Bishop Rachel gave a speech in response to the Budget.
The Right Revd Rachel Treweek, Bishop of Gloucester and Anglican Bishop for HM Prisons in England and Wales, spoke in a debate on the Budget focussing on the criminal justice system. She urged the Government to look at financial resources in a person-centred way rather than through a departmental lens.
She says, “We don’t need more prisons what we do need to do is replace and repair much of what we already have.
Reforming the criminal justice system is a long-term and overdue project but the financing cannot be separated from areas of spending in other departments. We must ensure that our approach is well co-ordinated and far-sighted. In the meantime this Budget is a step in the right direction for criminal justice, and I look forward to engaging with the Government further on this vital work.”
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Full text of the speech:
My Lords I want to focus on the budget in the context of Criminal Justice and declare my interest as Anglican Bishop for prisons in England and Wales. I was encouraged to hear from the Chancellor that the Government intends to begin to repair the Justice system and I welcome the extra investment in the Ministry of Justice although how that is spent is vital. We do need to ensure the aim is not to finance our way out of a prison capacity crisis. First let’s address the purpose of prison and then put the resources in the right place with a long-term vision of enabling strong and healthy families and communities. As a Christian I hold fast to hope and transformation. Reoffending continues a pattern of broken relationships and is costly not only to the fabric of society but in financial terms it cost approximately 18 billion pounds per year. So let’s not increase funds simply to do more of the same because all the evidence is that it is not working.
I’m delighted that the Sentence Review will look at alternatives to custody. As we know a prison place costs more than £40,000 a year. A community sentence costs about a tenth of that and with better results yet the use of community sentences has been falling over the last decade. Incidentally we are currently hemorrhaging money through the dysfunctioning delays in courts and the record high numbers being held on remand. In the crown courts approximately 14% of people on remand are subsequently acquitted, and over 15% are then given a non-custodial sentence; but by that point there’s already been a costly pressure placed on prison capacity as well as the impact on victims, families and wider communities with monetary implications for health, care and education. Funding additional Crown Court sitting days is only scratching a symptom rather than addressing a cause.
But back to that Sentencing Review:- I’m hoping it will shape a criminal justice system that better delivers for victims as well as offenders such that offenders are unable to desist from crime, which will in itself have financial benefit. And again I do want to reiterate that many offenders are also victims often as children and I don’t believe we can talk about a Justice budget without looking upstream. How I long for us to look at Financial Resources in a person-centred way rather than through a departmental lens.
What we spend in education, health, social care not least in the early years, has a knock-on effect for who does and does not enter the criminal justice system, and all that that means for subsequent generations and the wider community and of course public finance. For a child born today how will the whole Budget across departments enable that child to flourish as an individual within a network of relationships? Then there’s the issue of how money is spent on prisons so that they can be places of transformation including purposeful activity, therapy, education, and developing healthy relationships.
We don’t need more prisons what we do need to do is replace and repair much of what we already have and of course let’s not forget that for many people prison is a place of work. I pay tribute to the committed prison officers, governors, chaplains, and all those who work in prison often out of sight and too often out of mind.
I note a minimum additional investment over the next two years of £500 million to recruit new prison and probation staff; yet extra resource for recruitment will only work if it’s coupled with resources for staff training, development, and boosting morale not least so existing staff are retained. And unless there is good and adequate resourcing and valuing of probation it will not be possible to have alternatives to custody or to reduce reoffending through community-focussed solutions.
My Lords with spending front-loaded for the first two years of this Parliament I fear we run the risk of short-termism. Reforming the criminal justice system is a long-term and overdue project but the financing cannot be separated from areas of spending in other departments. We must ensure that our approach is well co-ordinated and far-sighted. In the meantime this Budget is a step in the right direction for criminal justice, and I look forward to engaging with the Government further on this vital work.
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