Hansard

The decisions that we make as the bill goes through Parliament will affect our prison communities. A prison community is much more than the prisoners; the staff, wardens and support and counselling services all form part of that community, and any changes that we make with the bill must ensure that no damage is done to community cohesion in our prisons. The long-term safety of the public and public service workers must be paramount.

I am not a member of the Justice Committee, but I have listened to the debate with interest. I do not have a professional background in this area, although I served as a substitute member on Lanarkshire community justice authority and, as such, am familiar with MAPPA. I am convinced that the safety of the public is the Government’s absolute priority. Although progress has been made in recent years, the reform that the bill will bring about will ensure that, in the future, no long-term prisoner will be eligible for automatic early release after serving just two thirds of their sentence.

I believe that the bill will improve the system of early release by allowing the decisions that are taken about when and how people are released from prison to be informed by individual consideration of the prisoner, of public safety and the need for effective supervision of that prisoner. As well as ensuring that dangerous prisoners will not be released automatically, the bill provides for a mandatory period of control that will mean that all long-term prisoners who leave custody will be supervised.

As I said, the bill will improve the system of early release by allowing decisions about when and how people are released from prison to be taken in an informed manner. It has already been mentioned that section 2 should ensure that no one comes out of prison on what has been termed “cold release”.

We cannot consider the bill in isolation from previous bills and previous reports on what has been happening. I believe that, as was stated in 2008 in the report of Henry McLeish’s independent Scottish Prisons Commission, fundamental changes to the operation of the current system of early release can be taken only once prison numbers are established at a longer-term lower-trend level, so that capacity is available in the prison estate to deal with the short to medium-term impact of the changes.

We need to remember the context of the bill, which is that recorded crime has fallen for the seventh year in a row and is now at a 40-year low. The Government continues to maintain its commitment to providing 1,000 extra police officers to tackle crime in our communities.

Many members have mentioned the need to ensure that rehabilitation programmes are available and properly funded. The eventual impact on prisoner courses of the policy of ending automatic early release will be felt some years in the future, but I am sure that the cabinet secretary will work with the SPS to ensure that prisoners will have appropriate access to the support that they need in order to be rehabilitated.

My colleague Stewart Stevenson talked about sex offenders. This week, there was a programme on Radio 4 that was both informative and, at times, challenging to listen to. It was a documentary called “Inside the Sex Offenders’ Prison” that was made by the documentary film maker Rex Bloomstein. He had unprecedented access to HMP Whatton in Nottinghamshire, which is the largest sex offender prison in Europe. He sought to investigate how its inmates are rehabilitated for release. In the programme, it was noted that in Whatton no distinction is made between prisoners according to the type of sex offence that they have committed. There is an absolute focus on recognising that all the crimes have victims and on getting prisoners to take responsibility for their actions.

Lynn Saunders, who is the prison’s governor, said:

“Whatton’s a great leveller ... We’ve got everybody here you could imagine”.

She mentioned that

“vicars, teachers, airline pilots, police officers, prison officers, doctors ... people with learning disabilities, who have low IQ and complex mental health problems”

are all represented in the prison community.

Approximately half the prisoners are on determinate sentences and know their release date; the rest do not. Whatton has become known as a specialist treatment centre for rehabilitation. It offers a wide range of sex offender treatment programmes—indeed, it offers more such programmes than any other prison in the United Kingdom. The overwhelming majority of the prison’s inmates have accepted their crimes and are working to address them.

The offences that the prisoners at Whatton have been convicted of vary considerably. Dave Potter, who is one of Whatton’s most experienced facilitators, said:

“What we do at Whatton is to try and get them to understand the harm done to others, the harm done to themselves, and ways of identifying that warning sign when they get out, that they are on the path to offending again.”

As I said, it was a challenging documentary at times and not an easy listen. It addressed issues such as how the prisoners’ negative emotions of shame and guilt are a huge barrier to the treatment process and how staff must work through them to build prisoners’ self-esteem.

The documentary maker frequently addressed the paradox that Elaine Murray mentioned, which concerns the societal pressures and the pressures on us as politicians regarding how we view offenders and how they should be dealt with. We want sex offenders to be profoundly remorseful about their crimes, but rehabilitation demands that they go far beyond that in order for reoffending to be addressed and prevented.

Many members have talked about the low rate of reoffending by sex offenders. Governor Saunders of HMP Whatton noted that the rate among them is only 6 per cent compared to more than 50 per cent for the general prison population.

HMP Whatton seems to have had great success. I highlight that because rehabilitation programmes and their resourcing are a big challenge to the Government. I look forward to the cabinet secretary’s discussion of how he might approach the matter. It is vital that rehabilitation be at the core of what we do in prisons so that society as a whole can be satisfied that the bill represents progress.

I commend the bold approach that the cabinet secretary has taken. He has listened to the evidence and reacted to the stage 1 deliberations. His decision not to build a women’s prison at Greenock is testament to his absolute commitment to prison reform.