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Clare Jerrom, reporter with Community Care and communitycare.co.uk, interviewed Martin Narey, the new commissioner for correctional services.

Clare Jerrom: Why was the new role of commissioner for correctional services created and what exactly does your role entail?

Martin Narey: I think it was created because of the home secretary’s wish to have a more co-ordinated and coherent approach to reducing re-offending. The government has done a lot recently, establishing the Youth Justice Board, establishing the National Probation Service, put a lot of money into prisons to reduce re-offending.

In my old job of director general I was being drawn into a role to co-ordinate that activity across the piece, for example, recommending spending priorities to the home secretary and so forth. So to some extent this role is a bit of a progression from that and I am now pulled out in an independent role overseeing all three services, managing the director generals of prison and probation and working closely with the chair and the chief executive of the Youth Justice Board.

CJ What would you like to achieve in your time in this role and what are your top three priorities?

MN Well what I would like to achieve is a demonstration that the three services, Prison, Probation and the YJB can achieve reductions in re-offending and maintain them. The reality is that has never been done. Over many decades there has been periods of optimism about reducing re-offending, getting people’s lives back on track, but they have been rarely realized. And I think that’s what I want go make sure we do now and that’s the main priority which the home secretary has set me. We are well on the way, some encouraging statistics coming out about offending by those leaving prison and community sentences, and as you have possibly heard, very encouraging statistics of reduction in re-offending for children who are subject to final warnings and reprimands where there has been very significant reductions against expected re-offending.

CJ So that’s the main priority – are there any others?

MN I think that on its own encompasses so much of the work. But I think in a few years time, when I leave this job, if we have achieved that reduction in re-offending, I will believe that we have been successful. How we do it is a challenge and I certainly know it is going to require much closer working between Prison and Probation and between those two agencies and the YJB.
There are some dislocations at the moment which we need to fix at the moment if we are to be effective.

CJ What dislocations are you referring to?

MN Well for example I think there are dislocations between what happens between a young person when they turn 18. I have been hugely welcoming of the extra investment the YJB have bought, not least to the care of those in custody, but I am rather alarmed at the huge gulf between what happens to a 17-year-old in custody and an 18-year-old and indeed in some circumstances what happens to a 17-year-old when they turn 18 in custody. And I think we need to make sure there is a much greater sharing of good ideas and some of that I am delighted to the extent to which the innovative intensive supervision and surveillance programme has influenced the creation of a new disposal from the Probation Service, the intensive change programme. But the three so-called services still need to work together much more closely to get the maximum impact. But there are some very big gulfs between prison and probation not least on the discharge of prisoners and the supervision in the community after prison.

CJ I’m going to come back to rehabilitation later and in particular the conditions for 18 to 20  year olds in prison but if I can just take you back to early on in your career, you started off in a Young Offenders’ Institution didn’t you, which one was it?

MN It was Deerbolt in the north east.

CJ And what were the main problems that you were encountering because it was the early 80s wasn’t it?

MN It was the early 80s and I joined and had these idealistic notions about rehabilitation. And I was quite fortunate in terms of places I could have gone in the Prison Service in the 80s, Deerbolt was a bit of a flagship. But in terms of what might reduce re-offending, there was precious little of it taking place. There was quite a lot of activity, prisoners were rarely locked in their cells, but very little engagement on work which would make a real difference.
And in later years, after I left Deerbolt and as the Prison Service came under pressure, even the amount of time that young prisoners could spend out of their cells was radically reduced. The service didn’t really begin to get any serious investment in the things that might start to reduce re-offending until 1997.

CJ So do you think there has been a lot of progress over the last 20 years since you yourself were working in a YOI?

MN Yes, I think there is, not least in the approach of prison officers. We recruit very different prison officers now, and prison officers who have been in the service for many years have largely changed. They perceive their role much more as simply being custodians or awarders. It is now very common to see prison officers engaged in drug treatment programmes, sex offenders’ treatment programmes. I was at Hull prison very recently and witnessed a prison officer working one to one with a prisoner who couldn’t read and write, teaching him on a one-to-one basis some basic skills. And I hugely welcome that change and there’s a nice balance I believe now in the service between the proper concerns of security and the concerns of rehabilitation.

CJ Are some of your former colleague who you worked with at the YOI still working in YOI’s now and what sort of problems are they coming up against?

