Hansard

I welcome both the Scottish Government’s recent consultation and this afternoon’s debate on redesigning the community justice system. That matters not only because more and more offenders are being punished within the community but because it relates directly to Scotland’s eight community justice authorities, the sole purpose of which is to reduce reoffending in Scotland.

As a number of members have noted, reoffending is a both worrying and costly problem in Scotland. Margaret Mitchell was right to reflect that in her amendment, which I support. Why is it worrying? It is worrying because nearly one in three offenders is reconvicted within a year. Why is it costly? Despite spending £128 million annually in an attempt to reduce reoffending, the Scottish Government estimates its economic and social cost to be around £3 billion a year.

I am pleased that the Scottish Government accepts that reform is necessary. The Audit Scotland report, to which many members have referred, concluded that the way in which CJAs were set up, along with inflexible funding, have “significantly limited their effectiveness.” The report was remarkably blunt and concluded that CJAs

“have made little progress with reducing reoffending.”

Identified shortcomings include a lack of incentive to reduce reoffending, complex management arrangements, a short-term approach to funding and a lack of assessment of CJA performance. Those are serious criticisms.

The Scottish Government has put forward three proposals for reform, each of which has advantages and disadvantages. Like the Government, I, too, will wait for the consultation responses before indicating a preferred option. However, I would like to make three general observations.

First, the priority of any future model must be to direct resources to what works in reducing reoffending. As the Audit Scotland report notes:

“There is a mismatch between what is currently being delivered and what is known to be effective.”

That is damning, so we need to ensure that the new model is much more clearly focused.

Secondly, I suggest that the Scottish Government must learn from its mistakes in driving through the reform of the police service despite justified criticism. It must seek to carry all the relevant agencies and, I would suggest, the Opposition parties, with it in the process. I welcome the Government’s apparent willingness to take time to get this right. It is helpful that this debate has been called before any firm decision has been made.

Thirdly, I suggest that the Government should not restrict itself to the three options proposed for reform. Perhaps in summing up the minister will indicate whether the Government has considered more radical reform. For example, there is clearly room for improvement in throughcare. Christine Grahame, Colin Keir, Graeme Pearson and Alison McInnes all made what I thought were helpful and reflective contributions in that respect. Has consideration been given to the creation of one body with overall responsibility for reducing reoffending both inside and outside prison?

It would be remiss of me not to look back at the creation of the system that we are debating today. I was convener of the Justice 2 Committee, which considered community justice authorities back in November 2005. My party was the only party in this chamber to vote against the bill that introduced them. We did so for two reasons.

First, we took the view that insufficient time had been afforded to assess the regime that CJAs replaced, which had been established in 2002. By 2005, it was already proving to be useful in effectively co-ordinating activity and co-operation between agencies. My party worried about unnecessary bureaucracy. Eight years down the road, we are debating whether CJAs are fit for purpose.

Back in 2005, the view was taken—and has been embraced by the Scottish National Party—that because reoffending rates were slightly lower for those who were given community sentences than they were for those who were given custodial sentences, more offenders should be dealt with in the community.

My party has no principled objection to robust community sentences, which are cheaper and can be more effective than a prison sentence for some crimes, but we do not support the use of community sentences as a means of emptying our prisons of violent and dangerous individuals who should be locked up for the protection of the law-abiding majority. We fundamentally disagree with the SNP’s analysis that, because reoffending is lower with community sentences, more and more offenders should be spared prison. That is like saying that, because lambs in fields do not attack people, we should put more lions into fields—it is perverse logic. It is not the community element that reduces reoffending; it is simply that less serious offenders are given community sentences, so the risk of reoffending is lower.

The second reason why my party opposed the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Act 2005 was that it introduced home detention curfews and did so under the much-discredited automatic early release regime. I lodged amendments to try to end that practice, but I am afraid that the Labour and SNP members of the committee voted against them.

As I was looking back at the passage of the 2005 act, I came across a statement by a substitute member of the committee, who agreed with my approach on automatic early release. He told me:

“I have a great deal of sympathy with what you are trying to achieve”.

He added:

“We would all agree that we wish that we were not where we are. We are not in the chamber so, to some extent, who did what and when does not matter. What matters is what we are going to do about it. Lawyers are all aware of the differences: 50 per cent for those serving under four years and two thirds for those serving more than that. The public, however, are baffled; they simply think that whether the sentence is six months, two years or 12 years, what you see should be what you get.”—[Official Report, Justice 2 Committee, 27 September 2005; c 1688.]

I wonder whether the Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Kenny MacAskill, still stands by the comments that he made eight years ago.

16:42