PRISONS AND AFTER-CARE

HL Deb 31 July 1956 vol 199 cc435-87

3.25 p.m.

Debate resumed.

THE EARL OF LUCAN

My Lords, I think I should first say how grateful we are to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for introducing this debate and giving us his views, which are based on wide experience and knowledge. I cannot speak with anything approaching that knowledge, and all I should like to do for a few minutes is to enlarge somewhat on the question of after-care and, in particular, on the question of the voluntary agencies for that after-care. Nowadays, I do not think any apology is needed for raising questions of prison reform or after-care. One hardly ever hears now the view that it is sentimentality—and misplaced sentimentality at that—to try to ameliorate the conditions in the prisons and to assist the future of the men who have been sentenced to imprisonment. It is, after all, hard common sense and economics that the necessary measures should be taken to restore to good citizenship those who have fallen into crime. So the matter of after-care, in particular, was investigated by a Committee under Sir Alexander Maxwell, which came quite definitely to the conclusion that a good deal needed to be done to improve the after-care arrangements.

I was glad to see, in the Report of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Prisons for 1954, that one of the recommendations of the Maxwell Committee has been implemented, though on a small scale; that is, the appointment of prison welfare officers. I hope the noble Lord who is to reply will tell us, if that scheme has been going long enough, what the experience has been and whether he anticipates that the Home Secretary will be able to proceed to the appointment of the full number of prison welfare officers.

It is true that much of the material side of after-care is now looked after by the machinery of the Welfare State. It is true that the prisoner's social insurance position is safeguarded, and that the National Assistance Board, to some extent, look after his family while he is in prison and himself when he comes out. The National Health Service looks after his health, and the Ministry of Labour try to place him in employment. It was, however, the unanimous view of all the highly qualified witnesses who gave evidence to the Maxwell Committee that that is not enough. Once material needs have been satisfied, that is where the true after-care must begin; where there is a need for real service to assist the ex-prisoner to rearrange the pattern of his life and to restore his self-respect and take his place as a good citizen again.

Not all men undergoing sentences want help, and not all are capable of benefiting by it. But in the case of the great majority some tactful sympathetic help on release may make all the difference between a man "going straight" and relapsing again into a life of crime. As the noble Lord said in his opening speech, that after-care has to be planned, and the planning for it should start the moment the man goes into prison to serve his sentence. Unless those who will carry out the after-care have full knowledge of the background of the man they are to help, half the effort will be wasted. After-care needs voluntary helpers who are prepared to give their time, sympathy and friendship to men who are coming out of prison. These helpers must be carefully picked. They must be the type who will inspire confidence, in whom a man will feel confidence, because relations with a man who has served a prison sentence must necessarily be extremely difficult. The hardest thing is to ensure the supply of public-spirited volunteers to undertake this work. I believe that certain people have been doing it on a purely personal basis for years, but the number is a matter of dozens. What is needed is hundreds and thousands of people all over the country from whom suitable people can be picked to help individual prisoners on discharge.

One of the voluntary organisations of which I happen to know, in the formation of which the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, himself and my noble friend Lord Pakenham have been instrumental, is functioning in a small way in London, but in a pathetically small way. I want to ask Her Majesty's Government whether an approach could not be made to many of the voluntary bodies interested in social service and philanthropy in order to try to catch the thousands of people there must be who would be willing to take on such work. As things are, we all know that the number of people who take on voluntary work is strictly limited. It is always the same man who runs the cricket club or the darts club, or is the trade union secretary or is in the Territorials. He is engaged in every sort of activity of that kind. The load ought to be spread much more widely. I suggest that there must he many sources of supply in the country that could he tapped for this sort of work.

Without wanting to detain your Lordships too long, I say that the importance of this work, and particularly its importance in connection with the young prisoners, is most strikingly brought out in an Appendix to the Prison Commissioners' Report for 1954. If I have not misinterpreted these figures, they show that of men first offenders, aged 40 and over, no less than 90 per cent. do not come back for another prison sentence for at least twenty years, whereas in the 17–20 age group, also first offenders, the percentage is only 66 per cent. Those tables show in a most remarkable and consistent way that it is the younger men who, if they once get into prison, are more likely to go there again. Presumably, the older a man gets, the more his character is stabilised. Perhaps he has a better chance of having acquired home ties and family ties and leads a more established life. It is the younger man whose life is most seriously jeopardised by a first prison sentence. I would urge Her Majesty's Government to do everything they can to carry out the remainder of the Maxwell Committee's recommendations, and, in particular, that they should do all they can to foster, and encourage other bodies to foster, the spirit of voluntary service in personal after-care of prisoners.

3.34 p.m.

LORD GLYN

My Lords, I rise to speak on this matter because in another place I had something to do with the inquiry that was conducted by the Estimates Committee in the Session 1951–52. On that Committee were many representatives of trade unions who were Members of another place. We visited a large number of prisons. I think that all of us who made those visits came away with the horrible feeling that we were manufacturing criminals almost more quickly than we were redeeming them, owing to the peculiar circumstances of the present situation. I entirely agree with what the noble Lord who introduced this Motion said: that it is a very difficult time now, owing to financial stringency, to render the cures that are necessary, but I am quite convinced that there is no reason at all why the bestial conditions of sanitation should be allowed to continue. Cleanliness being next to godliness, there is nothing which disgusts and degrades people so much as having to suffer the indignities which are now, through overcrowding, part and parcel of prison life. When we realise that there are no fewer than 4,500 prisoners sleeping three in a cell—that was at the date of this inquiry in 1952—

THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (LORD MANCROFT)

Those are not the figures now.

LORD GLYN

I hope not, but I am afraid that the figures are still in the thousands. It has to be remembered that these cells were mostly designed in the time of Queen Victoria. Their ventilation is not particularly good. There is the squalor—and worse than squalor—and the effect on the younger men if they happen to be put three in a cell, although every care is taken to try to see that the three men in a cell are more or less the same sort of type. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, states, there are now so many different categories and classes of prisoner in Her Majesty's prisons that I do not think anything adequate has been done to sort them out properly.

First offenders ought not to be put in prison. It is quite useless to expect that a short sentence of three months, or something of that sort, will do any good at all to the individual. I remember that a very great friend of mine, Sir Alexander Paterson, who was one of the greatest men on the Prison Commission, was always saying that he thought every learned judge should go to prison for a week before he sentenced a man to see what the circumstances were that the man would suffer. I do not suggest that that is right, but I think it is very important that more people should know these conditions.

The other matter which I think is very important, besides this question of bad accommodation and lack of sanitation, is the shortage of prison officers. The Prison Service is a service which should attract to it men who feel that they have a mission. The majority of officers in the Prison Service realise their responsibility, but they are grossly overworked and underpaid. I do not think we ought to be quite satisfied with existing conditions. There is one small point I would ask the noble Lord who is going to reply. Is it really necessary, for instance, at Holloway for the wardresses to have to escort prisoners to eighteen different counties, on top of all their other work? In this respect there is a great deal to be learnt from Scotland. Their system of escorts is quite different from ours. One of the recommendations that was made to the Committee I have mentioned was that men should be recruited for this duty from among good Service men from the Army, Navy and Air Force who had retired. They could do this escort duty. They would have to be carefully picked, of course. I believe that that would be a great relief to many people in the Prison Service.

Then I should like to turn to this most most important question of productive labour in prisons. There is nothing more appalling than to find an intelligent man being told to stitch mailbags, and not even using a sewing machine, because there still prevails the old idea that there must not be in a prison any equipment which might be used by the prisoners for self-mutilation or something of that kind, or for attacking a warder. Can your Lordships imagine the feelings of a man who is an artisan, perhaps a toolmaker, who is sent to prison and is not allowed to continue his trade in any way, but is told to stitch mailbags by hand—a most primitive and futile thing. I remember being told that one man at Wormwood Scrubs, a man with perhaps one of the most intelligent brains in Europe (he was sent there in connection with the Harwell troubles) was allowed only to stitch mailbags. Is there not something incredibly wrong when we cannot use in some other way a man who has a wonderful brain?

I think we were all impressed with the desire of all the Prison Commissioners to do something in this respect. Mr. Fox, who was then head of the Prison Commission, took infinite trouble to help us in the Inquiry. We also came to the conclusion, as has been suggested, that there might be welfare officers, apart from the prison chaplain. Some prison chaplains get almost stale in the conditions in which they live, and one wonders whether that sort of work could not be done by bringing in people from outside a little more. Another thing that is tremendously important, if we are to have better aftercare, as we all should wish—and this is one of the easiest ways of getting it to work smoothly—is to allow a man while he is inside to continue in some way his trade, so that he can go back to it when he comes out. I have yet to learn that the trade unions are opposed to that sort of thing. I do not think it has been put to them properly. Those members of trade unions who were on the Estimates Committee expressed themselves very strongly on the subject when they made their visits, and their views are reflected in the recommendations contained in the Report. That Report and those recommendations have been laid before Parliament, but very few of them have been implemented.

Let me now turn to Borstal institutions, which are perhaps one of the most important matters. Your Lordships ought to have an opportunity of going to Feltham, for instance, which is one of the biggest Borstal institutions. I know something of the Scottish Borstal institutions, too. In Borstal institutions there is a chance of doing something, by education, which is not made full use of: the whole atmosphere of the place seems to me to be dead against any desire for the individual to learn anything or any attempt to help him to get on. The whole place has the atmosphere of a decadent institution, instead of a place where there is still some hope for people who are confined there.

I know that the Home Office dislike a certain amount of criticism, but I believe that they deserve criticism on the fact that, at this time, we should not somehow have improved the system before we send boys to Borstal. As was mentioned just now, the number of boys who are going back shows far too high a percentage. I believe this is due to the fact that when they are in Borstal they are not given the kind of training that is useful to them as young people, so as to fit them to go into industry when they come out. Surely we must get over all these difficulties. I know that there are great difficulties; and I know, too, that some boys who go to Borstal are almost untameable—if I may use such a word. They are boys with whom, even with the best will in the world, it is almost impossible to deal. I do not think they ought to go to the same place as other boys. It ought to be possible to segregate them in some way, because it is not at all difficult to spot those who are going to make trouble. Yet they are all put together. Feltham is one of the places where, I believe, some of the bad boys go, and these and the others are all put together. I think Feltham is too big. The scheme of outside camps is quite a good idea, provided that the local people can be relied upon not to object to the establishment of such a camp and show themselves willing to help when the camp is formed. Unfortunately, the local people always object, and often the idea is given up. I am quite sure that the whole object of Borstal training ought to be to help a boy to continue with the trade in which he is interested and the education that he wants.