MN There are some working there and coincidentally I’m going back to Deerbolt this weekend because it’s the 30th anniversary of the event and some people who were there when I worked there are still there now. And I think they would see some similar progress but I think a lot of that progress has been made in recent years since this government first of all put a lot of investment into the Prison Service and since it became quite clear that what the home secretary required of the Prison Service was much more than simply locking people up but he wanted to see this reduction in re-offending. So I think staff at Deerbolt now will see a greater emphasis on, for example, basic skills, education, making young people employable, trying to get them into jobs and so forth.

CJ What do you think their main complaints would be about problems in YOIs now?

MN I think the main anxiety in almost any establishment would be about the through put of young prisoners. Because of the problems of over-crowding we are having to move a lot of prisoners up and down the country.
It’s not just the overcrowding, for example, a lot of institutions dealing with young people and particularly those dealing with children are not overcrowded. But because we have so little space capacity we are having to move a lot of young people up and down the country to where there’s a spare bed and frequently moving them very far from their home. For example some children who might have been in Feltham, which is somewhere we wouldn’t want to overcrowd again, and have had to be moved by the Prison Service up to institutions in Northumberland which is where there are empty beds.

CJ And what problems can that create in itself being so far away?

MN Very grave problems. It significantly reduces the chance of getting parents properly involved. The Prison Service has made a lot of strides in recent years in trying to get parental involvement in a young person’s time in custody and parents are now routinely invited to sit on progress boards so they can hear from staff about how their son is doing. That’s quite a challenge to secure that co-operation when the parents live 20 miles away, if they are 300 miles away it’s going to be very difficult indeed.

CJ What is the current population?

MN There has been a welcome steadying in the population of juveniles in custody. Indeed it has fallen from its peak and has grown very little in 2003, I think because the YJB have done an excellent job in promoting alternatives to custody, such as ISSP. I am very taken when I speak to sentencers’, judges and magistrates about how impressed they are with the nature of the ISSP and I think the YJB have provided the courts with something which they see as a genuine alternative and a more constructive alternative to a short sentence of custody.

CJ So you think magistrates do have faith in the ISSP?

MN It is clear that is the case because the population of those 17 and under in custody has not grown anywhere as near as fast as the population of those aged 18 to 21. My view is that Norman Warner (the former chairperson of the YJB and now health minister) deserves a great deal of credit for that. I think he was very resolute in selling alternatives to the courts and being very frank with the courts where they were using a lot of custody. I have tried to join him in being frank about the futility of very short detention and training orders. Obviously serious offenders need to be sent to custody, but no-one should think that a very short detention and training order is likely to make much effect on a young person’s behaviour.

CJ A couple of weeks ago the new minister for children Margaret Hodge has taken over a great deal of the children’s services within the department for education and skills – children’s social services away from the department of health, Connexions, Sure Start, the majority of children’s services apart from children’s health and youth justice. Do you think that separating of the majority of children’s services from youth justice will cause any problems?

MN No I don’t. One of the things that government has got much better at in recent years is working across departmental boundaries. The fact that, I’m obviously glad youth justice has been retained here in the home office. I think it’s vital we have those synergies between youth justice, probation and prison to reduce re-offending, but it doesn’t mean we won’t be working very closely with other departments to make sure we have the maximum impact on reducing re-offending.

CJ So you think the key to it is this working together?

MN The meeting I had before seeing you has been, for example, with a senior colleague from the OPDM who is responsible for housing policy and we have been discussing how we can work together to get more offenders when leaving custody into housing. And that’s the sort of thing you have to do and mustn’t be constrained by departmental boundaries?

CJ So you don’t think it will cause any major problems?

MN I think it will be fine. I think more problems have been caused by the divorce of the Youth Justice Board from prisons and probation.

CJ Hodge is also going to be taking responsibility for the green paper on children, which is supposed to be coming out soon. Have you had a great involvement with the formation of that Green Paper?

MN Obviously some involvement advising my ministers on aspects of that as it relates to offenders and reducing re-offending, but as you know the green paper will look much wider than that.

CJ Do you think there will be many recommendations that are targeted towards the youth justice system or do you think it will be looking earlier in the process than that, such as earlier intervention?

