Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

My hon. Friend has made himself an authority in this area. He will know, therefore, that international experience is different from what he has described. The relationship between the level of crime and the level of incarceration differs across the world. The experience of countries such as Germany, Spain, Finland, Netherlands and Canada, and the state of New York, tends to contradict his analysis, while the experience of Florida and Denmark tends to support it. There is no clear evidence of such a simple relationship as he suggests.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

How many prisoners who come under the category of “prisoners protesting innocence” have gone way over their tariff, with the Parole Board refusing to release them because they refuse to admit that they were guilty, even though some of them may have served 25 years?

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. I do not know the precise answer and suspect that it would be difficult to get the precise data to analyse the problem. There is such a problem, not least with sex offenders, who are often reluctant to engage with the system and often protest their innocence when they are not innocent. It is a problem to get such people to engage with offender behaviour programmes. The hon. Lady is right that there is a class of prisoner who does not engage in that way, rightly or wrongly, and who presents the system with particular problems. I will follow up that matter.