That brings me to the other point which the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, mentioned, which I think ought to be dealt with at once—namely, the earnings of prisoners in prison. The present scale is really wicked, and seems to me something almost akin to an insult to an intelligent man, if we want to get the best out of him. Why should he not be paid an amount equivalent to his skill? But he must be given the tools to do things properly. We cannot expect a modern artisan to be satisfied with trying to do something with tools and implements that were old-fashioned in Queen Victoria's time. We must get over this idea that there is always going to be opposition by the trade unions. I believe that if they were approached now, even in these days of full employment, they would be more than willing to give the help that is needed.

Finally, there is this question of probation. I am quite certain that we have not done half enough in making probation more of a reality than it is now, so that the probation officers will be able to de their work. They do some magnificent work. Those to whom I have spoken tell me that the system is perfectly all right and ought to be expanded. If a boy is sent into a local prison he does not come out the better; the chances are that lie comes out disgusted and the worse. Therefore, I believe that, quite apart from schemes involving the expenditure of large sums, a great deal can be done, with quite small expenditure, to improve our prisons and to make it possible for us to give some hope to these men. The present conditions are, I think, degrading and are almost a disgrace to this country.

3.48 p.m.

THE LORD BISHOP OF EXETER

My Lords, I have no expert knowledge of this subject and I rise merely to make one very simple point. The fact that so many men come out of prison worse persons than when they went in, and the high proportion of recidivists among prisoners, must make it perfectly obvious that there is something very wrong indeed with our present prison conditions. It is quite horrible that society should be allowed to rest at all complacent about it, the more so because the blame for this state of affairs cannot in any way he laid on the prison governors and the prison staffs. On the contrary, the prison governors and their staffs are all geared towards the reclaiming of every single person who is reclaimable, but they are frustrated at every point by the conditions with which they have to deal.

I think all of our prisons date from a time when the ideas which held sway about the nature of punishment were entirely different from those which we have now. When these prisons were built the whole emphasis in punishment was laid upon its retributive and its deterrent character, and little attention was paid to the reformative element. As a result, the prison buildings are gaunt, ugly, beastly and repellent in every way, and it is almost impossible for the prison staffs to overcome the general atmosphere and environment which is created by those buildings.

I am informed that the majority of prison governors have come to their present posts after having served a period as housemasters in Borstal institutions. As your Lordships know, Borstal institutions are directed entirely towards the training and reform of the young people sent to them, and it is that vocation and ideal which the governors have before them. They approach their task in very much the same way as a parish priest approaches his parishioners. They see their prisoners as souls to be saved, as warped minds to be straightenen out, as weak persons to be given strength and encouragement; and when prison governors start on their work it is the conditions which frustrate them. The sanitary conditions are degrading. There is the loathsome morning procession from the cells to the one latrine for each forty prisoners—which is all that obtains in the local gaol in my city. The latrine itself is white tiled and clean—but that procession!

There is about prisons a certain queer aroma. I think it comes not so much from the buildings as from the prisoners, and it suggests, at least to me, that the actual facilities for washing and bathing are inadequate or that the prisoners do not get enough clean clothes. In any case, the prison uniform is a repulsive thing. How is one to set about building up a man's self-respect again when he is clothed in a uniform of that type? The noble Lord who initiated this debate takes for granted, as everyone else seems to take for granted, that in these days it is impossible to replace these ancient prisons with new ones. That seems to me to betray a wholly wrong standard of values and a lack of sense of proportion. I do not understand high finance at all, but surely, in so vast a national Budget year by year, a sum of money could be found to build at least one new county gaol each year. It seems to have been the pride and virtue of every Chancellor of the Exchequer of every Government since the war to budget for an enormous surplus. I try to do the same myself every year; the only difference is that Chancellors of the Exchequer are invariably successful to a very high degree. I do not know what happens to this huge budgetary surplus, but surely to goodness it could provide one small prison every year in every county town, so that we might get rid of the whole of these beastly premises.

It is also perfectly obvious to me that the big penitentiaries—I am speaking now not of county gaols but of big penitentiaries like Wandsworth and Dartmoor—are far too big. The point has already been made: how can a governor and his staff deal adequately with the personal problems and the delicate rebuilding of character when they have so many intensely difficult problem-personalities under their care? I agree also with what has been said about the wickedness of placing in the same building recidivists, persons on remand and first offenders. Would it be so very difficult for premises to be obtained and reconditioned outside each county town which could be used as a kind of subsidiary prison for the housing of those on remand, first offenders, and "star" prisoners? In this way they could be kept separate from the "old lags" and there would not be the need for this terrible emphasis on security which adds so greatly to the depression and degradation of existing prisons. If one could get rid of this emphasis on security I believe that it would go a long way towards reforming prisoners. One can dispense with security to a great extent because of the threat that if freedom is abused the governor always has power immediately to send the offending prisoner hack to a prison where security is very firm.

Lastly, I should like strongly to reinforce the plea which has been made that a far more varied kind of labour should be made available in prisons. Everyone with whom I have discussed this problem assures me that the stitching of mail bags has the most deplorable effect on the mentality of prisoners subjected to it, although they would rather do that than nothing. Surely it must be possible to provide a much wider and more interesting range of activities. It is generally believed that all that stands in the way of that being done is the attitude of trade unions. If that was the attitude of the trade unions during the period of the 'thirties one can well understand it; but that it is still the attitude of the trade unions I, for one, cannot believe, for it argues such an obscurantist reactionism that I cannot credit that any reasonable person would hold it. I therefore very much hope that the Home Office will take immediate action on this one point. I hope that energetic steps will be taken towards the provision of new, smaller prisons, as quickly as may be possible; and I hope that society will not be allowed to remain at all complacent, even for five minutes on end, while conditions in our prisons remain as they are now.

3.58 p.m.

THE EARL OF HUNTINGDON

My Lords, I should like to say how much I have agreed with the speeches that have already been made. I believe it is an indication of the way the wind is blowing these days that we should hear such progressive ideas coming from the Benches on all sides of your Lordships' House. Crime and punishment is an old problem going back to time immemorial. If one has a lot of rules, obviously one has to see that people do not break them, and we all agree that crime must be stopped; but what we do not agree upon is how we are to stop it. It is there that the big difference of opinion arises among various elements and parties in this country.

Many methods have been tried in history, from branding, torture, and burning to the pillory, but the present system, favoured by nearly everyone these days, is to shut people up in small cells in prisons. That saves trouble, but I wonder whether it is really the best idea or the best solution. Some people have proposed that we should take over a group of islands and make them into penal colonies, as the French did but without the abuses which arose in some of the penal colonies, on Devil's Island and elsewhere. My own feeling is that the key to this problem, if there is a key, is the disapproval of the community. The greatest force against crime is people's disapproval of the criminal and the criminal's fear of that disapprobation. For that there must be two features: there must be general acceptance of the law; and, secondly, there must be people with enough self-respect to make them fear the disapproval of their fellow countrymen.

There are, of course, three different views of punishment: there is the old idea of vengeance—"an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"—which I understand was brought in to mitigate the feuds of olden times; there is the idea of the deterrent—that if you make things uncomfortable enough a man or woman will not again embark upon crime; and there is the third idea which has been emphasised this afternoon, which is growing and which I believe is the most enlightened—that of reform. But the trouble is that although most enlightened people in all Parties agree that reform is clearly what we must try to bring about, and it is generally accepted theoretically, in practice in our prisons very little is done to bring it about.

The deterrent is used, and when that fails people say: "Ah, but the criminal is impossible to reform." It is an unpleasant argument because it is, I think, hypocritical. It is true that if you are going to reform on any scale at all you need imagination and you need money. There is no question but that some money must be used. As the noble Lord who opened this debate has made clear, conditions in our prisons are a disgrace to any country that calls itself civilised. I have been given a figure—if it is not correct, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, who is going to reply to the debate, will correct me. The present cell is very small; it gives a very small amount of space in which to make one's home for many months or years. Yet I am told that at the end of 1954 there were something over 3,200 men sleeping three in a cell. I think that that is a disgrace. It makes any idea of reform completely impossible and merely adds to the problems and difficulties of the prison officers.

I wish to examine for a moment what can be done without spending money. Obviously this is a big problem and to tackle it on a big scale will need big finance. But what in the meantime can be done to help towards a solution of this problem? The obvious answer—it is so obvious that one hesitates to mention it—is to reduce the number of prisoners. I think that that can be done relatively easily. There are certain categories of prisoners who, I submit, should never be in prison at all. Those categories run into thousands. I will give a few examples. There is the category of the prisoner who is in prison for not paying what he should pay to maintain his wife or child—men who have affiliation orders against them, and others. It seems to me to be absolutely nonsensical that a man who refuses out of spite, or perhaps merely inability to pay, to support his wife or child should be put in prison where he cannot earn money to support them. It would be far better to take away some of the wages of such people every week for the support of the wife or the child. Let the man in question go on working.

This is no idle, visionary dream, because it is practised in Scotland. There you have attachment of wages. I understand that although there are certain difficulties of administration, on the whole the system works very well. In the last four years, I am informed, something like 4,000 men every year have been sent to prison in cases of this sort, and those are men who could be doing useful work and supplying their wives and children with money. If they were kept out of prison some of the congestion in our prisons would be relieved. I am sure that good results would follow if only we were to adopt a more enlightened attitude on this matter. There are other categories of prisoners to whom this applies—for instance, alcoholics. The question of alcoholics is a very difficult one. I am told that some very good work has been done on that question in American prisons, where that extremely enlightened organisation, "Alcoholics Anonymous", have got together with the governors of prisons and are working out ways to help these people. They seek to find out what is the basis of the trouble, and in some cases they have had very spectacular results.

Another step which I suggest would bring good results would be this. Section 17 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1948, as your Lordships will remember, lays it down that it is incumbent on summary courts and courts of quarter sessions to state in writing the reasons for imposing prison sentences on persons under twenty-one. I am told that the result of that has been a great decrease in the number of persons under twenty-one sent to prison. I would suggest that that might be extended to cover the cases of adults committed for a first offence. That, again, might decrease very largely the number of first offenders who are sent into our overcrowded prisons. That same Act, as your Lordships will no doubt remember, also provides for remand homes, but I understand that none has yet been built. That seems to me a very serious matter indeed. To quote the Report of the Commissioners of Prisons for 1954: Substantial numbers of young persons below twenty-one who are remanded to prison before conviction and subsequently dealt with otherwise than by committal to prison on conviction… are sent to prisons instead of to remand homes, these being non-existent.

