Official Report search · Parliament Workbench

Chamber

Meeting of the Parliament 02 May 2013

02 May 2013 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

Community Justice System

Marra, Jenny Lab North East Scotland Watch on SPTV

I reiterate what other members have said about the timing of today’s debate. Two days after the closure of the consultation is perhaps a little too soon to debate the redesign of the community justice system properly, because expert opinion on the matter is crucial. Under any restructuring of the system, the difference will be made by those who deliver services in our communities—those who work day in, day out with some of the most vulnerable members of our society. Those people who do the work know how to get the results, so it is important that we inform ourselves of their opinions.

If we are to transform lives, to drive down the cost of reoffending and to avoid incarceration rates growing in the way that has been predicted, we must build a system that is more integrated than ever before with health, social work and education systems, not least in our poorest communities.

The economic and social cost of reoffending cannot be overestimated, nor can it be teased apart from the wider social problems that are faced in our most deprived areas. It is not coincidence that 40 per cent of prisoners come from the very poorest communities of Scotland. We can be in no doubt that the staggering £3 billion cost of reoffending will affect those areas the most.

To tackle reoffending is to build a system that creates not just meaningful second chances, but meaningful first chances. To ask how we tackle reoffending is to ask why the first person whom a released prisoner meets outside the prison gates is the same drug dealer who helped them end up in jail in the first place. To ask how we tackle reoffending is also to ask how we overcome childhoods that have been blighted by the trauma of neglect, abuse and substance misuse; how we build an education system that empowers every child with the ability to learn not just the facts of the world around them, but how they can shape their own world; and how we build a health service that not only treats illness and addiction but teaches us how to make healthy choices. That is the scale of the challenge that we face, and it is Labour’s starting point in this debate.

We need change that is expert led, integrated and driven by innovation in every aspect of our public services. So, when we are asked to debate the restructuring of the community justice authorities without the benefit of the evidence, we are not satisfied that that is the best approach, and neither are the CJAs themselves. As Mary Fee says, there is disquiet among the community justice authorities about the timing of this debate. In response to the Government’s motion, on which we will vote at decision time today, Howard Llewellyn, the chief officer of Tayside community justice authority, says:

“It does not seem unreasonable to infer from the absence of an expressed commitment in the motion by the Cab Sec to continue to work with CJAs as well as the other partners referred to that there is no intention to do so and that therefore the CJAs are ‘dead’.”

Search Hansard contributions

Meeting of the Parliament 02 May 2013

In the same item of business