Hansard

In the policy memorandum to the Community Justice (Scotland) Bill, the Scottish Government commits itself to reducing reoffending. It says:

“Offending is a complex problem and there are well established links between persistent offending and poverty, homelessness, addiction and mental illness. Re-offending creates victims, damages communities and wastes potential”.

It goes on to talk about the complex needs of offenders and says:

“Successful delivery of better outcomes for victims, offenders and communities relies therefore on a wide partnership of agencies and services working together”.

Much mention has been made of the commission on women offenders and the Audit Scotland report. The Justice Committee focused on whether the proposal in the bill was the transformational change that both bodies envisaged. Mention has also been made of how long the current arrangements have been in place—they have been in place since 2007, and the question whether, given that fact, it is premature to consider reform has been raised.

This was not a very academic approach, but I spoke to a senior social work professional and asked about their community justice authority. The person I spoke to said, “They top-slice our budget and I have to go to two meetings a year.” That evidence might be crude, but it suggests that the CJAs were never fully embedded in the landscape and, indeed, passed many by unnoticed.

Gil Paterson and Alison McInnes both said that it is important to recognise that people have been meaningfully engaged in community justice authorities, although there has been geographic variation. The proposals were never meant to undervalue the work that has taken place.

The 2012 reports talk about the problems, the structures, the numbers of bodies involved and the accountability and funding mechanisms. They say that those complex arrangements were inhibiting the potential to reduce offending. The Justice Committee accepts that improvements to the community justice structures and arrangements are needed. Therefore, the question is whether the bill is the right vehicle to make those improvements.

We have little evidence to support the current model. Initially, I said that we heard little enthusiasm for it—full stop; actually, we had a muted response. Given that 340 folk attended meetings and 66 consultation responses were received, it is clear that there is interest in the debate around having strong national leadership with local flexibility, and that the matter is a compelling one for communities.

I was keen that we should hear from rural practitioners—and we did. We heard that under the current models, one of the national offender programmes was inoperable in the Western Isles, because it did not have the aggregate number of personnel involved. That flags up potential issues around the question of strategic commissioning and adopting a single approach.

I like local—I thought that all of us did. We should not be scared of local. As Nigel Don said, very clear geographic areas are already set out, and we want to see local decision making flourish—at least, I do.

Greater clarity about the relationship between national and local and the balance of responsibilities—as well as how it is all going to work in practice—are very important. There are things on the horizon that will shape that. The Scottish Government’s move to more community-based disposals and the presumption against short sentences have been mentioned. I am hugely supportive of those measures, and of another piece of legislation that we dealt with that ended automatic and unconditional early release. The cabinet secretary provided me with assurances in relation to tailored support for individuals in such cases. How the Community Justice (Scotland) Bill will work is crucial to the whole tapestry of measures.

The Scottish Prison Service’s role in throughcare and aftercare has been mentioned, as was the position of the third sector. There could be tensions there. Does it follow that the Scottish Prison Service would deliver that care?

We must commend the very good work that is going on, including cross-border working. The policy memorandum mentions the Christie commission—that approach is the one that we want to see taken with everything. On the definition of community justice, the Christie commission mentions prevention and early intervention, but I was reassured by what I heard from the minister earlier. On that and on a number of other matters, the minister has indicated a willingness to listen.

I go back to the idea of a flowchart, diagram or whatever to understand how many of all those really good initiatives dovetail together. There is a lot of work going on—and a myriad of acronyms—and we need to understand how they work together. I will not use the word that everybody else has been using; I will use the word “horizon”, because I think that we need to look forward. There is a lot of work still to be done.

I want to pick up on something that was said about measurement. I do not want to offend the bean counters, although I fear that I am going to. If measurement is simply going to be about statistics, rather than there being a focus on the individual, we will not measure real success: taking an offender whose chaotic lifestyle meant that it was a challenge for them to get out of bed and getting them to turn up in the morning, go to an interview, secure a job and maintain it. I am sure that the minister will want to pick up on that; this is about individuals, and I am keen to hear more about the access to universal services and removal of barriers that he mentioned.

Housing, in which I have a keen interest, has been mentioned many times. When someone leaves prison, it should not be a surprise, so their accommodation needs some forethought. If all the commendable collaborative work across the sectors that we have heard about is genuinely taking place, I hope that we can solve the accommodation issue, because it is absolutely pivotal.

On whether we can find an alternative to the word “offenders”, I thought that the minister was making an early bid when—if I noted him correctly—he twice used the term “people with convictions”. What would the term be for people who have a single conviction? Would it be “people with conviction”? I do not know, but I hope that we all have conviction.

I like the direction of travel. The position of the Green and independent group is that we will support the bill.