Archer offers advice on penal reform

Lord Archer, who once was cheered to the rafters by a baying Tory party conference for inviting Michael Howard to "stand and deliver" on law and order, will today deliver a thoughtful plea for penal reform.

In his speech to a conference at the Randolf Hotel in Oxford, organised by the Howard League for Penal Reform, Lord Archer says that after two years of incarceration he feels in a position to offer the government and the opposition "one or two thoughts" for their consideration.

In the speech, released last night by Lord Archer, the former inmate admits that one of his detailed reforms in the way the prison system deals with drugs, categorises prisoners and tackles illiteracy, will be seen as draconian but says that he could never be called a "bleeding heart liberal".

Nevertheless, he praises the Howard League and other penal reformers for having the courage to "face the wrath of the public, and the ridicule of the tabloid press".

He claims that he has supported such "do-gooders" and "loony lefties" ever since 1971 when they helped him with a constituent who was incarcerated in a Turkish jail for smoking marijuana in his hotel room.

The closely argued programme for penal reform is in marked contrast to the attack on the home secretary, David Blunkett, and the former director-general of the prison service, Martin Narey, that he had been expected to make for their treatment of him during his sentence, or his plans to sue them over it.

Indeed Lord Archer says he does not intend to become a prison reformer and does not consider the legal or prison system unjust or punitive.

Instead he quotes a Guardian article on the scale of prison illiteracy and suggests that an intensive 12-week reading and writing course should be introduced with a compulsory test at the end of the course. "The prisoner would have to pass before they could be considered for any other job, or even more draconian, early release," he says.

He also suggests that many more prisoners would use the full-time education opportunities inside prison if they were paid the same weekly wage - £12 - as those who do prison jobs, instead of the current £4 to £5 a week.

He also complains that he was taken to Belmarsh high security prison, where murderers, terrorists and rapists are imprisoned, during the first three weeks of his sentence before he was categorised as a prisoner suitable for an open prison. He says he came across several inmates convicted of traffic offences who were made to live with professional criminals for up to a month.

"A month is a very long period of time when you are locked up in a cell with two other prisoners for 22 hours a day ... First-time offenders should not begin their prison life among the professors of crime." Instead, he says, defendants should be categorised during their trial.

His third suggestion concerns drugs in prison - a subject on which he admits he was "naive" before going inside. He argues that there is no distinction in prison punishment for an inmate caught smoking marijuana at the weekend and someone who is found injecting himself daily with heroin.

Last night the prison service said that following a recent human rights ruling a distinction was now made between punishment for heroin and cannabis possession in prisons. A spokesman said prisoners were categorised as soon as possible and you were as likely to meet a murderer nearing the end of his sentence in an open prison as a high security one.

Frances Crook, director of the Howard League, said she supported many of the peer's ideas but disagreed with his proposal that illiterate inmates should be denied parole.

She said: "You can't force them [prisoners] to learn. I think this must be part of Lord Archer's authoritarian nature."

Mark Leech, the editor of the Prisons Handbook, called Lord Archer's illiteracy idea "nonsense".

"It's a typically Tory kind of policy and I wish he would research his subject before speaking at a conference like this," Mr Leech said.

However both Ms Crook and Mr Leech backed Lord Archer's proposals on cannabis and equalising wages for prison workers.