Hansard

I welcome the opportunity to sum up what has been an important debate that was led very ably by Alison McInnes on behalf of the Liberal Democrats. The debate has been quite consensual. There can be little doubt that we are dealing with a highly important subject. Tackling reoffending is about offering second chances and it is clear that members on all sides think that we are not offering enough of those second chances to the people who need them.

A quick glance at the statistics on reoffending that Alison McInnes highlighted is enough to make the eyes water. The simple fact is that most people who are convicted in a Scottish court have offended before and 62 per cent of Scottish prisoners will reoffend within two years of their release from prison. That is a deeply unhelpful statistic when we consider that Scotland’s prison population has increased by more than 25 per cent in the past decade.

Even more concerning is the fact that more than two thirds of the 9,372 people who received a prison sentence in 2009-10 already had five or more previous convictions. There is clearly a problem there and the Government is simply not getting a grip on it. “An overview of Scotland’s criminal justice system”, a report published last year by Audit Scotland, stated:

“Reoffending is a continuing problem in Scotland. There has been little progress towards the Scottish Government’s national indicator to reduce reconviction rates, which have fallen by less than one per cent in the last three years.”

The cabinet secretary and Mary Fee concentrated on talking about families. Each statistic represents not just a reoffender, but a personal tragedy for friends, family and other concerned individuals. The reoffender might have been brought up in a turbulent environment, might not have been able to enjoy the same educational opportunities as the rest of us, or might have had problematic drug addictions, which Lewis Macdonald addressed.

There are societal consequences from failing to tackle reoffending effectively. Just ask the 825,000 victims of criminal activity in Scotland in 2009-10, many of whom were victims at the hands of reoffenders. Many members, including Christine Grahame, mentioned the cost to society. Although there are no estimates of the cost to the Scottish criminal justice system, the Audit Scotland report highlights UK Government research, which estimates that every prisoner who reoffends costs the taxpayer around £80,000. Interestingly, research commissioned by the Wise Group, a social enterprise that helps unemployed people to move into employment, established that, by factoring in the costs of welfare payments, unemployment benefits and the cost to the criminal justice system, moving one unemployed reoffender into employment could deliver savings to Scotland of £940,000 over a five-year period.

Graeme Pearson mentioned how a reduction in reoffending would deliver significant savings to the criminal justice system. It would result in fewer cases heading into the in-trays of fiscals throughout the country, fewer court cases and fewer recipients of legal aid. A reduction in the case load for fiscals should be a pressing concern for the cabinet secretary in light of the Procurators Fiscal Society’s written submission to the Justice Committee. It revealed that fiscals had 14,000 unmarked cases in October, which was an increase of 7,000 cases in just six months. There would also be a reduction in the costs to the courts and the police of supporting the courts system.

The Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Act 2005 established Scotland’s eight community justice authorities while we were in government. The intention behind the CJAs was to enable a more co-ordinated approach to the delivery of offender services and to target those services towards the reduction of reoffending.

We established both a framework to tackle reoffending and some outstanding projects, such as the Women in Focus service in the south-west of Scotland, which I will touch on later. Sadly, however, no progress has been made and the Government failed to achieve its own national indicator on reducing reconviction rates.

I have spoken of the reasons why we require a new approach to prison rehabilitation in order to reduce reoffending rates in Scotland, and Audit Scotland has stated that there needs to be significant improvement in how services for offenders are delivered throughout the country. As with everything in life, there is no silver bullet, as David McLetchie, Dennis Robertson and others have mentioned, but social impact bonds present an attractive option for policy makers, and the evidence from the pilot in Peterborough seems encouraging, as Roderick Campbell mentioned.

Despite not operating on the basis of a social impact bond, the Women in Focus service, which is being delivered across the south-west of Scotland by Barnardo’s Scotland, is a useful illustration of how such a model could work here. The service works with women offenders who are serving community-based orders in Ayrshire and Dumfries and Galloway to reduce their levels of reoffending and reconviction, reduce the number of community-based orders and help the women to make positive contributions to their local communities.

The service was commissioned following a highly successful pilot in Ayrshire, the outcomes from which showed that the number of successfully completed community orders among women engaging with the service more than doubled, with significantly lower reoffending levels. Early indicators show that the service is achieving similar results to those the pilot achieved.

Driving down levels of reoffending in Scotland is in all our best interests. As a party, we wish to engage with the Government on the issue, which is why we suggested this debate. To be successful at reducing reoffending, we need to know what does and does not work and what is and is not cost-effective. Audit Scotland states:

“Performance information on both the level of reoffending and the effectiveness of services to reduce offending is limited and inconsistent.”

We need to remedy that and I would be keen to discuss with the cabinet secretary how the Government will assess the effectiveness of the preventative spend measures that he plans to explore, as detailed in his amendment.

As my colleague Alison McInnes mentioned, it is a matter of regret that the Government does not fully support our motion. We appreciate that this has been a consensual debate and will take the cabinet secretary’s words in good faith. However, we are disappointed: the amendment welcomes the fact that the Scottish Government will “explore the potential” of social impact bonds, but we would rather see a pilot set up.

Thank you for this opportunity, Presiding Officer, and I look forward to the rest of the chamber supporting our motion at the end of the day.