any way to minimise the problem which cases of this kind create, or without wishing to minimise the problem of women who get into trouble with the courts, it is right to say that we are dealing with a small number of offenders. In itself this presents a problem.

It is perhaps appropriate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that there should be a woman in the Chair at this stage. The fact remains that fewer women are convicted than men.

Mrs. Renée Short

They are more law-abiding.

Mr. Carlisle

Apparently. Of those convicted, fewer women are sent to prison than men. Because women are a minority this is inevitably a factor militating against the development of a wide range of special facilities for women offenders. For practical reasons those facilities which are provided have to cater for a much wider geographical area than is the case with the facilities available for male offenders. There is already a wide range of powers available to the courts and a wide range of different forms of treatment for those who have been dealt with by the courts.

Before coming to the individual cases to which the hon. Lady referred, let me remind the House of some of the alternatives which the court has. As the hon. Lady knows, I welcome her persistent attempts to see that imprisonment is kept to the minimum. I very much share her view on that matter. There are various methods whereby people who need psychiatric help may be dealt with in society without custodial sentences. The most obvious and prevalent means is by probation.

A probation order is capable of having included in it certain special requirements. For example, there is power under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 to include a requirement to undergo medical treatment with a view to the improvement of the individual offender's mental condition. Also, as a condition of probation a person may be required to reside in a probation hostel. We have seven such hostels throughout the country. In addition, there are a number of hostels provided by voluntary organisations and again a condition of residence at one of them may be made a term of a probation order. There is a group of hostels which specialise in dealing with specific categories of people. For women convicted of child neglect or in cases where, although a conviction has been in respect of some other offence, there is evidence that training in general household and domestic management and the care of children would be beneficial, there are certain hostels specialising in that form of training to which women can be sent as a condition of probation orders.

Bringing the situation up to date, in the Criminal Justice Act of last year we introduced a new provision which, when it is fully implemented, will allow a court to impose as a condition of a probation order attendance at a day training centre for a period of up to 60 days. An order of that type is concerned more with a male defendant. However, it is equally applicable to a woman who comes before a court, and it is aimed at education in its widest sense, including education in coping with children and with a household.

Although we have to proceed slowly in matters of this nature, we have set up four pilot centres. The problem at the moment is to find the necessary resources. In any Government there is always the need to argue a case for the resources which exist. We hope eventually to extend the system to other parts of the country.

Coming to the cases of disturbed people to whom the hon. Lady referred, may I remind her of the psychiatric facilities which are available? First, as I have said already, there is the power for a court in putting a person on probation to include a condition that that person should undergo medical treatment. There is also the power for a court to make an order for conditional or absolute discharge if it is satisfied that the individual offender is agreeable to receiving voluntary treatment from a general practitioner or at a hospital either as an in-patient or as an out-patient. If the court is satisfied that the person is willing voluntarily to undergo such treatment and it believes that the offender is in need of the treatment, it can give a conditional discharge and rely upon the person's undertaking to accept that treatment. Secondly, it can decide instead to make a probation order with a condition that the offender attends in-patient treatment at a mental hospital. Finally, there is power under Section 60 of the Mental Health Act, where there is medical evidence before the court that the offender is suffering from a specified form of mental disorder and that it is of a nature or degree which warrants detention in hospital for treatment, for the court to make an order requiring the person to be detained at that hospital, with or without a Section 65 order, the effect of which means that the person cannot be released other than with the consent of the Home Secretary.

The hon. Lady said that in the third case to which she referred that was the type of order which had been made. She suggested that that type of order was a humane way to deal with the girl concerned. As I understood it, the hon. Lady attempted to contrast that with the way in which Pauline Jones and Jacqueline Padden had been dealt with.

Without commenting on the final specific decision made by the court, in the case of Jacqueline Padden I must tell the hon. Lady that no court can make such an order unless there is medical evidence before it from two doctors. If I remember aright, one of them must give evidence in person though the other's may be given in writing. In the case of Jacqueline Padden, the court had before it a social inquiry report and two medical reports, one from a doctor in private practice and one from the medical officer at Holloway Prison. Neither medical report made any recommendation that Miss Padden be detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act. Therefore, even if the judge had wished to do so, he had no power to make such an order. Moreover, the counsel acting for Jacqueline Padden, presumably on her instructions, asked specifically that if a custodial sentence was to be passed Miss Padden should be sent to prison rather than be required to go voluntarily to hospital as a condition of an order, because she had made it clear that she was not prepared to remain in hospital and that if a custodial order was to be made she wished to be sent to prison instead. As I understand it, the court had no power to make the order that the hon. Lady suggests should have been made in that case.

In the case of Pauline Jones, again there was medical evidence before the court. The defence called a consultant psychiatrist to give evidence on behalf of Miss Jones. However, that medical evidence did not suggest that she should be dealt with under the Mental Health Act, and it was never suggested by defence counsel on behalf of Miss Jones that such an order was open to the court. It was quite impossible for the court to make the kind of order that the hon. Lady suggests should have been made since the medical evidence on which it was required by statute to act did not give the basis for such an order to be made.