This is another category of persons with whom we need not clutter up our prisons. In 1953, I understand, persons under twenty-one on remand in prison or sentenced to other than imprisonment totalled something like 2,930. Here is a very large number of people who, I submit, might well be either put into remand homes or kept out of our prisons. This, again, would relieve the congestion in our prisons without throwing any additional burden upon the Treasury at all.

Yet another category is that of women who have neglected their children. Is it really the best way of dealing with such women, to send them to prison? Would it not be better to make them attend centres where they would be given instruction in child care and housewifery? I am not, of course, including in this idea very serious cases of cruelty—only those of neglect. This, I suggest, is another category of persons who might well be kept out of our prisons.

I should like to ask the noble Lord who is going to reply to this debate whether Her Majesty's Government would not consider the setting up of a Departmental Committee to examine this subject very thoroughly and to examine categories of people such as those to whom I have referred with a view to seeing whether, in this way, something cannot be done to relieve the terrible overcrowding which really makes reform impossible. Of course, this is a tremendous problem, but I suggest to your Lordships that we must make an earnest endeavour to bring in reforms. By so doing we shall not only be accomplishing a great, humane work. It would be economically most desirable that we should get back some of our criminal classes into a decent way of life; that would make an enormous saving all round. It would help with the big problem of prison staff also. There is a shortage of prison officers; they are difficult to get. I am sure one of the reasons for the shortage is not only the overcrowding in prisons but the fact that they are not really given a constructive job. If they could be organised into a team and used constructively to try to re-educate prisoners, I am sure we should get much more enthusiasm in this work and possibly, even, in some cases a better type of man.

Of course, we must have new prisons, and we must alter some of the old ones. We have heard enough this afternoon about conditions, and those accounts are far from exaggerated. And we must have new experiments. In the last fifty years we have acquired a tremendous amount of scientific knowledge of the causes of crime, of the reasons why men's minds work along criminal lines and what causes lack of stability. But we have not used that knowledge; in the future we must do so. Instead of an extension of those experiments and an extended use of this knowledge, we find that the Government are cutting down even on the experiments they are doing.

One example is Grendon Underwood for dealing with psychopaths, one of the most difficult of all criminal problems. The large sum of £1,250,000 was allocated for this new project and I understand that for the year 1956–57 there was to have been a payment of£35,000, but instead it is being cut down to£5,000. If I am wrong there. I should be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, would correct me when he speaks. At this moment, when it may be that more murderers are going to be reprieved than before, it seems fantastic that the Govern- ment are cutting down on the one institution that could deal with these difficult cases. I would suggest to the Government that they should review this matter and see whether they cannot stop this policy of false economy. There is no "prison lobby" to speak for prisoners and it is only too easy to economise on schemes such as this.

I think that much could be learned from other countries. We should not be too proud to study prison conditions elsewhere and learn what we can. In France many experiments have been made in turning prisons into factories, and in some cases in letting prisoners out to work in factories during the day and bringing them back at night to sleep in their prisons. My idea of a prison is that it should be a factory, some place where a man can go and either continue his trade or learn a trade if he has not one, so that when he comes out he has something that will help him to get a job. It is always difficult for prisoners to get a job after coming out of prison. There is the obstacle of the insurance card which has no stamps. When the prisoner shows his card, everyone knows that he has been in prison, and naturally the prejudice is strong against him. That opens up the whole question of after-care, but I am not going to deal with that, because it has been dealt with so well this afternoon by other noble Lords.

The important thing is to get the men to work in prisons. They may be given some sort of wages, some of which might be sent to their families and some kept for them when they come out to tide them over the first few weeks. A proportion might even be given them for any luxuries or little comforts they could buy. I read an article the other day in a newspaper—I do not know how accurate it is—about prisons in China. There the prisoners work nine hours a day. They receive no wages, but if they behave well, they get remissions of sentence and certain privileges. Even there they have adopted the idea of working, which in my opinion is one of the best curative influences we could use. I do not speak with any authority on this point, but I am sure that if the trade unions were approached on this subject there would be some good results. In these days, I cannot think that the trade unions would stop any constructive plan which would cure criminals of their criminal habits. This terrible problem needs great courage and great imagination. I beg the Government to put aside all prejudice and use both courage and imagination.

4.15 p.m.

LORD MIDDLETON

My Lords, I should like to join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on initiating this debate. It is indeed timely, in view of the increased interest in the state of our prisons, in the conditions under which prison sentences are served, in the question of whether reformative influences are or are not being brought into play, in after-care on discharge, and in other matters relating to the imposition of prison sentences. I agree with other noble Lords that no one suggests prisons should be luxury hotels, but I cannot see why sanitary arrangements should not compare favourably with what is expected in a civilised community, even if only in the interests of health. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, mentioned Mr. Wildeblood's book. That book must have shocked a great many of us, all the more since Sir Basil Henriques has paid a tribute to it. He would hardly have done so had the book been a travesty of the facts in regard to conditions prevailing at Wormwood Scrubs. The book makes one wonder how close an eye the Home Office keep on the competence of our prison governors.

The noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, who is well qualified to do so, made a valuable contribution, in yesterday's issue of the Daily Telegraph, towards the solution of the problems we are discussing. No-one can disagree with his suggestions in regard to the reformative influence of staffs, and one can only hope that the Government will study his suggestion with the greatest care and sympathy, and will do something effective. Those of us who are interested in the whole problem can scarcely be satisfied with after-care, about which the noble Earl, Lord Lucan, spoke—a matter on which the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, did not touch in this article: the care of those who have been discharged after serving a sentence of imprisonment.

There seems to be no doubt that those who are out on ticket-of-leave are adequately looked after and there is little room for complaint in that category. But, for the others, what is there? The Church Army do admirable work, and the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society do what they can. But these two organisations can touch only the outer fringe of the problem. Their financial resources are lamentably weak, and they have an inadequate trained manpower and womanpower, and are now achieving only very little. Trained welfare workers inside prison (the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, suggests that there may be assistant governors) are most urgently needed. But they are scarcely less needed, I would say, for after-care work outside prison. I would suggest to the noble Earl, Lord Lucan, that though voluntary workers are required for this work, they should be trained by those who are doing full-time work. I should say that for voluntary workers a good recruiting ground is Too H, who have done such recruiting for other people.

I should like to say a word about prison cells—and here I join issue with the noble Lord. Judging from what I hear, those closely concerned with prison administration deserve the highest praise. What really deters men from becoming warders is the appalling monotony of their lives. Day after day, week after week, there are the same dull duties—watching prisoners sewing mailbags, supervising exercise, and so on. There is no variety, no call for imagination; and their hours of work give cause for discontent. Little or nothing is done for them to enjoy themselves on Bank Holidays, and other festive occasions, with their families. Of course, this problem is not easy of solution, but surely the Home Office could do something to enlist those of experience and imagination to suggest steps to relieve the boredom that prison staffs endure. A move in that direction is, in the opinion of many, far more important than revision of scales of pay to check resignations and to stimulate recruiting. I apologise for taking up so long, but I would fire this parting shot. If the "Silverman Bill" goes through in its present form, and if convicted murderers can assassinate warders almost with impunity, recruiting can scarcely be expected to improve.

4.20 p.m.

THE LORD BISHOP OF BRISTOL

My Lords, I had not intended to take part in this debate, for I can claim no expert knowledge in this matter; but there is one positive contribution which I should like to make which does, I think, bear on a number of suggestions that have been put forward. Before I do so, I should like to make two almost incidental comments. I was a little disturbed to hear the noble Lord who introduced the debate speak rather disparagingly of the intelligence of the new Edwardians. I cannot claim any wide acquaintance with them, but I am glad to say that some of my clergy can. I believe that a number of that particular group are above, rather than below, the average level of intelligence, and that their curious reaction to life, as instanced by their uniform and their group habits, is an indication of a certain frustrated sense: that they can find little scope for certain powers they possess. I wonder whether that may not have rather an important bearing on this whole question of the prisoner; whether sometimes the most deleterious effect of his imprisonment is the sense, as has already been suggested, that the powers which he possesses are not only not being used, but are being crushed out and stultified by the treatment offered to him.

I would also add a word in reference to the comment that has already been made on prison chaplains—and nobody who knows anything of their work can fail to realise its enormous importance. I wholeheartedly agree with the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, that sometimes their work is such that it makes them stale. It is an admirable thing, therefore, if, in addition to their chaplaincy, they can be given some work which brings them into contact with the outside world. I am happy to say that at Horfield, in Bristol, our prison chaplain also helps in an ordinary parish, and I have no shadow of doubt that that experience helps to keep him a little alive and fresh. I would add this further comment: that if you want good chaplains, try to get ex-chaplains from the Royal Navy. Their experience of living at somewhat close quarters has given them, so far as I can judge, both a sympathy with human nature and an extremely shrewd estimate of its weaknesses, which makes them particularly good at their job.

The practical contribution that I should like to make—and I can make it in a minute or two—concerns the experiment that is being carried out at Horfield. I do not know how far it is common knowledge, and I do not know how far it is widespread, but I have reason to believe that the experiment is quite exceptional. In she case of those who are doing the last stage of their sentence a certain selected number are brought to Horfield, and are allowed to live and work in totally different conditions. I have been round with the prison governor to see their quarters. They live in a quite attractive hutted building, which they are allowed to furnish and decorate, to some extent, with their owe belongings. Inside it is rather like being inside a room at a youth hostel. The men go out to work and are found regular employment with companies and firms in the city, where they may earn a reasonable wage. All of those disadvantages which have been so forcibly alluded to, of men being restricted either to idleness or to quite unfruitful work, are removed. The men earn something, which contributes a little to their self-respect, and which can be used, in part, no doubt, for their families; and by the fact that they are already associated with firms while they are in prison, the transition to return to work is made much easier.

The Governor told me that in his experience there had been very few cases of the betrayal of that measure of freedom and trust. That seems to be a sensible. intelligent and imaginative experiment. I have no knowledge of who initiated it, or of the possible difficulties of initiating such an experiment in other cases. It seemed to me, as I listened to the debate, that here, no doubt only on a small scale, there was a significant contribution to the removal of some of those deplorable conditions which arc, as my brother the right reverend Prelate has said, a disgrace to a civilised and Christian country.

4.26 p.m.

