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170 Values and Civil and Political Liberties The dreadful state of prisons and the need for reconsidering the Prison Rules has much concerned the present government, with the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Scottish Prison Service pursuing an enlightened penal policy well ahead of the Home Office. Doubtless, because of risks of yet more European Commission on Human Rights proceedings and further findings by the Commission that provisions of the Prison Rules are contrary to the Convention, Prison Rules and Prison Standing Orders in England and Wales have, after much internal heart-searching by departmental and other committees, been revised to remove antiquated notions of military discipline, such as disciplinary offences should prisoners make groundless complaints or ventilate their complaints before using official channels. It here needs remembering that Home Office civil servants cannot push through a reform or even give it effect unless the ethos of the Prison Service alters and prison officers are professionalised. Apart from Government pressures to that end, far more public money has recently been spent to provide single-cell accommodation and sanitary facilities, while the need to detain juveniles separately from adults is beginning to be met. Should anticipated reforms materialise, things ought to improve. "And about time too," as Alice would say. It is much to the credit of the present administration that they appointed the last Hamlyn Lecturer, Lord Justice Woolf, to survey the state of prisons while inquiring into the Strangeways Prison riot and that they also appointed the outspoken Judge Stephen Tumim as Chief Inspector of Prisons. In retrospect, fair observers will recognise that more liberalisation and improvement of the prison system will have been effected since 1983 than has been achieved by any other modern British government. Leaving aside the earlier failures by successive governments to provide resources when faced with demands
An Evaluation of Governments' Records 171 for expenditure on more popular causes than improved penal accommodation, overcrowding in prisons has not been caused by the judges or by Governments, who cannot say when prisoners are due to be lodged that "there are no vacancies." The large number of persons in prison arises from the sentencing powers of Magistrates' Courts, which handle the vast bulk of criminal offences. Apart from well-rehearsed arguments for more generous parole provision and substitution of novel forms of supervision in lieu of imprisonment, such as electronic tagging and new forms of community service, a major cause of over-full prisons has been decisions by Justices of the Peace (43.8 per cent, of whom in 1988 were women, generally representative of community attitudes about protecting the public). Justices remand unconvicted persons in custody rather than on bail, if they consider that an accused person has no suitable accommodation. If prisons are not always to be full, either there must be more bail hostels or social workers to find suitable supervised accommodation, or new legislation must make bail mandatory in nearly all cases. The most drastic alternative would be for professionally trained judges to take over such work, despite the cost and outcry that would be caused by reducing the scope of Justices' historic participation in the administration of justice. Another method of reducing the prison population on remand has recently been introduced by Guidelines for the Police, indicating that they should caution offenders, old and young alike, more frequently, rather than prosecuting. Unfortunately, these Guidelines do not require Chief Constables to provide ethnic statistics of those cautioned and those prosecuted. Once ethnic statistics become available, anomalies become obvious. For example, 12 per cent, of male prisoners were non-white, as were 21 per cent, of female prisoners, whereas the ethnic minorities were at that
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THE AMLY LECTURES Forty-second seri
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THE HAMLYN LECTURES FORTY-SECOND SE
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THE UNITED KINGDOM AND HUMAN RIGHTS
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CONTENTS The Hamlyn Lectures vii Th
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viii The Hamlyn Lectures 1959 Judge
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x The Hamlyn Lectures 1985 Law and
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xii The Hamlyn Trust London, Leeds,
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xiv The Hamlyn Legacy Torquay. Will
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xvi The Hamlyn Legacy grandfather.
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xviii The Hamlyn Legacy realising a
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xx The Hamlyn Legacy and imaginativ
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2 The United Kingdom and Human Righ
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10 The United Kingdom and Human Rig
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2. Human Rights, Values, Choice and
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52 Human Rights, Values and Choice
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3. Constitutions, Values and Civil
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108 Values and Civil and Political
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220 People and Education for Human
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234 Education—cont. National Curr
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236 Relativism—cont. descriptive,
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Protection of the Public— A New C
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