Bishop speaks out about the prison crisis

The Bishop of Chelmsford, Rt Revd John Gladwin, has spoken about the crisis in the prison system. Taking part in the committee stages of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill yesterday (5 February), the Bishop advocated establishing a commissioner for offender management and prisons on an independent, statutory basis. He supported the protection of the rights and welfare of children in the criminal justice system and spoke in favour of raising the threshold for passing custodial sentences on young people.  

The Bishop said: “The Minister will be aware that Bishops have rights of entry into prisons and often have close relations with their local prisons. In our part of the country we have been in the local press with regard to deaths in custody recently, and some important aspects of this issue need to be tackled, not least the fact that those who succeed in taking their own lives in prison are but the tip of the iceberg of the attempts made to do so. I am concerned about the morale of staff in prisons in relation to these matters. That is why the statutory basis should be independent. There needs to be clarity of structure and a proper sense of accountability, so that those who are managing our prisons in their present state of crisis have a sense that they are getting proper public support.”

He asked, “Do we not need to say in this House and in Parliament that in this nation of ours we have far too many children and young people in custody?” He went on to say, “Surely the aim of legislation should be to assist us to turn that culture around and move in a new direction“.

“For a number of years, my wife had professional work in the field of children held in custody. We know that the behaviour of some children and young people is deeply challenging to society. The easy thing to do, dare one say, is to whisk them out of society rather than think of other means of addressing the issues. We also know that custody is the place in which the highest safeguards have to be set out if the interests of children who have been locked away are to be protected.”

“When we are serving the needs and welfare of children, we are serving the needs of society, the community and victims. When we are attending to the needs of victims and society, we should properly be attending to the welfare of children. If we can hold those things together we will get it right.

“Secondly, public policy needs to be consistent. When local authorities take children into care, the one thing they seek to avoid, if possible, is putting them into residential units, which is a last resort solution for children. We have the needs of the child in mind and our experience of such homes in the past means that we are very cautious about that solution. Thirdly—this has not been said in the debate—if it is necessary within those principles to take children into custody, such must be the conduct that that too serves the interests of children and their welfare. There is a danger of saying, ‘We don’t know what to do with this hard core of children and young people who we can’t cope with in society, so we must put them in custody.’”