LORD HADEN-GUEST

My Lords, I think this debate will have fulfilled a useful purpose if it stirs up the indignation which is obviously simmering in the breasts of a number of noble Lords who have spoken, as it is certainly simmering in mine. I am thinking, particularly, of the extraordinarily filthy conditions in which many prisoners live: three men to a room; no sanitary accommodation; people being marched out on a parade to go to the latrine in the morning; no proper facilities for washing; and—as one noble Lord mentioned—the curious odour emanating from those who are in the prison—in fact, a condition of swinish filthiness. I feel strongly that this kind of thing can have no possible kind of justification.

Certainly, as I know from my long experience as a medical inspector of schools, not only in London but in many other parts of the country, this kind of dirt and filth has a most demoralising effect on human beings, and it will certainly have a demoralising effect on the prisoners. That three should be compelled to sleep in one room, in disgusting conditions, without proper ventilation, in all probability, and without the opportunity of going out to relieve nature if they so desire until an early hour in the morning, seems to me to be an outrageously stupid way of dealing with human beings, whether they be convicts, murderers or anything else. To treat them in this way only degrades them further. I speak strongly, as I feel strongly on this matter.

I have never had the opportunity of being in a prison. I have never been put in a prison as a prisoner, and I have never, in my medical experience, touched on prison life: otherwise I should certainly have said something about it in a strong sense before now. It seems to me that the fact—and I agree as to the figure—that 4,500 have to sleep three in a cell every night is a serious reflection on those of us who are permitting this condition of things to continue. Cleanliness is very desirable. We must have proper arrangements for cleanliness of prisoners in all circumstances, and there must be an end to this overcrowding of prisons and the putting of men together. People talk about homosexuality. What are you doing but offering the probability of homosexuality if you put three men of this character into one cell, with no outlet for their emotions and no outlet for their conversation? If you put three men into a cell like that, what do you expect? I expect there will undoubtedly be homosexual practices, and I do not see how it is possible to avoid them under those conditions. I think that that is a worse punishment for a man who may not be inclined in that way when he goes in. It makes him worse than he would otherwise have been. Instead of being reformative, the prison adds something evil to the man's life which he has to carry with him for the future.

I believe the necessity of cleanliness is essential. I suggest that the men should certainly be separated in their sleeping, although if it were a large place it could be supervised, and that there should be a proper water supply and running water to the closets in all these prisons, instead of these horrible latrines of which one hears. I feel that we are on strong ground here for calling for a great reform in the control of prisons and in the condition of prisoners. I hope that one of the results of this debate in this House—and, of course, the matter will be before another place also—will be a complete change in the conditions under which prisoners are dealt with. It seems to me absolutely essential that we should break away from this old, senseless, almost lunatic system, and get down to the facts of life as we know them. We give men punishment if they need it. There are men who need to be kept in control in prison. I am not a sentimentalist on this matter. I am one of the only men on these Benches who voted for the continuance of the death penalty because I thought it was desirable to have it in some cases. I am not a sentimentalist, brimming with superficial kindness to everybody. But I believe that we must make a break and that the sooner we do it, the better. And the more we express ourselves, the more it will impress itself on the general public.

4.32 p.m.

LORD CHORLEY

My Lords, as a student of these matters for many years now, I should like to make a few comments in this most important debate. The first point which strikes one whose researches into these problems now go back something like forty years, is the almost revolutionary change in outlook which the speeches made in your Lordships' House this afternoon show. There has not been a single protagonist of the old and much supported doctrine of "treating 'em hard." I think every noble Lord who has taken part in this debate has realised that the only justification we have in shutting people up in the way we do is that we should reform their characters and do our best to produce new personalities which are capable of standing up to the problems of the modern world. That has been one of the most interesting features of this most important debate.

I should like to support strongly the views which have been expressed by most of the participants in the debate—that it is time that Her Majesty's Government, and the Home Office in particular, took up the problem of removing these sordid prisons from the face of the earth. Everything that has been said about them is undoubtedly true. I was glad indeed that the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, who speaks with a good deal of personal knowledge of these things, was able to confirm the terrible account which was given in the Wildeblood book, referred to more than once this afternoon, and which, I am sure, has shocked everybody who has read it. Everybody with whom I have discussed this book has referred to the horrible conditions which this sensitive man had to put up with while he was in prison, and I am glad that that view has been endorsed this afternoon.

This matter has been well known to the authorities for a long period of time. When I was a very young man I worked under Sir Harold Scott who, before he was in the Metropolitan Police, was Chairman of the Prison Commission. At one time he was quite a junior clerk in the Home Office. I remember his telling me about 1915 that one of the first jobs on which he had to work on corning into the Home Office was the question of removing Pentonville which, at that time, forty years ago, was regarded as being quite unfit to be a prison. Scott was telling me how unfortunate it was that the war had come to put an end to those plans for getting rid of Pentonville. And there is Pentonville still—one of Her Majesty's prisons in much the same condition now in the present year of Grace as it was at the time when it was agreed that it was completely out of date and ought to be removed. I should therefore like to endorse everything that has been said by the speakers in this debate of the importance of getting rid of these horrible places which were, most of them, built, if in Victorian limes at all, in very early Victorian times. Quite a number of them go back to periods before then. Dartmoor was constructed long before Queen Victoria was born and is a place in which it is almost impossible to produce the personality at which modern penal ideas aim.

Since the war, there has been a development of the open prison, and that has filled everybody with hope. The only criticism that one has to make is that the authorities are so slow in getting on with the job of opening more open prisons. Everybody agrees that they have been an unqualified success. Very few prisoners attempt to leave them. Almost invariably, after local opposition, the neighbouring people become proud of their open prison and take a great part in the job of assisting the prisoners to build up their new lives. The noble Lord, Lord Glyn, referred to the fact that schemes are frequently given up as the result of opposition. I know of cases where, in spite of opposition, the Prison Commissioners—and the present Prison Commission is the most enlightened Prison Commission we have ever had, and I should like to congratulate them on the efforts which they make—have gone ahead and opened their open prisons, and the local people in a very short time have been feeling that they could play their part and have responded in a very fine way.

Indeed, it is a most ironic thing that in my own county, where there is one of these open prisons and where exactly this situation has developed, it has now been found necessary, because the prison is situated in an old prisoner of war building of which the requisition is coming to an end, to give up this open prison, and the local people who protested against its being opened in the first instance are now flooding the Home Office with petitions against its being closed. Is that not a remarkable thing, and is it not most unfortunate that some technical objection like the coming to an end of the requisition is preventing this magnificent piece of work from being carried on? It is all to be concentrated in a much larger open prison. I should like to add my voice to those who have protested against that. One of the most important modern discoveries in penology that has been made is that the smaller the prisons with which you deal, the more likely are you to have success. I think it is a pity that this admirable little open prison in South Westmorland is going to be closed down in order that it may be merged with a new large open prison, which, no doubt, will be excellently conducted, but where the valuable local enthusiasm will all be sacrificed.

I should like also to support everything that has been said about the importance of training these men so that they have a real skill at their disposal when they leave prison. That is the most difficult time, and it is a time on which the least attention has been concentrated—perhaps the most important time there is in the history of a prisoner. So frequently he leaves without any sort of skill having been provided for him which he can use when he once more becomes a free citizen. It is obvious that there are difficulties in the way of training in the prisons. In some of the prisons these difficulties are surmounted, but I think that one of the troubles is that which was referred to by the right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Exeter about the over-emphasis on the security arrangements all the time.

I think we might make use of the facilities in the technical schools and colleges up and down the country by sending these men out to be trained there, but everybody is so afraid that they are going to escape. That was one of the arguments against the open prisons. Let one or two escape. It would be much better to take the risk of one or two escaping if we could build up the abilities of the great mass of the others. But I do not myself believe that there is this danger of their escaping, because, if they feel that they are being treated like human beings, and know they are being encouraged and assisted to take their proper part in the work of the world when they come out, then, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, they will cooperate. The man who will want to take the opportunity of escaping will be a very rare bird indeed.

Therefore, I would emphasise the importance of getting away, to some extent, from the insistence on security at every possible turn. There is, of course, a hard core of these prisoners—usually, they are perfectly well known to the police and Prison Commissioners—who are likely to try to escape, but these can be looked after under real security arrangements. But to treat the whole of the rest of the prison population on this extreme security basis because of this hard core seems to me to be a very srious mistake.

I should like also to add my support to the plea which has just been made by my noble friend Lord Haden-Guest about the vicious folly of shutting these men up three in a cell. My view is that provision ought to be made for prisoners to have the society of their wives. We have been altogether too squeamish about these problems of homosexuality in connection with prisons. So far as I know, no effective study has ever been made in this country of the relationship between homosexuality and life in the prisons. In America, Professor Kinsey has devoted a great deal of careful research to this problem, and I think has proved conclusively that a great amount of homosexuality is developed as a result of prison life, quite apart from a situation in which three men have to sleep together every night in one cell.

In some parts of the world, arrangements are made by which prisoners may have the society of their wives, and that has been found, I think, to be of great benefit, not only in preventing the development of homosexuality but also in the development of these prisoners. When the men are released they feel that they have been treated like human beings, and they respond. Therefore, I should like to support strongly what my noble friend Lord Haden-Guest said on this matter.

I come to my final point. I should like to add my plea to what was said by one of the right reverend Prelates who have taken part in this discussion this afternoon. The prison garb is an altogether out-of-date part of the penological system. It is not as bad as it was years ago, when I was young. The broad arrow has been removed, but it is still a degrading thing to insist on men, many of whom—possibly the majority—are sensitive, being clothed in this way. Recently, I have been in Russia. One of the questions I asked a police officer there was whether they had this system of putting all their prisoners into prison garb. He said "No, of course not. They are ordinary citizens who have strayed from the path. We hope that they will return to it. You do not help them to do that by putting them into the same prison garb. The men wear their ordinary clothes until they are worn out, and then they are provided with new ones, ordinary ones which they would be wearing if they were working outside." Indeed, many of these men do, in fact, work outside a good deal.

That it; the way we find we are most likely to assist them to be good citizens when they have completed their sentences. That is a significant thing. It was also interesting to know that during the last years in the U.S.S.R. there has been a quite remarkable falling away of serious crime. Just as, in this country and in other countries, the post-war years were filled with tales of violent criminality, and there was a great increase in the prison population, so there I was assured that not only had that period receded into the past but that during the last two or three years there had been a quite remarkable improvement in the criminal statistics.

