Strive to be a penal reformer

1am delighted that you have 1 been appointed Home Secretary. My hearty congratulations. You have proved in war and peace. particularly in Northern Ireland, that you possess the combination of courage and compassion which is more indispensable in the Home Office than in any other department.
I will concentrate in what follows on penal reform in the widest sense. I am only too well aware of your other onerous responsibilities.
Your Party and a large section of the nation are looking to you For a firm law and order policy. In so far as that means an ever more energetic attempt to reduce the appalling level of crime, especially violent crime, all men of goodwill must support you. Everything you do to strengthen the police and increase the probability of detection and conviction has us all solidly behind you.
I hope and believe that you will respond enthusiastically to a new initiative that some of us have have been taking on behalf of victims. I shall be introducing a Private Member's Bill on that subject in the near future.
But it is my central submission that there is no conflict between a firm law and order policy and an enlightened policy of penal reform. They are both fully corn patible with sound Conservative principles.
the three Home Secretaries in this century who have shown the deepest interest in penal reform at one time or another were all Conservatives: Sir Winston Churchill, admittedly a Liberal while he was Home Secretary; Sir Samuel Hoare (later Lord Templewood) and R. A. (now Lord) Butler. None of these three in fact accomplished what they must have %‘ ished.
Their examples can at least provide you with the inspiration to do better still. No one can accuse them of being soft on law and order.
One thing at least we can all agree on. The resources devoted to penal reform for many years have been wretchedly small. The former Home Secretary, Mr Merlyn Rees, admitted this in effect when setting up the May Committee last winter, though the immediate occasion was the protest of the prison officers at their quite inadequate remuneration and lack of fruitful opportunities.
Your first crucial test will be the arrival on your desk, one hopes by the end of the summer of the May Report. It is inconceivable that they will nor recommend a substantial increase of resources devoted to penal treatment. I hope and believe that you will enthusiastically welcome such a finding. It should lend much strength to your elbow in your inevitable arguments with your colleagues. It is excellent that you should possesss the status of a Deputy Prime NI mister.
But how are the extra resources td be allocated? The Home Office will no doubt press on you elaborate schemes for new prison buildings. 1 heir opinion in this respect is very different from what 1 w mild call enlightened opinion outside.
We all want to see far fewer people in prison — at least I hope so, and to build a lot of new prisons seems an odd way of achieving that purpose. We all agree, however, that the present overcrowding is intolerable.
All penal reformers, including myself. will press on you the much superior remedies of work for the community. under supervision. outside prison and other aliernatives to sterile incarceration.
These alternatives, as has been said many times, will actually save you money in the not very long run, I have been told repeatedly by Ministers that in the short run they will increase expenditure. I would hope that with additional resources this argument will have been disposed of.
But you may still tell me, not unreasonably, that it is not the Home Secretary who determines the level of sentencing: that is for the judges and magistrates. whose independence must at all cost be respected.
Judges and ma;!istrates, hov+ever, do not live in a vacuum. I simply do not believe that it is impossible for the Home Secretary, in conjunction with the Lord Chancellor and the Cabinet as a whole, to influence the level of sentences, which is higher in this country that in almost any other comparable State.
Through the parole system, you have a patent opportunity of indicating w hat seems to you the right approach. Roy Jenkins, not in all ways too fortunate in the Home Office, did a lot to liberalise the approach of the Parole Board. I would hope that you would do a lot more and begin by insisting that they give reasons for their often mysterious decisions.
But at this point you can see yourself cooling under fire from your more extreme hard-liners, who are nothing if not vocal. They want penalties to be more severe instead of more lenient. You understand their mentality better than I do.
I venture to suggest, however, that you can quite honestly present the choice not between soft and hard punishments, hut between negative and positive, between useless and constructive. No one who has met as many adult criminals as I have during the last 25 years can doubt that they would have not gone wrong to anything like the same extent if they had been treated more wisely or, as I would say, more constructively when they were young.
I know from conversation with you that you have given earnest thought in particular to the treat ment of adolescent delinquents. You know, and I know, that the solution is not easv and that the right answer may take a long time to show its benefits.
But whether we are talking of treatment inside institutions or in the community. that treatment will be provided by individuals. The individuals. whether prison officers, probation officers or other social workers may possess a line sense of mission which a large proportion of them do at present. But if, as now, they are grossly and scandously overworked.
nothing large can be achieved. Here again we conic: back to the question of resources.
There are plenty of other topics I would like to raise with you. There should be con siderably more autonomy for prison governors and the establishment of the whole prison service on a much more professional basis. with much wider opportunities for prison officers.
The w hole question of the secrecy afflicting our prison arrangements. which is carried so much further than in most other coutries, has escaped criticism for too long. I can only mention now iny conviction that the life of prisoners will never he humanised
— the same is true of prison officers — until the political and, official leaders make NIMore personal contact with those on the ground.
My dear lamented friend. Lord Stow I Till. used to lock himself in with the most dangerous criminals. so as to give himself no ulterior advantage. That was felt to be going rather far. But I have seen you on television with the Catholic wives or Derry and I know that vou have the personal 'touch to transform the atmosphere.
I am not yet aware what arrangements you are making in the Home Office among your Ministers. I hope that one of them at least will get to know some individual prisoners, as did Lord Hunt. for example. when he was Chairman of the Parole Board.
I would hope that, in any case, you would appoint one or two personal assistants, preferably from outside the Civil Service, who would he your eyes and ears in the prisons. For the first time we would have a I lome Secretary who really knew what was going on.
But the ineluctable question before you is: Are you or are you not. ready to proclaim yourself a penal reformer'? If you decline the suggestion. things will go on as floss. getting on the whole rather NN,orse. If you accept it, you have the character and prestige to make your deeds lit your words. With all my heart I wish you well.