MN The final composition of the green paper is a matter for ministers and not for me as an official. But I expect it to be a very important document with significant ramifications for how we deal with young people who are offenders, not least because as we know a lot of the problems that offenders have are exactly the same as a lot of young people who may have got into criminal behaviour and ended up in custody. But aspects of homelessness, lack of education, poor employability are pretty common characteristics.

CJ One of these characteristics is children in care as very often children in care end up in the youth justice system.

MN Very frequently.

CJ And in custody. Will that be part of your job to be looking at that and what can be done to eradicate that where possible?

MN I think that’s an example of where we need to work across departments to maintain links. I’m in no doubt at all that efforts elsewhere in government for example to reduce the number of children in care or to reduce the number of children excluded from school will have a long term benefit in terms of the number of people being sent to custody because those two characteristics feature so heavily in the population of young people who are in prison.

CJ So its children excluded from school and children who have been in care that are the two most common characteristics?

MN That’s right. As efforts are made to reduce those it will lead in time to a smaller population of young people in custody.

CJ Is any work being done now?

MN There’s a lot, a great deal of work being done in this area and we are concentrating with young people who are coming into custody, for example, who might have been excluded from school, we’re trying very hard to use the time they have with us to provide compensatory education and we are having some success at moving young people who have got no qualifications at all whether in school or perhaps have been permanently excluded. We’re having quite a lot of success in getting them educational qualifications, and for the first time raising in their minds the possibility of becoming part of mainstream society and getting a job.

CJ Another piece of legislation that came out in March, is the Antisocial Behaviour Bill. A lot of children’s charities have been quite critical about some of the measures and said they are quite punitive. Would you agree with that?

MN It’s not an area for which I have any responsibility and I wouldn’t really want to comment on that. I understand the concerns of charities, but I also have some sight of what are often the beginnings of behaviour which can lead to greater criminal activity.

CJ So low level anti-social behaviour can escalate?

MN I’m absolutely sure it does. If there’s one lesson we’ve learned in recent years from trying to reduce re-offending is that early and effective intervention is likely to be more effective than later intervention.

CJ So you are quite supportive of things like Identification Referral and Tracking, likely to be in the green paper and the youth inclusion and support panels created by the YJB?

MN I am keen on anything which tries to deter young people from eventually ending up in custody which is something which we should avoid unless it’s absolutely necessary by the nature of serious offending. If we can do things earlier in a young person’s life to stop them drifting into offending, and lots of young people do drift into offending, then obviously I would welcome that very warmly.

CJ So if people are saying the measures in the Antisocial Behaviour Bill are punitive, you don’t think it will end up drawing more people into the youth justice system?
 
MN I don’t think we should look at measures and measure them by whether or not they are punitive – we should measure them by whether or not they are likely to be effective.

CJ Scotland is planning a single correctional agency. Do you think that given your new role that is something we will head towards?

MN It’s a possibility but only a possibility and it’s not something that is yet being discussed with ministers. I am trying to do work to pull the three main players here closer together and beginning to have some success with that. But it may be at some point in the future it will be considered that a single correctional agency is needed to make sure we have a more coherent management of offenders, but that’s not something that ministers have yet discussed and clearly that’s a decision for ministers.

CJ A lot of the problems are when people are coming to the end of their time in prison or YOI, it’s the lack of continuing in services.

MN That’s absolutely right and whether or not we have a single correctional service we have to eradicate those dislocations.

CJ But would that help?

MN It may well help but I’m not going to suggest that I think it’s an absolute prerequisite. I think we need to explore a little further what can be done with current structures and then at some point in the future ministers will no doubt want to make decisions about whether they want to go further and make structural changes. But it’s not an issue on ministerial agenda at the moment.

CJ The Howard League judgement in December ruled that the Children Act should apply to children in prison have you seen any changes since then?

MN The judgement was pretty sympathetic to the Prison Service if you read it, it acknowledged significant changes which have been made and we had to amend perhaps one sentence in our guidance. The Prison Service has sought to enshrine the principles of the Children’s Act very much in what we are doing and certainly I have seen a transformation in recent years in the extent to which the Prison Service approach is much more child orientated than it ever was before and that’s carrying on. It’s a transformation in attitude which is underway and there’s more work yet to be done.
But I think anyone who was visiting YOIs five years ago and were looking at how we were looking after a 16 or 17-year-old and went to visit one now would believe that some sort of revolution had taken place.

CJ But some of Anne Owers reports are quite critical of YOIs, particularly for the 18-20 year olds.