These points are all of very great importance. I hope that the noble Lord who speaks for the Home Office will report back to that institution. The present situation is not the fault of the Home Office or the Prison Commission at all: it is just that they cannot get the finance. We have to face up to the fact that this intolerable problem of criminality can be effectively handled only if means are provided for an improved prison system, and still more for an improved service of doctors and prison officers to enable these prison premises to be properly used.

4.47 p.m.

LORD PAKENHAM

My Lords, the noble Lord who has just spoken is a criminologist of high standing nationally and, I believe, internationally. I know that he and all other noble Lords who have spoken, and all other Members of the House, will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, not only for introducing this subject but for the effective and penetrating way in which he has done so. I hope that noble Lords, each one of whom has made a striking contribution of some kind, will not consider it my duty to comment on their speeches—that will fall to the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft; but I should like to endorse very strongly almost everything that has been said and almost every criticism that has been made. But perhaps Me House would hardly wish me to begin running over the same ground again, remembering that last year I spoke for 141 inches of Hansard on this subject. It was the longest speech of the year. Measured in inches, it was 141, as against a speech of the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, which measured 103 inches, although we both spoke for the same length of time. I do not know whether it is worse, if you are going to listen to a speech of that length, to have more or less words inflicted on you in the same length of time. Last year I may have prevented other people from speaking—it might have been described as an exercise in preventive detention. Perhaps this time the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, would like to join me in an exercise in corrective training, if I may use these prison metaphors.

I do not envy the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, very much the task of replying. It is customary in our debates for speakers at the end to say "We have had a remarkable discussion." It is a phrase we often use; it is non-committal, friendly and flattering. We have had a remarkable discussion so far. I do not know that even last year there was quite so much unanimity in condemning the prison performance, but I do ask the noble Lord—and I know perfectly well, because I myself have been a Minister. as so many of us have, the limitations of his rôle—to reflect that perhaps the criticism has been even stronger than he expected when he came here this afternoon with what I am sure is an admirably prepared speech. Last year the noble Lord finished his reply, which was, as always, very well delivered, with these words: We are facing difficulties but I hope that I have convinced your Lordships that we are doing just about the best we can. Well, that was last year. I hope that the noble Lord, who has done a great deal of work on this subject in the meanwhile, will use less complacent language this afternoon. I feel sure that he will, because he has made himself a thorough and first-hand expert in this field, and am sure that his satisfaction has diminished.

I am bound to say that, to my mind, the purposes which I know he has at heart, and I am sure the Prison Commissioners have at heart, are served very poorly by the attitude of self-satisfaction, real or apparent, in official circles. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, while he mentioned it as an important point, was perhaps a little kind to the Prison Commissioners and the Home Office in giving them a sort of clean bill, and saying that it is no fault of theirs but just a question of money. I am not going so far as that. I realise that the monetary factor is enormously important, and that if they had twice the money they would do twice as well; but they carry very heavy responsibility for fighting for the necessary funds and anything that savours of complacency makes their task in fighting the Treasury so much harder.

Not long ago the Prison Officers' magazine contained an article called "The Staffing Crisis". Certainly anyone who knows the position at all will recognise that there is a staffing crisis. But when the right honourable gentleman the Home Secretary dealt with this factor the only figures for staff which he gave related to the period from 1946 to 1956. He consoled himself with the great improvement that had taken place over the last ten years—a singularly "phony" argument, it seems to me, in dealing with a contemporary crisis. What he actually said was: In ten years the staff in post of all ranks has more than doubled, from a total of about 3,300 in 1946 to over 6,900 in 1956, despite the difficulties to which I have referred. That is a remarkable achievement."— He then patted himself proudly on the back— This does not suggest that this important work has, in general, been socially undervalued. I hope that he will be further consoled by that reflection. I feel that it is quite the wrong attitude. I think that the gentlemen in the Treasury whose job it is to resist all claims until they are forced to yield to them, when they read those words, lay back with a happy smile and thought: "We need not do any more for them. They are well satisfied with their performance. They are congratulating themselves in front of the whole world about their achievements." I hope that we shall not have anything of that sort to-day from the noble Lord, Lord Man-croft, who is a brilliant speaker. I do not give many after-dinner speeches, but sometimes I am told that mine was nearly as good as that delivered by the noble Lord on an earlier occasion. I am told that his speeches are almost too brilliant for some of his colleagues and he has been told to be a little duller. I do not mind how dull he is to-day, nor how long he is, so long as he is not complacent. That is all we ask of the noble Lord at this stage.

The prison problem is a moral problem and a spiritual problem. I am glad, therefore, that we have had two important contributions from the Bishops' Bench. I am going to descend, as it were, to lower ground on this subject and, so far as possible, although not completely, avoid most of the subjects that have been raised already, because those arguments have been put better than I could put them. I intend to concentrate mainly on certain administrative steps, and in particular on the question of staffing, because in my opinion that, of all the bottlenecks, is the biggest. At the present time there is a great deal of emphasis being placed on this issue by the prison officers themselves—to whom Lord Middleton referred, with a good deal of inside knowledge of the difficulty they have in carrying out their work. Great emphasis is being placed upon this matter by the prison officers themselves, by outside reformers, by the prisoners (and may I here join in the tributes that have been paid to Mr. Wildeblood's book), and by the official world.

I do not want to criticise the Home Secretary in any sort of personal sense. So far as I understand it, he has not yet got round to the prisons problem. He is a man of highly respected personality, and when he is able to spare the time for this question I think we may find some excellent results. I can only quote with encouragement what he said lately in the House of Commons. He said that attention is now being concentrated on a right and proper relationship between prisoners and staff. That is where his own emphasis seems to lie, and I think rightly, at present. But I would say to him, with the greatest respect, that he is certain to fail in his laudable desires to increase the reformative possibilities of the staff so long as the prison staffs consider—and in my view rightly consider—that they are grievously underpaid, and while beyond all doubt their numbers are so woefully short.

It is common ground that without the restoration of what is called the three-shift system in the prison staff an adequate working day is impossible. I do not think anybody really doubts that. No one pretends that there is an adequate working day in the local prisons. In the House of Commons it was stated that the average in local prisons is between twenty and twenty-five hours. When I went to Wandsworth Prison lately it was about 22½ hours, apart from the laundry. It is really the inability of the Prison Commissioners to restore the pre-war arrangement of the three-shift day that makes it impossible to provide adequate work for the prisoners and, incidentally, to give any sort of individual attention to the staffs. I pointed out last year—I hope that your Lordships will not mind my returning to it to-day, because it has not been superseded by any subsequent events—that the three-shift system was in force in all our thirty-one prisons before the war and that today it is in force in only twelve out of forty-three. So we are a long way behind the prewar level in respect of our three-shift system.

That cannot be put down to a well-known series of developments since the war which everyone can perfectly well understand, because it was only in November, 1952, that we were told that the Commissioners hope to see recruiting proceed at a pace which will enable them to complete the expansion of the three-shift system in two or three years to all local prisons. So in 1952 the Commissioners hoped that certainly by now the three-shift system would have been extended to all local prisons. To-day, the position seems no better than a year ago. In fact, the system does not operate in the local prisons; it operates only in twelve prisons out of the total of forty-three—I am quite ready to give way if I am wrong. We must take it, therefore, that the hopes, indeed the expectations, held out by the Government in 1952 in this respect, have been completely falsified. Failure is total in the last three or four years. Therefore, I hope I have not spoken disrespectfully of the Home Secretary in saying that in paying tribute to the remarkable achievement in this field since the war he was adopting an attitude of altogether unwarranted complacency.

It is well known that we need another thousand officers to introduce the three-shift system generally. There is no sign whatever of getting them. As a matter of fact, last year there was no substantial increase in the present number of prison officers. Not only that, but even with the three-shift system operating as it is, the prison officers are thoroughly disgruntled 'because they feel they are so seriously over-worked. I should like to read one extract from the Prison Officers' Magazine which in my opinion is of the first importance when we are discussing prison reform, as we are to-day. The Prison Officers' Magazine for July, the last issue, contains this passage— If the introduction of additional reforms, desirable as they may be, is to entail still greater sacrifices from the prison staffs, then the reforms must wait "— that is the attitude of the prison staffs: that if further sacrifices are to be required, then these reforms must wait— until the public conscience is sufficiently awakened to its responsibility towards the men and women who have the unenviable and responsible job of staffing the prisons of this, country. That is the attitude of the prison officers. It is a thoroughly disgruntled attitude, justified or unjustified, towards prison reform; it is widespread amongst the prison staffs and is reflected in their official organ. That is the situation with which I am afraid the noble Lord in his official capacity has to deal. The truth is that the hours of work and any hope of personal relationship between the staff and the prisoners, and the numbers of staff and their pay, are all inextricably interwoven. We cannot get reasonable hours of work for the prisoners, or an adequate psychological relationship between the prisoners and prison staffs, without greater number of staff; and we cannot get more staff without better pay. I quite agree with what was said about the need for making prison work more varied, but the function of obtaining greater numbers of staff must be the first duty of Her Majesty's Government.

I know that the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, has prison reform very much in his heart. I said that last year and it is even clearer to-day than it was then. I know that he will sympathise with my argument but will feel great difficulty in giving effect to it. I put it to the noble Lord—and I hope that here I have the House with me—that the first duty of any Government with its heart in penal reform is to provide more adequate pay for prison staffs. I know that there has been a recent award and that prison staffs have received higher pay in view of the higher cost of living; but the gap in pay which has always existed between prison staffs and the police has been increased. I am informed that prison staffs have fallen still further behind under this recent award. Therefore the first step must be to increase the pay of prison staffs. It is the only step which can be taken which will begin to overcome the shortage in numbers, relieve overwork and remove the widespread sense of grievance. I am inclined to think, too, that we may then begin actively to enlist prison staffs as social workers rather than as mere custodians. I hope that the noble Lord, fortified by all that has been said this afternoon, will struggle for higher pay for the staffs.

I admit to a certain pessimism, however, about increasing numbers to the requisite level, whatever is done about pay. Though I believe some increase in numbers can be brought about by that means, I should be misleading the House if I gave the impression that any increase which we could consider as rational would lead to our securing in the foreseeable future the 1,000 extra staff which we need for the three-shift system. I am afraid that I must say further that in my own view—and it is a matter on which we must form our own opinions—the present uniformed staff, recruited and trained as they have been, are, for the most part, not of the calibre which can supply the junior leadership in this exceptionally difficult task of moral education. After all, the task of prison staffs has become harder, as we have ceased to look on them primarily as custodians and begun to look towards them for redemptive achievement; and I am bound to say that if we take prison staffs—honest fellows as they are, with a good deal of ability in various ways—I am afraid few of them, however we may now train or pay them, can supply what I can only call the junior leadership required for the abnormally difficult human task that some of us have in mind, and which is, indeed, the purpose of the Prison Commissioners.

