Oral Answers to Questions — Justice – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 31 January 2012.
What steps he is taking to encourage the inclusion of peer mentoring in prisons as part of the training of prison officers.
Prison officer training aims to give officers an awareness of the benefits of peer mentoring currently provided by voluntary sector and faith organisations, such as the Shannon Trust’s toe-by-toe reading plan and the Samaritan-trained listener scheme. Our rehabilitation policy will encourage and facilitate mentoring for offenders by ex-offenders and other members of the public, as all parts of the justice system focus more on outcomes than inputs. The early payment-by-results pilots at Doncaster and Peterborough prisons both use peer mentoring, and the experience of these and all other pilots will guide future training and practice.
Does the Minister believe that the expansion of private provision in prisons and the payment-by-results scheme will lead to more peer mentoring and better prison officer training, and that rehabilitation rates will improve as a result?
Yes, but the payment-by-results scheme is not limited to private sector prisons. We are piloting it in two public sector prisons as well. The National Offender Management Service is to contribute £1.4 million to eight voluntary sector organisations to help with mentoring, and is also involved in a Europe-funded project that is assessing the relative benefits of mentoring by peers and non-peers.
Will the Minister consider the effectiveness of training when it comes to security issues? Will he look into how on earth Bilal Zaheer Ahmad, who is serving 12 years in prison and was described as
“a viper in our midst” by the judge who jailed him under the Terrorism Act 2000, managed to send a six-page letter from his Belmarsh cell that advised potential terrorists on the best way to outwit our police and security services? Will this latest lapse be investigated by the Justice Secretary?
Of course that will be investigated, as, indeed, is every security breach.
Following the tragic deaths of two teenagers at young offenders institutions in the last week, will the Minister examine the role of peer mentoring in helping people to detect those who are at risk of self-harm or suicide?
Of course our condolences go out to the families in question. However, I understand that this is the first time such a thing has happened on the under-18s estate since 2007, and the fact that there have been two tragic incidents in close succession does not mean that we should not recognise the good record that has been maintained in the intervening years. Every effort will be made to learn all the lessons from what has happened during the four different types of inquiry that will take place into each of the deaths.
I call Michael Connarty. He is not here, so I call Dave Watts.