MN Well I made the distinction early on between those who are 17 and under, those who are children and covered by the Howard League judgement and those who are 18-20.
As director general of the Prison Service I did not have the same investment to put into the care of 18 to 20-year-olds as I had to put into the care of those aged 17 and under. But if you look at those dealing with and looking after children then with the exception of one establishment which has been in some difficulties I think the chief inspector shares my view about considerable progress that has been made.

CJ How would you describe conditions for the under 18s and how would that compare to the over 18s?

MN We’ve had a lot of money to put into the care of those who are under 18. To give you an example at the once notorious Feltham in west London, the additional investment that I received from the Youth Justice Board has meant we were able to build a brand new state of the art education block for the children there so typically a 16 and 17-year-old in Feltham is more or less in full-time education including PE, will be having a great deal of help to overcome educational deficits, the approach will be a child-centred approach, individual training plans, there will be somebody in the institution who is leading on issues of child protection.
Now for those aged 18 to 20, some of those benefits are accrued. They too have had an increase in education provision, but of a much more modest nature and there is no doubt at all that the Prison Service isn’t able to offer the same educational opportunities or the same time out of cell to some of those aged 18 when compared to some of those aged 16 or 17. But we have to make a start and I think it was right for us to start and the government to with the most vulnerable age group.

CJ Do you think the improvements will work up to the 18 year olds?

MN I hope so and there has been some additional investment in that age group and I was fortunate in the most recent Spending Review to get quite a lot of new investment from the DfES and that will be spent, much of that will be targeted towards meeting the educational deficits of those aged 18-20.

CJ Would you say that’s a big priority for the Prison Service?

MN It is. I think what the Prison Service wants to do is to further improve the care of children in custody but to try to ensure that the care in custody of older prisoners, particularly those aged 18 to 20, begins to catch up.

CJ What are the dangers for those aged 18 to 20 if this doesn’t happen, if they are locked up in their cells for 23 hours a day?

MN There will be very few of them locked up for 23 hours a day and none of them locked up for 23 hours a day on a regular basis. But it’s just a matter of what prison can achieve. I believe that with the necessary investment, prison in dealing with that age group, can characteristically get somebody off drugs, get them de-toxed, get them into a drug treatment programme, get them some educational qualifications, help them to find a job on release and somewhere to live. If we can do all of those things we have a very good chance of reducing re-offending. The down side of that is it is difficult for us to do that when the pressure of numbers are so very grave and it’s difficult for us to do that for anywhere near as many people in custody as the Prison Service would like because obviously despite, by any measure, very significant investment he government has put into improving prisons, clearly the pressures of the very large, difficult, uneducated and troubled population leading chaotic lives in the community means the charges are very, very high.

CJ You don’t think the current tabloid obsession with youth crime could increase pressures on the population?

MN I think news coverage of crime issues does put pressures on the population. The fact is that crime has fallen in this country since 1997, and if you read a tabloid newspaper you would not believe that.

CJ The social exclusion unit’s report figures for re-offending were about 75 per cent, would you say that’s reduced as that was a 1997 figure?

MN We don’t yet have statistics on the re-offending rates for young people who have done DTOs. The significant reductions in expected re-offending are for those children who have been punished in the community, particularly for those who have been dealt with short of court, those who have had reprimands and final warnings. There has been a very, very encouraging apparent reduction in re-offending.

CJ So that’s the way forward?

MN It strengthens my point about as early as possible intervention. Some of those people are very young, they are not just getting an old fashioned police caution, which didn’t amount to very much, they are typically getting a proper final warning system and alongside the final warning system they are being given some help or they are having to provide some reparation for the crime committed.

CJ What about re-offending rates for those in prison?

MN The re-offending rates for those in prison, you’re talking about the most troubled group, are very high indeed. But I believe that things we are doing now will lead to a reduction and overall – I can’t separate out age groups – but overall there is some evidence now that there is some reduction in re-offending being achieved by the Prison Service.
What I would very much like to achieve is the biggest possible reduction in re-offending for those children in prison. Not, for one moment that I am in any way wanting to advocate or encourage anyone being sent to prison and particularly for children custody should be absolutely the last resort when no other reasonable alternative is there. But I think when a court has to make that decision then I think there are things that can be done in a residential setting that can change people’s lives.