It seems to me that there is one solution which I mentioned last year and now re-submit, and which I hope the noble Lord will not brush aside in quite so cursory a fashion as I encountered last year. It seems to me that throughout the prisons, as a whole, we must extend the supply of assistant governors on the scale that at present we find only in training prisons. I will not cover the ground which was covered last year, but I believe we shall all agree that the perform- ance of our comparatively few training prisons is a good deal more satisfactory than any other feature of our prison work; and while there were a number of different factors drawn together to produce that result—outstanding governors like Mr. Vidler of Maidstone, easier kinds of prisoners to deal with and better workshops—one particular, outstanding feature in training prisons as compared with local prisons is the much higher ratio of assistant governors.

In passing, may I say something which I hope the House will not regard as dropping below the level of this large subject. I was horrified to find that when Mr. Vidler, one of the great governors of our age and certainly an outstanding governor of recent times, retired the other day he was given an O.B.E. I have never been given any decoration and therefore I would have been most grateful to receive an M.B.E.; an O.B.E. would have seemed glorious. But when we see quite ordinary officials retiring and being knighted, and very rightly, and then we seek out one of our greatest prison governors and say to him: "Well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou has earned an O.B.E.", I feel it is pouring contempt on the whole subject and shows how low in our official thinking this exceptionally difficult work of our prisons is at present rated. Be that as it may, I submit that we should think seriously of trying to equip local prisons as a whole with the same proportion of assistant governors that we find in training prisons. That might mean increasing the total number of assistant governors from about 100 to something like 500 over all, and might cost an extra half a million pounds a year; and to that half-million there will have to be added the increased payment for the basic staff who should be paid considerably more.

On the other hand, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and others, have explained the saving that would result if we reduced the numbers now in prison by cutting down the number of people foolishly sent to prison at the present time. The noble Lord, Lord Glyn, in his exceptionally authoritative review, I think convinced all noble Lords that we could run the work in prisons not only more agreeably for the prisoners but more economically for the country, so that there again there would be a saving to set on the other side. I therefore resubmit my proposal and I would hope to see in future assistant governors trained more deliberately than they are now for a life of service as social officers. Most of them could come into it as people now come into the administrative grades of the Civil Service. But I should like to see much promotion from the ranks and some experience in the ranks for all of them.

The noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, last year described my idea as not very practical. He said it required too many assistant governors, suggesting that we might have forty at Wandsworth alone on my calculation. I would not stick to precise figures, but in the central prison of Stockholm, which is only half the size of Wandsworth, they have, apart from the governor twelve assistant governors and several social workers. If we apply the same ratio to Wandsworth there would be some two dozen assistant governors which would be five or six times the number at present. I hope that the noble Lord will not treat this suggestion as one of those "airy-fairy" ideas which people conjure up when they are trying to think of something to say in a speech. I hope no one will tell me that this plan would down-grade the ordinary basic officer. It does not down-grade anybody at Maidstone, it up-grades; and if that is so at Maidstone, why not at Wandsworth? It does not down-grade the ordinary prison officer if, for the first time, he is given the moral leadership which we find in the training prisons though not elsewhere.

Finally, I hope we shall not be told (I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, will say it, for he is too serious a student of these matters) that the prisoners in local prisons cannot be trained. Undoubtedly the 2,000 who are there at any one moment are there for too short a period—at least six months is necessary for proper training to be given, and I would exclude them. But, for the rest, I cannot help recalling what was said by Sir Lionel Fox in his classic book. If I seem, by implication, to criticise him, it is not intended. He is a man of most distinguished personality who, I believe, is very unwell at the present time; and I am sure the House would wish to send him good wishes for a complete recovery. In his classic book he described as the central purpose of the prison system the: training and treatment of convicted prisoners, establishing in them the will to lead a good and useful life on discharge and fitting them to do so. I ask your Lordships to note that the term he used was "convicted prisoners". It is not just a few convicted prisoners or some selected convicted prisoners; it is convicted prisoners as a whole. That is the purpose of our prison system. It is in failing to carry that out that I feel that our performance is so badly lacking.

I hope we shall not get an answer to the effect that "We do not know how to begin". Indeed, I may say at once that I do not expect such an answer from the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft. After all, we have Maidstone, we have Wakefield and other such prisons, so I do not think it can be said that we do not know how to make a start. The task is difficult enough, Heaven knows! but I think there is a great deal in the answer which my noble friend Lord Chorley has given—though it is not a complete answer—that the present position is certainly to a large extent due to the fact that we have hitherto been too stingy as a nation to do our Christian duty. I am bound to add that I feel that our national stinginess has affected the authorities concerned. For all their devotion and high-mindedness, a certain defeatism and a certain hopelessness seem to have affected them, and I think we have to help them work their way out of this slough of despond.

I am not referring to the Commissioners who, after all, are the servants of the Ministers; I am not speaking with any personal animus and I am certainly speaking with no Party bias when I beg the Government to examine all the proposals which have been put forward to-clay so far as possible with a fresh mind. I know that after many years of studying such proposals, if one is in a Department one is inclined to get into a rut and, when these proposals come forward, to say that one has heard that before and one knows the answer, which is that these things cost money and the Treasury will not allow it. I beg the noble Lord who is: going to reply not to take that line. I beg him to give us an open-minded answer. And indeed I am confident that he will do so. He is himself very deeply interested in this subject. I am sure that he is not going to give us a lot of generalisations designed to show what a good record everybody has and how generous action has effected a general transformation of the situation. The noble Lord has a duty to perform and I am quite sure that he will do it, and will do it very well.

As the representative of a great Department the noble Lord must stand up for that Department to the best of his ability. But I do beg him to open his mind to the possibilities of proposals which have been made to-day and to realise that they cannot just be swept aside. I do not see how we can go on just having debates like this repeatedly. I do not see how we can have a debate last year, a debate this year and then have to look forward to a similar one next year without result. I do not feel that the Home Office should be able to face this House if a year from now the prison situation is not very much better than it is at the present time. I therefore beg the noble Lord to realise that we have all spoken with deep feeling. We appreciate the noble Lord's own deep interest in this matter and we look forward to his reply. But, above all, we ask him to wrestle with his colleagues and to try to persuade them, for the first time, to make our prison system worthy of a Christian country.

5.14 p.m.

LORD MANCROFT

My Lords, I welcome this debate for two reasons. In the first place, I welcome it for the purely selfish reason that I myself happen to be keenly interested in the subject. In the second place I welcome it because I think it is a good thing that the question of our prison system and existing conditions should be discussed generally and dispassionately. I do not think we have had a debate in this House for a year, and very little debate on prisons takes place in the country.

The noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, has been at pains, in his interesting and well-informed speech, to plead with me not to do a large number of things which I have no intention of doing. I have no intention of shutting my eyes to the many deficiencies of our system which have been dwelt upon in detail by a number of noble Lords this afternoon. For one thing I know too much (if I may say so) about the problem; I have seen too much of it with my own eyes to be in any way complacent. I hope your Lordships will acquit me of complacency from this moment. I certainly hope that I shall not be accused of complacency if I attempt to put before your Lordships some account of the stewardship of the Home Office and the Prison Commissioners and try to explain some of the things on the credit side of the balance sheet which I think ought to be brought to your Lordships' notice as they are sometimes overlooked. If I do that and I also mention one or two other things which I think worthy of commendation, I hope that your Lordships will not think that I am for one moment minimising or overlooking some of the serious items which I admit are on the debit side of the balance sheet.

I was glad that Lord Moynihan, in the course of his lucid and helpful speech, told us that it was no good saying, as some prison critics do, that we had better blow the whole lot up and start all over again. That is said too easily by those who seem unable to realise that such a course would be financially impossible and also quite impracticable. Moreover, such people seldom remember to suggest any alternative. Lord Moynihan has certainly suggested a number of alternatives. There is much that can be done, and much has been done, with the material, financial and human resources we have available. But it would be stupid to deny that there is room for more still to be done. May we now look at one or two of the difficulties with which we are faced and have been faced in the ten years since the war?

The first thing to remember is that the prison population has doubled since the war, and alas!shows no signs of declining. May I tell the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, who dealt with this question, that the Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders is examining the proposal for reducing the number of short sentences. This might be a real solution of this problem. But it is a complex problem, and welcome a solution would be. There are two aspects of it. One is the ethical aspect of sending people unnecessarily to prison and the other is the administrative aspect. A large number of short sentences is an administrative nuisance. That I know the noble Earl well understands. He also mentioned one of our additional problems, which is that of the 4,000 maintenance defaulters—men who have refused to pay maintenance for their wives. The system of attachment of wages does work, I know, in Scotland, but the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce has advised against it in this country. I know that many employers, and I believe also trade unions, are not in favour of it. But I say this to the House: I think that this is a case in which the country may well have to reconsider its point of view.

Several of your Lordships have drawn attention to the fact that too many first offenders go to prison. One or two of your Lordships have talked about a dog having one bite. There has been a certain amount of shyness about suggesting how hard the bite must be before the offender is sent to prison. Your Lordships will also remember the undesirability of the Legislature dictating to the Judiciary. It is, after all, the courts and not the Home Office who must decide whether or not to send a man to prison for a first offence.

I will touch briefly on the difficulties of which your Lordships are all aware, and I will endeavour to tell you something of what we are doing about them. What have we already done? Every cellular prison—there are seven in all—has been taken back into use since the war. We have planned or built twenty new prisons and Borstals in open or semi-open conditions. I was glad to hear the noble Lords, Lord Chorley and Lord Glyn, refer to the difficulties which we sometimes meet from people who live in a locality where we are trying to put up a new open prison or Borstal. I hope that that particular difficulty will be minimised by their remarks. In addition to what I have just mentioned, we have set up three new detention centres for young people—there are in total now nearly double the number of establishments there were before the war: the figure has risen from forty to about seventy.

