§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Newton.]
§ 10 pm
§ Mr. Harry Greenway (Ealing, North)There is a need to counteract the effect of imprisonment. Whatever the arguments for and against sentencing different offenders to imprisonment, there can be no argument in favour of returning prisoners to the outside world when they are unable, through ignorance or ineptitude, to survive in the community and stay out of prison or are so decayed in personality that they lack the will and stamina to lead good and effective lives.
Imprisonment can leave its mark. However much some people might sometimes wish to make prison a terror to the evil-doer, a deliberately deterrent regime is impossible because the public conscience will not tolerate it and because it is impossible to recruit staff to inflict a punitive regime on prisoners.
The effects of imprisonment are many. Because a man is looked after, he gradually loses the ability to look after himself. Because he does not have to take decisions, even a decision as simple as whether to open or close a door, he loses the power to decide anything. Whatever knowledge or skill a prisoner has when he enters prison, he gradually loses it because he does not have to remember or exercise it. It is well known that people with low educational attainment are prone to forget what little they know.
The agencies which combat the decay of prison life are crucial. Every service connected with the imprisonment of men and women in prison—for example, the prison chaplaincy, the prison officers and the industrial services—strives sincerely to sustain and improve men and women during imprisonment. Prison officers seek to be active agents in a remedial regime. The conditions must be created in which they can be so. However, in the eyes of the prisoners, they are handicapped by their custodial duties.
Employment in prison industries could provide valuable training for prisoners who wish to lead useful lives. However, employment cannot be found for all prisoners. The working day is short and can be as short as three to four hours. Industrial processes in most prison workshops have to be broken down into small and simple operations which do not offer the worker a challenge or stimulus.
When educational activity is provided in a prison in sufficient variety to cater for the range of needs, it can do what no other reformative agency in the prison can achieve. It can make the prisoner exert himself. It can make him concentrate his mind and think quickly. The "prison crawl", necessarily developed to fill days and years in which there is no real occupation, is the surest guarantee that the released prisoner will not be able to stay out of prison. Educational activity can preserve his capacity to meet new experiences. It can teach the prisoner to fix his sights on a distant objective and discipline himself to work steadily towards it.
The downfall of many prisoners is their inability to work for anything but immediate satisfaction. It is notorious that, in prison, association often centres round interest in crime and leads the prisoner deeper into criminal society. When men are brought together in groups 104 on the basis of a shared interest in a branch of knowledge skill or hobby, there is a chance that they will form relationships which at worst are innocent and at best fruitful and beneficial.
All the agencies which the prisoner encounters in the course of his imprisonment have as their ultimate objective that the prisoner should on release lead a good and useful life. Invariably, when a prisoner undertakes an educational activity, that activity assumes for him an enormous importance. It is the only thing in his prison life with any purpose or direction. Since the teacher meets the prisoner in this context, he is in a uniquely favourable position to influence him towards the good.
The range of education in prisons is great. I mention four aspects, the first being remedial education. Even in the sheltered world of prisons the illiterate is at a disadvantage, often a great disadvantage. He loses the small degree of privacy allowed to him in letters sent from home. He is often sent back to his cell from workshops because he cannot read working instructions or fill in records of the work that he has completed. Most men who go to prison unable to read and write learn to do so, given the opportunity. In one London prison, for example, records show that fewer than 10 per cent. fail to profit from instruction, and the expectation is that a man will improve his reading age by between two and five years if he is in daytime remedial class for three months.
It is necessary to include in the bracket of remedial work such survival skills as budgeting, a knowledge of the Health Service and social services and the obligations of contracts and family responsibilities.
I turn next to voluntary non-vocational education. The value of educational activities voluntarily undertaken for interest only without vocational objectives is commonly under-rated. Their value in prison in awakening the capacity of prisoners to take an interest in something, to exert their faculties and to retain a capacity for making contact with people is immense. Physical activities pursued as voluntary educational activities are most valuable, some because they demand lively senses and quick responses and others, like weight lifting, because they give anybody who practises them a chance to experience progress in personal achievements as a result of steady and persevering effort.
I turn next to vocational education and study for public examinations, including long courses. The shock of a sentence of imprisonment and the forcible removal of a man or woman from the contacts, opportunities and obligations of normal life into a world of almost total frustration and non-identity can easily destroy that person.