Mrs. Renée Short

In the light of Jacqueline Padden's past history of, I think, three different periods in South Ockendon Mental Hospital, does not the hon. and learned Gentleman feel that the advice given to the court was curious, to say the least? Even if the medical evidence did not support a return to South Ockendon, the court could still have decided upon one of the other alternatives referred to by the hon. and learned Gentleman. It was not a question of prison or nothing, was it?

Mr. Carlisle

I do not want to be drawn into commenting on the order that was made. I understand that there was no medical evidence, but there were two medical reports, on which the court could have made a compulsory order under the Mental Health Act. It follows that the court could have made an order with a condition of residence as a voluntary patient in hospital. But, as the hon. Lady said, Miss Padden had, on at least one previous occasion, to use a neutral phrase, removed herself from that establishment. I repeat, the plea that was made on her behalf—and presumably on her instructions—urged the judge that, if he was considering that course, it would be much better that she be sent to prison than returned on an order to attend that hospital.

I turn now to the case of Pauline Jones. I was glad that the hon. Lady said that she understood, as I know she does—I am not trying to be cynical in putting it that way—the concern of the mother whose child had been stolen. Public opinion changes quickly in these matters and occasionally forgets the distress and trauma which must have fallen upon the parents of that child who was taken and kept away for several weeks—from 30th July to 3rd September—with the clearest possible intent on Miss Jones' part permanently to deprive the parents of that child. Whatever may have been the motivation behind Miss Jones' intention —I do not disgree with the hon. Lady's assessment of the fourth class into which she suggested she fell—during the intervening period she had attempted to register the child as her own and had clearly done what she could to indicate that she proposed permanently to deprive the parents of her.

I am not attempting to put a sympathy vote against a sympathy vote. But we must remember, apart from the attitude being expressed by the public, the dreadful experience that the parents must have gone through during the period that the child was removed from their care. It is true that the child came to no harm in that period, but I would suggest that any judge must take account of the effect that that experience had on the victims, as well as the other matters to which the hon. Lady referred.

After Pauline Jones was sentenced a great deal of public controversy was raised in the papers. I think that the hon. Lady knows that the Home Secretary of the day specifically obtained a psychiatric report on Pauline Jones from a leading and publicly recognised psychiatrist, who confirmed that there was nothing in his psychiatric asessment of her which differed from the evidence which had been before the court at the time that sentence was passed.

The hon. Lady talked about the experiences of Pauline Jones in Styal. The Home Office cannot be responsible for the choice of an individual prisoner voluntarily to be subject to Prison Rule 43 and to withdraw from association with other prisoners. It may be that, as the hon. Lady said, life for her in those conditions was not as full as it could be within the prison setting. But we cannot overlook the fact that it was no decision of the Home Office or of the prison governor; it was a voluntary decision by Miss Jones to exclude herself from other people in this way.

Having referred to the way that people can be dealt with other than by being sent to prison, I turn to the question of the psychiatric care that is available to those for whom the court decides that prison is a necessary sentence. I am fully aware of the hon. Lady's views on this matter. However, I emphasise that if a court decides that it is necessary to impose a custodial sentence it does not mean that the person concerned is deprived of psychiatric care. The hon. Lady knows that in Holloway there are five full-time medical officers, all of whom have psychiatric experience, and that there are six visiting psycho-therapists. Psychiatric facilities are also available at the girls' borstal at Bullwood, and. although not of the same degree of psychiatric assistance, there is a visiting psycho-therapist at Styal.

When Holloway Prison has been redeveloped there will be more emphasis on medical and psychiatric features. I think I am right in saying—I will correct myself by letter to the hon. Lady if I am wrong—that the newly-appointed Governor of Holloway was a medical officer at the prison. The whole emphasis within the new regime will be towards medical, psychiatric and remedial treatment. We realise that a substantial proportion of the women who are sent to prison are in need of medical assistance of this nature. I assure the hon. Lady that within the restraints imposed on the prison system we provide all the psychiatric help we can in Holloway, and will continue to do so.

It is easy, but not always necessarily accurate, to comment on the sentences passed on the basis of that part of the evidence which appears in newspaper reports. As the hon. Lady said, there are cases of attacks upon children which, on the face of newspaper reports, appear to have been dealt with leniently, and others which appear to have been dealt with severely. But often we do not have the advantage of having a full report which is available to the court on the facts and on the medical and social needs of the individual offender. I believe that we should be strong in retaining the distinction between our job in Parliament and the job of the judiciary. It is our job to see that facilities are available; it is for judges or magistrates who have the whole of the facts before them to decide the necessary sentences which, in society's name, should be passed on individual offenders.

I believe that the course involving the use of the Mental Health Act, which the hon. Lady would have liked to see taken in the cases that she mentioned, was not available to the courts because there was no medical evidence to justify such action. I believe that today, widened slightly by the Criminal Justice Act, we are providing a greater variety of methods to deal with disturbed people who appear before the courts. I hope that in future years we shall succeed in putting more resources into probation hostels and projects of that nature, so as to give the courts the widest possible alternative availabilities of sentence when deciding what is the appropriate order to make in any case.

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