Our new building programme is probably familiar to your Lordships. Three new prisons are contemplated, including a new psychiatric institution, and four new Borstals. The Home Secretary recently laid the foundation stone of the first of the new prisons. I can reassure the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of Exeter, who made a plea for smaller prisons, that his point has been met in the one now building. Site works on a second prison should start before the end of the year, and negotiations are in train to complete the purchase of a site for a third. A fourth detention centre, in Staffordshire, will be built by the end of March. We hope to open more in the North of England soon. Then we should have provided this type of accommodation for the greater part of the country where it is particularly needed. The wings of eight prisons which were badly damaged in the war have been rebuilt. We have undertaken a vast programme of improvement of facilities and modernisation. We have built 168 new workshops and laundries, and eighty more have been enlarged; eleven new kitchens, eight hospitals, thirteen chapels and eight gymnasia have been built, together with a large number of visiting rooms, bath houses and drying rooms. This is in addition to a large amount of miscellaneous work. Twenty old heating systems have been replaced. New electricity has been installed in thirty-five prisons and cell lighting has been raised from 20 to 40 watts and is going to he raised again to 60 watts as soon as we can get circuits sufficiently strengthened.

I have read out this catalogue of what we have done deliberately, because I think it is too easy to overlook it and to concentrate only on what remains to be done. Do not let us forget this major programme which has been carried out since the war and for which the taxpayers have had to find the money. That does not alter the fact that there is still a great deal to be done. I admit that. But your Lordships will agree with me that more has already been done than people think. However, I realise, better than most noble Lords, how much more there is still to be done. I know only too well the problem of sleeping three in a cell. The figure is not 4,000, as a noble Lord gave it; it is actually 2,000

LORD PETHICK-LAWRENCE

My Lords, does the noble Lord mean that there are 2,000 persons sleeping three in a cell—that is to say, 700 cases—or does he mean 2,000 cases of men sleeping three in a cell?

LORD MANCROFT

It is 2,000 people who have not a cell to themselves. All I can say about that is that the figure is 1,000 better than last year, when it was 3,000. But I want to make perfectly clear what I think about 2,000 sleeping three in a cell—it is exactly 2,000 too many. Let there be no doubt about that. I should like to assure the noble Lords, Lord Glyn and Lord Huntingdon, that we do everything we can to sort prisoners into suitable categories—not only those who have to sleep three together, but those who have to associate in any particular type of prison. Of course, it is not possible to do it completely, but we are doing our best to make certain that undesirables are not put where they can do more damage.

May I turn to the question of hygiene, something which I think has worried me more than anything else during the two years I have been dealing with this subject. It is a question which has attracted as much criticism as any question to do with prison administration, and again I admit that a good deal of the criticism is justified. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Haden-Guest, however, that all prisons are not in a state of "swinish filthiness." I think he is going too far. I do not know how many prisons he has visited, but I should like to take him immediately to one or two prisons where conditions are very good.

LORD HADEN-GUEST

I am glad to accept the noble Lord's invitation.

LORD MANCROFT

But I am afraid I can also take him to three or four more the conditions in which neither the noble Lord nor I nor any other Members of your Lordships' House would approve for one moment. I do not think I can express myself too strongly about this matter. I agree with every view that has been expressed about it. The effect on the prisoner's self-respect, quite apart from the hygienic aspect, is fully appreciated by the Prison Commission and the Home Office. It is an immense problem, but since the war we have achieved better sanitary standards in the recesses of over 100 prison wings. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, is not going to accuse me of being complacent. I recognise the trouble, but I assure the House that we are getting on with the work as best we can.

I would tell the noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, that we are not too proud to learn from other countries. I went across to France myself this Whitsun to see what we could learn, accompanied by Sir Lionel Fox and by Sir Frank Newsam, the Permanent Head of the Home Office. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Drogheda was not able to come with us, because he particularly wanted to, but his illness did not permit him to do so. I am glad to learn that he is now much better. Monsieur Touren, who is Sir Lionel Fox's opposite number, put every facility at our disposal and we saw a great deal of the French prison system. We saw a good deal that we should like to have here, but we also saw some things that we should hate to have here. What impressed me most was the new sanitation in one or two new wings they are converting. But if we had here what they have there—lavatories and running water in the cells—the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, would not approve, nor would many of our sanitary authorities. There is, on technical grounds, a difference of opinion among the experts about the best thing to do, but I must confess that the French system impressed me. I was horrified, however, when I was shown the budget afterwards and realised how enormous the cost would be. But I give your Lordships my personal assurance that I am acutely aware of this sanitation problem and anxious that everything possible should be done to put prison sanitation in the condition in which I know, from the vehemence with which views have been expressed, your Lordships would like to see it.

"Priorities" is, however, a word which your Lordships have bandied about this afternoon. I need not deliver another financial speech, such as my noble friend Lord Selkirk did yesterday, to emphasise the need for Government retrenchment. We are all aware of the fact that Government expenditure must be cut to the bone, so long as it is not our bone that is cut. Those interested in prisons resent the fact that their particular bone is being cut. The noble Earl, Lord Huntingdon, said that there was no "Prison Lobby" and that that was half the trouble. I believe that he is right. There is no political kudos in asking for "more quids for quods." Only last Sunday I saw an indignant letter in the Press saying that we were going to squander more money on prisons. "What about spending a bit more money," the letter-writer said, "on the barracks in which my son is living, which are worse than any prison, or on the school to which my child has to go, which is worse than that." That is a frame of mind to which we must of necessity pay some attention.

The right reverend Prelate the Lord Bishop of Exeter complained bitterly about the standard of prison clothing. I myself should very much like to issue pyjamas to prisoners, but that would cost £30,000 and an annual outlay of £7,000. We are, however, now doing it in some of the dormitories in open prisons. I mention that, not to be accused of complacency by the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, but to remind those who are taxpayers and those of you who believe in the "Prison Lobby" or otherwise, what is going to be the cost of some of the most desirable reforms. Nevertheless, I agree with what noble Lords have emphasised: the fact that there are a number of improvements that can be carried out which would not cost any money.

LORD PAKENHAM

My Lords, I do not want to pick up the noble Lord on words, but he has told us of the improvements which can be carried out without costing money. Are they being carried out?

LORD MANCROFT

I am merely emphasising the fact that some can he carried out without much cost, and that is being done, but other most desirable reforms will cost a great deal of money.

Let me turn to the question of staffing, which nearly all noble Lords have mentioned, particularly the noble Lords, Lord Pakenham and Lord Glyn. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, was less than generous to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State when he announced that prison staffs of all ranks had been more than doubled. My right honourable friend went on to add that that was not enough. The noble Lord used the word "phoney" about these figures.

LORD PAKENHAM

My Lords, I did not say that the figures, but that the argument, was "phoney".

LORD MANCROFT

It would be a great deal more "phoney" if the figures had gone down. Then the noble Lord would have had some ground for criticism. But they have more than doubled. That is the fact. My right honourable friend was far from complacent, too, when he pointed out, also, that in order to extend the shift system to local prisons, which is highly desirable, particularly from the point of view of work, we still need another 1,000 officers. I regret to have to tell your Lordships that the situation is no better than it was last year. We are still 180 men and 50 women short on the existing prison arrangements. The blunt fact is that only a limited number of people are attracted to this work, even without the counter-attraction of full employment. It is not only a financial and material matter—I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, will agree with that, and my noble friend Lord Middleton mentioned it. Last year, however, we had an improvement in pay agreed between the Prison Commissioners and the Prison Officers' Association, from 18s. at the bottom to 30s. at the top. I hope that this will have some effect.

Housing is a problem, and, of course, it is an inducement. In the past financial year 183 new quarters have been provided, and 217 are in the process of being built. We have provided altogether 2,300 new quarters since the war. Eight out of 10 officers are now provided with married quarters, and if any more have to be deferred, we all know the reason for it, and we regret it. There has also, with a view to improving the status and the recruitment of prison officers, been added an additional channel through which officers may now reach the rank of assistant governor. There is something even more important than the material benefits I am talking about. I think we have to substantiate the claim that the prison service is an important social service, and the public will not think it is if the officers do not think so. I am sure that I shall carry your Lordships with me when I emphasise the need for a prison officer to have professional pride, a satisfaction in his job, and a feeling that he is an effective unit in the rehabilitation of the prisoners in his charge. We, for our part, believe this strongly, and we are taking what steps we can to achieve it. We are extending initial training of recruits. There is a liberal scale of refresher courses. We are having increased discussions at all levels to promote a sense of common purpose; and we are looking carefully into the problem mentioned by my noble friend Lord Middleton, of relieving the monotony of the prison officers' work.

I believe strongly—it has been borne increasingly upon me—that whatever remedial forces of work, education or anything else may achieve, what finally counts is the influence of the prison officer on the prisoner. Therefore, we are doing all that we can to foster and improve this. We shall take carefully to heart the suggestions made by your Lordships this afternoon. I think the relationship in training and open prisons between the prisoner and the prison officer is good; but I cannot pretend that it is so good in local prisons. Here we must renew our efforts, and we are doing so. Discussions are now in progress at all levels on developing a more constructive approach to the work of the officer in local prisons. We are conducting a practical experiment in the prison of my native city, Norwich, and I hope that this may prove to be a turning point. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pakenham, that the prison officer is not a mere custodian. I am not going to brush aside his suggestion of more assistant governors. I have thought about it carefully during the last year; I have discussed it with the experts, and I have thought about it again. However, I still do not agree with the noble Lord.

LORD PAKENHAM

Since the noble Lord is still open to argument, may I ask him this? Why is it desirable in the training prisons, but not in the others, to have a high ratio of assistant governors?

LORD MANCROFT

Because there is a different type of prisoner in the training prisons. That is the chief stumbling block in the scheme of the noble Lord. Since we are talking about training, perhaps I may now turn to what I regard as the second most important aspect of the training side—namely, the question of work. May I go to the credit side of my balance sheet, without being accused of complacency—because there is a credit side. In the regional and training prisons the prisoners do a full day's work in a wide variety of skilled and semi-skilled trades. I hope that those noble Lords who have been harping on the mailbag do not think that sewing mailbags is the sole means of employing a prisoner. There is a large number of much more interesting and profitable tasks—I can supply a list of them at any moment—undertaken in the training prison. Vocational training is being continually developed. I was glad to hear the right reverend Prelate, the Lord Bishop of Bristol, refer to the interesting and successful experiment which is being carried out in Bristol, where, as your Lordships know, third-stage preventive detention men working in the city receive normal wages. There have been few breaches of trust and confidence. We do not even talk about an escape from Bristol Prison; the word we use is "dematerialisation". I may add that these men are actually paying for being kept in prison. So successful, indeed, has this limited scheme been, that we shall shortly be laying before Parliament some amending rules designed to extend this practice, not necessarily in the same form, but to some other classes of prisoners.