It is easy to understand why prisoners who are given the opportunity of preparing themselves by study during their imprisonment for a qualification or public examination are usually so eager: it enables them to look forward not to a period of non-existence but to a constructive use of their lives. It is surely desirable that society should take advantage of that and try to use it as the lever to raise the prisoner from criminality into a life which will contribute to the community.
Most men turn away from crime between the ages of 30 and 35. It is therefore reasonable to regard the criminal as somebody who reaches the same degree of moral maturity at 30 as the non-criminal citizen achieves at school leaving age. It may well be that he needs for his maturity the experience of working to achieve a standard of attainment set by others and submitting himself to the 105 judgment of others — one aspect of criminality being precisely the refusal to do these two things. Prisons have long had a valuable organisation for vocational training and everybody would agree, surely, that in a world of changing patterns of employment this organisation should be extended and broadened in its scope.
Prisoners are, however, prepared to work hard in preparing themselves for a wide range of public examinations, and there is a growing effort in prisons to provide men with facilities for study in their cells and complementary class study to assist them in their efforts.
It is desirable that, when a man has proved his genuineness by persevering in a course of study for a period of a year or more in his own time, he should be given the opportunity of daytime classes for a period and that his work in the classroom should be recognised as work for the payment of the basic industrial wage current in the prison.
I turn next to pre-release courses. A man who has been in prison for a year or two, or has served an even longer sentence, needs help to confront and deal with the problems which he will encounter on his release. More especially, if effective remedial education has not been made available to him before, it must be made so during this pre-release period.
While the growth of education in prisons over recent years, stimulated by the energetic and thoughtful efforts of the education department of the prison department, to which I pay tribute, encouraged by enlightened governors and supported by local education authorities, has been remarkable and most encouraging, the demands of the law are satisfied if prisons provide a minimum of remedial education and one or two evening classes per week. The education officer in a prison proposes, with such advice as is available to him, a programme of educational work for his prison at yearly intervals, or more frequently, and then negotiates with his governor and with the education department of the prison department for the facilities necessary to run the programme. In those negotiations, however, he has no absolute rights. He is always negotiating from a position of weakness, in that while prisoners must be guarded, fed, exercised and given baths, they need not be taught. Moreover, two of the commodities that he needs for the conduct of his classes are always in short supply. One is rooms, the other is the time of prison officers, who must supervise the movement of prisoners from cells to classrooms.
While all sectors of the prison service are anxious to support all positive elements in the prison regime and to humanise life in the prisons as far as possible, at this time, when circumstances impose upon them every possible stress and strain, it is inevitable that education, which is not seen as an inescapable necessity, should be sacrificed when it seems that room and labour cannot be supplied for its purposes.
I believe that the prison service exists to meet the demands of the law, and, if Parliament recognises by legislation its own duty to make provision on a sufficient scale for education in prisons, the prison service will recognise its own legal obligation and co-operate in the maintenance of education facilities.
It is desirable in law that the following five suggestions be realised. First, every prisoner should be informed, at an appropriate time early in his sentence, of the desirability of making constructive use of his time in prison by working towards an educational objective. In 106 particular, those in need of remedial education must be identified and urged to take advantage of the opportunities open to them. Testing and counselling facilities should be provided to enable that to be done.
Secondly, there should be facilities in every prison for every prisoner in need of instruction in reading, writing and numbers at the basic level to receive instruction if he is willing to do so. Prisoners serving sentences of a year or more in need of basic instruction should, unless adjudged unsuitable for some positive reason, have the opportunity during their imprisonment of a period of at least three months on daytime classes, and prisons must make every effort to provide tuition adequate in quantity and quality, including daytime classes, to enable those on shorter sentences with literacy problems to remedy them if they have the willingness so to do.
Thirdly, facilities for voluntary non-vocational education must, in every prison, be on a scale that will enable any man who wishes to undertake an educational activity to receive tuition at least once a week. Fourthly, students undertaking vocational education or preparation by study for a public examination should, if they prove their genuineness and ability by persevering in their studies in their own time over a reasonable period, and are not adjudged unsuitable on some other grounds, be given the opportunity of a period of daytime study of one month for every year of their sentence, such daytime study being regarded as work and paid for at the basic industrial wage current in the prisons in which they are serving.
Fifthly, the education department of the prison department of the Home Office should be obliged to make arrangements with local education authorities to ensure the quality of educational work in each prison.
