COURAGE to overhaul the criminal justice system is needed, to deal with the UK’s overcrowded prisons, bishops told the House of Lords on Wednesday.
Opening the penultimate day of debate on the King’s Speech, the new Minister for Prisons, Lord Timpson, said that prisons were necessary “as a punishment and a deterrent”, but currently were not fit for their purpose: “They create better criminals, not better citizens.”
Employing ex-offenders was a “win-win” for the country, he said: it boosted the economy and lowered reoffending rates. Lord Timpson formerly chaired the Prison Reform Trust, and, until his appointment to the House of Lords, was chief executive of the Timpson retail chain.
In the first days of the new Government, the Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced that, to relieve overcrowding, about 5500 prisoners would be released early.
“If we fail to act now, we face the prospect of a total breakdown of law and order,” she said, and, on Wednesday, Lord Timpson repeated a statement that Ms Mahmood had made in the House of Commons, in which she described the situation as a “ticking time bomb”.
The Bishop of Gloucester, the Rt Revd Rachel Treweek, who is the Bishop to Prisons, asked Lord Timpson about ambitions to change the public narrative about incarceration, and suggested that a “whole-systems approach” was needed rather than a narrow focus on increasing prison places.
“New prison places are important, and we will build more prisons — prisons we are proud of,” Lord Timpson said in reply.
Changing the narrative took time, but was possible, he suggested: 20 years ago, when he had started recruiting ex-offenders, “no one thought it was a good idea,” he but now it was widely accepted as good business practice.
In the debate on the King’s Speech, Bishop Treweek addressed the question of culture and system change. “The narrative that our streets will be safer if we lock more people up and for longer is not supported by the evidence, and simply leads to doing more of the same thing,” she said; and blaming the previous government for not building more prisons was “missing the point”.
She continued: “We need a whole-community approach, and the issue of relationship is key. We need to look at the big picture, including upstream. We need that long-overdue review of sentencing.
“We need courage to establish alternatives to the revolving prison door and the repeated pattern of fractured relationship, and this must include community-based alternatives as well as the presumption against short sentences, not least with their disproportionate impact on women.”
The former Archbishop of York, Lord Sentamu, called for fundamental change. Recalling his work as a prison chaplain in the 1980s, he said: “Building new prisons must go hand in hand with increased funding for the courts system; legal aid; the rehabilitation and education of offenders; a fully funded and renewed Probation Service; a regular training review of all prison officers; a rigorous refreshing of the workings of the Crown Prosecution Service; and the renewal of restorative justice.”
The Bishop of Manchester, Dr David Walker, began his speech with an invitation to Lord Timpson, to dine with him at the Clink restaurant at HM Prison Styal. The restaurant is staffed by inmates.
Dr Walker welcomed the Government’s pledge to introduce a “duty of candour” for public officials, fulfilling a recommendation from the former Bishop of Liverpool, the Rt Revd James Jones, in his report on the Hillsborough disaster (News, 2 November 2017).
Dr Walker also “applauded” the ending of the Rwanda scheme, both on moral grounds, and because the previous government could not confirm that it was fully compliant with international law.
He urged the new Government to consider allowing those waiting for asylum decisions to take paid employment, and signalled his support for a ban on conversion therapy. “I and others stand ready to help frame a law that will outlaw these disgraceful practices while not criminalising medical practitioners and registered therapists, or private non-coercive prayer,” he said.
The only ordained member of the new Government also spoke on Wednesday. Baroness Sherlock, a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions and an Anglican priest (Back Page Interview, 24 June), answered questions on the Household Support Fund.
Dr Walker asked about use of the fund for providing food for children during school holidays. “Can we have any hope that the Government will look at a more strategic way of helping children cope with hunger during the school holidays?” he asked.
Baroness Sherlock said that this would be considered by the newly created Child Poverty Taskforce.