Hansard

I, too, very much welcome the debate and the consensus across the chamber about reoffending. I will not reprise the figures and percentages, which have been cited. The costs of a prisoner are in the tens of thousands per annum, yet most of that is wasted funding. The prison population has been rising and, if it goes on as it has done, it is predicted to rise to 9,500 by 2019-20. The population has been rising over my entire 12 years—almost 13—in the Parliament. We must look to reduce the waste of public funding and human potential yet retain the element of punishment and, most certainly, public protection. There remains the conundrum of how to deliver those elements along with effective rehabilitation, effective early interventions, diversions from prosecution and alternatives to custody.

We have trod this path before. I take members back to February 2003, when the Justice 1 Committee—I think that Richard Simpson was there, I was a member of the committee and Jim Wallace was the Minister for Justice—held an inquiry into alternatives to custody. It is regrettable that everything that we said then is still valid now.

I even recall a proposal that local alternatives to custody should be available at the touch of the sheriff clerk’s fingertips on a computer, so that the sheriff would have up-to-date information at his or her disposal should he or she be considering options other than custody. I do not know whether that is now the case. I hope to be enlightened later in the debate.

We have talked about the social impact bond that is being piloted in Peterborough. I note that the cabinet secretary is not setting social impact bonds to the side and is prepared to consider them. I think that the Liberal Democrats should therefore be able to accept his amendment.

Programmes are, of course, already funded by a mix of central Government, local government, charitable and corporate funding. For instance, Turning Point is funded by Lloyds TSB, the Robertson Trust, the KPMG Foundation, the Tudor Trust and the lottery. That brings me to a Turning Point programme that I believe is exceptional: the 218 service in Glasgow. Some members of the Health and Sport Committee visited the service earlier this year as part of a preliminary fact-finding task on women in prison. Others went to Cornton Vale and HMP Saughton, where some of the women are held.

Many of the women are, like many prisoners, damaged. I think that it was a senior procurator fiscal who said many years ago—I paraphrase—that in prison there are the bad, the mad and the sad. Indeed, a high proportion of those who are incarcerated have mental health issues. Many have been victims themselves, which may be part of the genesis of their criminality. However, to take that on board does not mean that we are going soft on crime: we are looking to break the cycle.

The 218 service has 12 beds. The women must have a commitment to turn around their lives. Some had been in before, had failed and had come back. We had time to speak to the residents and the discussions were very enlightening. Many of the residents had been in care and, sadly, because of their offending, their children are now in care. That is another cycle that requires to be broken. I observe that that might be one of the factors that contributed—I am not saying that it is, but it might have been—to their criminality. Another contributing factor that surprised me was not drugs but alcohol. Many of the women were in there as a result of excessive abuse of alcohol. That issue was touched on in yesterday’s debate; as I said, that debate could well have been a justice debate rather than a health debate.

Across the chamber, the task is to reassure the public that diversions from prosecution, alternatives to custody and putting money into rehabilitation are not soft options. Those options must be tough and we know that if they are tough, they work. That does not always require public funding and it does not always take funding from the justice portfolio; it must take funding from education, health, housing and employment, which all have a part to play in breaking the cycle.

10:58