Throughout my adulthood I have visited prisons throughout Britain, both for men and for women. For 20 years I have been closely associated with a great educator in prisons. No one has done more than Sidney Heaven, an ILEA inspector, who is in the Strangers' Gallery tonight. I pay tribute to the great work that he has done. I have seen him in action in this important area. He was awarded the OBE for his outstanding work.
I should like to quote what my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State said as recently as 6 November. Speaking about adult prisoners, he said:
It seemed likely that those starting sentences had achieved significantly less educationally than a cross-section of the community as a whole. Hence the importance of education in a strategy of 'positive custody'. I am not arguing that the lack of educational success turns an individual to crime. But I am sufficient of a believer in the ability of education to help give a person the self-confidence and perhaps the skills necessary to start again, and so to see it as an ally in the struggle against recidivism.I should also like to quote from page 67 of the May report, which, in the section on "The Future", states:The purpose of the detention of convicted prisoners shall be to keep them in custody which is both secure and yet positive, and to that end the behaviour of all the responsible authorities and staff towards them shall be such as to:I therefore commend my remarks to the House in the spirit in which I have made them.
- (a) create an environment which can assist them to respond and contribute to society as positively as possible;
- (b) preserve and promote their self-respect;…
- (d) prepare them for and assist them on discharge "
§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Leon Brittan)I have not been able to establish when the House 107 last had the opportunity to discuss in any detail the education facilities available in our prisons, but I am sure that it was a long time ago. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) therefore does the House and the education service in prisons a particular service in raising the subject tonight. He does so, as he indicated himself, with a background of considerable experience and knowledge on these matters. I am grateful to him for what he said about individual officers and the service as a whole.
My hon. Friend began by describing clearly the adverse effects of imprisonment—the sapping of initiative, the loss of self-confidence and the erosion of social and educational skills. Of course, the recognition of these influences is not new, but it is fair to say that the overcrowding and pressures under which the prisons have had to operate recently have certainly made matters worse. My hon. Friend paid tribute to the various trades and professions who work with prisoners and who seek to mitigate the effects that he mentioned. Apart from the prison officers themselves there are, of course, chaplains, doctors and psychologists, probation workers and social workers. But the very valuable work that these people do is comparatively well recognised in this House and outside. On the other hand, the contribution that the prison education service makes is not so generally recognised, nor is much known of the substantial strides forward that have occurred in the last few years. I would, therefore, like to say a little more about the various activities that my hon. Friend mentioned.
The urgent educational need for many prisoners is to develop basic skills of communication. Eight per cent. of prisoners cannot read or write at all. About 22 per cent. have a reading age of 10 years or less. The education services' most pressing task, therefore, is to teach the three Rs. The prison service rightly gives priority to young offenders, not just those of compulsory school age, and all young offenders with reading ages of 10 years or less are offered help.
For adults, there are fewer staff to go around, and while the assessment system works well in training prisons, local prisons are hard pressed to spot those who would benefit from remedial education. On entering the establishment, prisoners in training prisons and all young offenders are told of eduction facilities that are available. They are all interviewed as a matter of routine by the education officer and his staff. But, as I have said, the situation in adult local prisons is less satisfactory, mainly because the large turnover makes it difficult for every new entrant to be seen. A member of staff could refer a prisoner to the education officer, or the prisoner would be told what was available if he asked. Naturally, there are notice boards and so on indicating what is available.
I do not pretend that the position in the local prisons is as satisfactory as in training prisons, and that is likely to remain the case so long as overcrowding remains. None the less, it has proved possible in the main to offer help at least to all adult prisoners who are totally unable to read and write.
The prison education service was a front runner in improving adult literacy, doing sterling work before the Adult Literacy Resources Agency and its successors began 108 their drive to improve literacy among adults in the community as a whole. As to the future, Mr. Justice May, in the report referred to, said that
remedial education…should be provided for those who ask for it and demonstrate the need for it, as well as those who, at the outset at the least, are assessed as needing it".That is our aim, and as resources become available that will be our objective.
Apart from basic education, the prison service provides a wide range of courses that might loosely be collectively entitled non-vocational education. That includes, of course, full-time education for younger people of compulsory school age. It is here that the prison teaching staff do some of their best work, not just academically but in stimulating general maturity of outlook and behaviour.