Again, I cannot pretend that the picture in local prisons is as good. It is not. There are twice as many prisoners in the local prisons as there were before the war. I agree that the mail-bag is far from ideal, even for those who cannot do much more. But a variety of other trades are attempted, even in local prisons. And there is no fear, I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, about leaving dangerous equipment about. There is a great deal of dangerous equipment in prisons that could well be put to improper use. But there is no getting away from the fact that local prisoners are not working much more than twenty-six hours a week. I say, as firmly as I can, that we are not content with this. I remind your Lordships, also, that there is no obvious remedy. There was not even before the war, when the prison population was much smaller. I say again that we must revise our thinking and cast around for new sources of suitable work. There is the possibility of sending more prisoners to work outside. There is the possibility of sending more ordinary prisoners to training centres. There is a modest experiment just starting at Dover on these lines, of which we have some hopes. We must examine more carefully the possibility of getting work for local prisoners through the establishment of out-factories for local employers, which I saw done extensively in France and which appears to work. I could not agree more with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, when he says that the whole of this problem needs a readier co-operation from public employers, the trade unions and the workers.

We appreciate, of course, the reasons for the distrust of prison labour. We all know the cry "Slave labour", and fully understand it. But the numbers are small. The Prison Commissioners have always gone to great pains to avoid any undercutting. They have tried to keep in close contact with local trade unions concerning wages and alternative labour available. I believe that local contacts are more hopeful than some sort of national agreement with the Trades Union Congress. I will bear in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, but I am of opinion at the moment that local contacts are more promising than contacts at national level. But not all local employer; and union officials, unfortunately, show realism and sympathy. Much more must be done. I think there is room for improvement, too, on the question of prisoners' earnings. My right honourable friend is trying at this moment to see what can be done about that matter.

I now turn to the major point of this debate and the subject which the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, raised of aftercare, the preparation to be made for the future of the prisoner after his or her release; and let us remember that the whole of this preparation, which involves a great deal of organisation, is based on the belief that effective material help and constructive after-care go hand in glove with prison training. In this connection I should like to emphasise that the help and supervision of a prisoner after his release, which is the true meaning of after-care in the strict sense of the word, is only the final stage in a much longer and indivisible process that should start from the day the prisoner begins to serve his sentence. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, in this, and I hope that I shall be able to satisfy him that we are working towards this end and. that, while much has already been done since the war, we regard this as merely the foundation of a new and better system which we hope will be evolved in the course of time.

We have considered the work in four stages: the preparatory work to be done from the time the sentence begins, when the prisoner's mind should be turned at once towards his future; the work in bridging the gap between prison life and a free life in society, which is known as pre-release training; the actual release of the prisoner with all the necessary help to get home and to get work; and, lastly, his help and supervision for some time after his release, which is after-care in the strictest sense of the word. We have decided that fresh attention must now be given to the starting point, and we have recently sought the views of the prison staff consultative committees on the composition and working of reception boards. We propose to review the whole procedure.

Pre-release training is a matter to which we have given a great deal of thought, and in which I believe we have shown some little enterprise. In its simplest and commonest form, this takes the form of courses of lectures by people from outside, who come and talk to the prisoners about the family and social problems with which they will be faced on release, and conduct friendly and, I think, fairly informal discussions. Its most advanced form, of course, is to be seen in the Bristol hostel, about which we have been speaking, where men live pretty much like free men, work and draw their wages in the town and who, as I think has been mentioned, are allowed to go home for Christmas and other holidays. Your Lordships may also know of the recent scheme where nineteen long-term first offenders from Wakefield went off on a six-day course in civil affairs. They did very well, and all returned. We hope to continue that sort of thing as circum. stances permit. The noble Lord, Lord Chorley, realised that it needs doing carefully, and I agree with what he said about privileges being abused. Between these two extremes there has been a fertile variety of experiment, and the now well-established system of home leave for certain categories of prisoner towards the end of the sentence is one of the most helpful of these various bridges between prison and freedom.

In the organisation of after-care, four great changes have been made in recent years, and I should like to bring them to your Lordships' attention. The first of these was the establishment of the Central After-Care Association to ensure that all compulsory after-care is carried out on common principles by a trained staff under central control. The second was the vital decision to ensure the effectiveness of after-care, arranging for it to be carried out by the only nation-wide body of social care workers qualified to do it—that is, of course, the probation officers. And very well they have responded to this new task. The third was to link the Welfare State with the after-care of prisoners, so that the released prisoner should not feel that he was an exceptional person dependent on charity, but a citizen free to use the same social services as other men, in the same way. Thus, the Ministry of Labour now see all prisoners who need their help, some time before their discharge, and do all they can to place them in suitable work. The National Assistance Board gives released prisoners such immediate and continuing help as they need, and special arrangements have been made, with the most sympathetic cooperation of the Board, to eliminate delays and specially to ease the path of released prisoners. The W.V.S. also provide for women prisoners valuable help in many ways, both during sentence and afterwards.

I think that some critics of the Central After-Care Association and the Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies tend to overlook the fact that it is no part of the functions of these bodies to usurp or overlap the functions of the Welfare State. This is probably the cause of the canard that all the after-care societies ever do is to give a discharged prisoner "five bob" and wish him good luck. I need hardly say that they do a great deal more than that.

Lastly, a review was made through the Departmental Committee to which several of your Lordships have referred—a Committee under the chairmanship of Sir Alexander Maxwell—of the functions of the local discharged prisoners' aid societies and their National Association, who look after all those discharged prisoners in local and regional prisons who are not subject to the compulsory after-care which is exercised by the Central After-Care Association. I can assure your Lordships that all the recommendations made by that Committee have been or are being, put into effect. The new prison welfare officers recommended by them, to whom the noble Earl, Lord Lucan, referred, have been appointed at four local prisons, and others will almost certainly follow. These officers will be in close contact with prisoners during their sentence, and we have great hopes that they will do much to smooth the re-entry of the prisoner into the outside world.

Meanwhile, the assumption by the State of certain responsibilities previously falling to the local societies will enable these to devote their resources increasingly to constructive after-care, rather than material aid on discharge. But in considering the probable rate of progress in this direction, three things must be remembered. First—and this is voluntary after-care I am talking about now—no prisoner can be required to accept it unless he wishes. Secondly, there is a long tradition among these independent societies which obviously cannot be changed overnight; and, thirdly, the fullest efficiency cannot be expected until the new prison welfare officers have been appointed, thus leaving the old-style welfare officers free to visit the homes of those they are trying to help.

But the resettlement of a prisoner in normal life demands much more than the smooth running of an official machine and the devoted efforts of voluntary workers. They can, and do, ensure that subsistence is available until the prisoner can maintain himself; they can find him a job; they can give him the necessary working clothing and tools, and they can assist and advise him generally. But all their efforts may be nullified if an employer cannot be found who is prepared to give the man a job, or if, when he has been given one, his workmates will not work with him. There are, happily, many kind-hearted employers and trade union officials and other workers, and we are most grateful to them, and to others who are ready to lend a helping hand, well knowing that, on occasion, their kindness may be abused. But I cannot deny that more co-operation is very desirable. Here, as in so many other of our prison problems, as has emerged from this debate this afternoon, public indifference is our chief obstacle. We will certainly consider adopting the other suggestions which have been mentioned by your Lordships in this debate this afternoon—for instance, the noble Earl, Lord Lucan, and the noble Lord, Lord Middleton, mentioned Toc H. But I want to emphasise that it is public indifference which is our chief difficulty, and not the lack of the right men among the officers we have been discussing.

My Lords, I have spoken far too long, and I am sorry. I have tried to answer most of the major points that have been put to me in this interesting but critical debate. I am not complaining that the debate should have been critical. I hope your Lordships, for your part, will not criticise me for having attempted to show a little of what is on the other side of the balance sheet. I hope I have convinced your Lordships that there is a bit more on the credit side than most people think. I hope I have firmly put my own view that there is much still wrong to he found on the debit side—I admit that, and I am not trying to disguise it for a moment. We are trying to put it right with all the available resources we have, and I believe that we are on the right lines. I offer only one small point of proof; that is the fact that at least 75 per cent, of those coming to prison for the first time never return.

We hear the Prison Service called the Cinderella of the social services. That is not true. Cinderella's plight was put right and improved beyond all recognition at the touch of a wand. We cannot put prison affairs right, I am afraid, at the touch of a wand. There is no such solution here. I believe that one real step forward which I hope may emerge from this debate will be a greater interest and knowledge and co-operation from the man in the street. We do not want his interest in prisoners only when he thinks there is some possibility of a "juicy scandal" in the offing: that is one thing we do not want. We do not want him to avert his eyes from what is happening to his fellow human beings over the wall. To give one example of how out of touch most people are with what goes on in a prison, the next time your Lordships look at a joke in a comic paper about prisons—and I myself never see anything very funny about prisons—you will invariably see the prisoners wearing a broad arrow on their clothing: the broad arrow has been abolished for certainly thirty years, and I believe longer. I believe increasingly—as I have taken more interest in it myself—that a country gets the prison service its conscience deserves. I am beginning to think that, despite all the obvious faults, which I have admitted to your Lordships and which your Lordships have naturally concentrated upon this afternoon, it is a better prison service than the conscience of the country deserves. That does not mean it could not still be vastly better, and we are doing our level best to make it so.

5.50 p.m.

LORD MOYNIHAN

My Lords, it has been a most interesting afternoon. I am most grateful to noble Lords for supporting me to-day, and particularly am I grateful to the right reverend Prelates, because I was very critical last year that no one from their Benches was here or seemed to take any interest; and it is vastly important in this subject that we have their full support. I think the reply we have had—although it has come from the same noble Lord who spoke last year—is so infinitely better that I shall go away much happier than I expected when I came this afternoon. We are delighted to hear the credit side of the balance sheet. It has put very clearly what Her Majesty's Government have clone. We are also delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, admits that a great deal of our criticisms are justified. We know that in the noble Lord we have a full-time supporter (if I may call him that) to see that, where possible, a start will be made in the near future on putting right the things of which we have complained.

There is one final criticism that I have of the Treasury. We were most interested in the visit to France. Is that country so much richer than we are that it can put these very expensive improvements in modern prisons, or is it that the French are a little more advanced in their thought? I think we might put that point to Her Majesty's Treasury: if other people can do these things, why cannot we? I am most grateful indeed to have had this opportunity of this debate. I look forward to further debates, and to hearing how things are going on. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.