Lord German
Main Page: Lord German (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord German's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord German (LD)
My Lords, the one thing that we can take away from this timely debate, which was well introduced by my noble friend Lady Burt, is that it has demonstrated that the Minister has an inbox full of difficult decisions. The current action to release prisoners early cannot remove all the risks inherent in this exceptional situation, but it does expose the problems, weaknesses and failures of the current justice system. The immediate need to free up prison spaces cannot be allowed to mask these failures. A top-to-toe set of reforms is needed from pre-sentencing through to licensing ending.
This debate has shown that the problems are extensive: there is a lack of meaningful activity in prisons; sentence inflation; vulnerability of prisoners to self-harm; drug abuse; poor morale in the Prison and Probation Service workforce; shortage of staff at all levels; and a lack of resource to effectively provide essential housing, skills and healthcare when leaving prison. The list goes on—in the course of this debate I have written down another seven or eight that should appear on the Minister’s action list. I want to add another: the so-called dynamic pricing of facilities offered to those seeking to train offenders within prison, which is pricing NGOs offering training out of prisons, such as Redemption Roasters at The Mount prison.
But there is great work going on, as we have heard. That needs replication and augmentation. Will the Minister, with all his experience at his elbow, agree that wholesale reform is needed, and as swiftly as possible? When will he be able to set out the actions that we need to take to resolve all these difficult issues, and will he provide a wholesale reform?
This is a massive project, which needs fixing so that the punishment needle can be moved back towards rehabilitation and reducing offending. That will produce a much more productive activity list for prisoners when they leave prison as well, but it will also save huge costs to taxpayers and make an improvement to society at large. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.