Then there are, of course, academic courses leading to public examination at all levels up to university level. In recent years the scale of this kind of education has increased enormously, so that in 1979 over 6,000 prisoners sat for examination in more than 8,000 subjects, with an overall success rate of 67 per cent. But not all study of this kind leads to examinations. Many prisoners are motivated by interest in a particular subject rather than a wish to obtain qualifications. Similarly, a great deal of valuable work has been done to help prisoners develop social skills and cope with life, for example, by teaching them how to obtain a job or how to manage money. There is excellent scope here for prison officers to be creatively and constructively employed.
My hon. Friend spoke kindly of vocational training. This is training intended to improve an offender's skills in a particular trade and thus enhance his chance of obtaining employment. Not surprisingly, many of the courses are in trades related to the construction industry. They are full-time and are particularly angled towards young offenders. In 1975 there were 93 vocational training courses alone. There are now 130, with a further 10 planned—taken together, an increase of over 50 per cent. in five years. Two thousand and fifty-one prisoners successfully completed their training last year, almost half of whom were successful in public examinations.
I should not like to complete a description of the education facilities without mentioning those concerned with recreation and the use of leisure time — in particular, physical education, art, handicraft and music. The great value of these activities lies in their ability to stimulate creativity and to help a prisoner discover skills of which he was not previously aware. Participation in these facilities can do a great deal to boost morale. A particular debt of gratitude is due to Arthur Koestler, whose generosity has made possible an annual exhibition of prisoners' art, craft, music and literary work for many years now.
In practice, the facilities that I have described involve a considerable number of teaching staff. In the academic year 1978–79, the education authorities employed 118 education officers, 285 salaried teachers and 2,856 hourly paid and evening staff. The Home Office employed a further 250 or so vocational training instructors, librarians and supporting staff. That is a total of over 3,500 full-time and part-time education staff who reached an impressive proportion of the prison population.
On one day in 1979, for example, 65 per cent. of prisoners made use of books from prison libraries. All young offenders must participate in education facilities, and over 45 per cent. of adults do so on a voluntary basis. 109 When we are talking of the development and extension of educational facilities in prisons, the fact that 45 per cent. of adults participate in those facilities today, compared with 33 per cent. 10 years ago, is a measure of the extension of education in prisons. Altogether, in the last academic year prisoners devoted 4½ million hours to education, about half during the day and half in evening classes.
The generous praise that my hon. Friend gave to the education department of the Home Office for the rapid and recent development of facilities is well deserved.
My hon. Friend mentioned resources. The position is broadly that the prison service itself is responsible for providing accommodation and stores, and it directly employs the instructional staff for vocational training. For teaching staff, on the other hand, it is indebted to the 49 local education authorities in England and Wales. They are reimbursed in full for their services and also get an additional reimbursement for their overhead expenditure. Library authorities are paid on an agreed capitation basis. Payment is a direct charge on the prison department's annual budget, not on the local rates or the central Government's rate support grant.
This brings me to the question of priority. My hon. Friend urged me to ensure that education in prisons received the high priority that he considered it deserved, and he suggested that this should be achieved through giving education a particular status by legislative means. While I share my hon. Friend's objectives, I am not persuaded that legislation of a rigid kind is the most appropriate way of going ahead, because legislation in itself, setting down requirements, does not provide the resources that are needed. I hope that my hon. Friend will feel that the fact that without legislation it has been possible to make the advances that I have described indicates very clearly the commitment of the prison department in the past to the extension of education wherever possible.
110 I can assure my hon. Friend, on the part of the present Administration, that that commitment remains very much to the fore, even at a time when the pressure on resources in the prison department, as elsewhere, is very great indeed.
My difference with my hon. Friend is a difference only as to means and not as to end. When we have a pressure on resources in the prisons, in relation to matters that I am not suggesting are more intrinsically important than education but are in a sense more basic and cannot immediately be done without, we see the position that we are in today.
When I began, I observed that it was many years since we had had the opportunity to discuss education in prisons. It would be wrong to let this occasion pass without recording, on behalf of those responsible for prison education, our gratitude to the various local and central education authorities which have been involved.
On the subject of quality, I hope that I can reassure my hon. Friend that the local education authorities and the prison service's own professional education unit recognise that this is an area where there is always room for improvement. Together with the Department of Education and Science, they are holding a series of conferences over the next 12 months to study how quality, performance and accountability can all be improved and to consider the best way ahead for prisoners' education, vocational training and library services during the next five to 10 years. That is particularly appropriate at this time of change in our prison system, and I think that it will make an important contribution towards the development of education on the lines—
§ The Question having been proposed at Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
§ Adjourned at half-past Ten o'clock.