Criminal Law

Dehenna Davison Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this most important of debates. Out there, there are countless victims of some of the most serious crimes—rape victims, GBH victims, the families and loved ones of manslaughter victims. My family and I fall into that last category, as I have previously mentioned in this place. In my case, a line from Lois McMaster Bujold’s 2002 novel sticks with me:

“The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.”

It is our duty to ensure that justice is done for the victims of the most heinous crimes. For those victims and their families, it can be difficult to feel that justice can ever be served in an appropriate and proportionate way. That is why sentencing is so crucially important. I can remember sitting in court at age 14, listening intently to proceedings—if I thought I had nervous butterflies on election day, they were absolutely nothing compared with that.

In the road to recovery from a severe criminal court case, the delivery of the verdict is the first hurdle. For victims and families who do hear a guilty verdict, the second hurdle is the delivery of a sentence. When a sentence feels too lenient, it can leave a victim or family feeling lost and drifting, with justice not having been done and no real way to move on. We must always support victims by ensuring that the sentences that are delivered are proportionate and sufficiently serious.

The third hurdle to recovery is what this debate is focused on: the point at which the sentenced perpetrator is released from prison. I still remember the day that my nan saw my dad’s killer for the very first time after he was released after just 18 months, and the anger, frustration, confusion and sheer grief that flashed across her face, especially when he raised a glass to her as we drove by, which was a real clincher. This experience is shared by far too many, with victims feeling severely let down by the current automatic halfway release point.

What is the purpose of a prison sentence? There are several. The first is to protect the public from the offender. The second is to ensure that victims feel that justice has been done. A serious offender serving just half a sentence does not provide victims and victims’ families with that sense of justice. The third is to act as a deterrent for future offences, but the existing automatic halfway release gives a sense of leniency, which means that it does not necessarily act as a deterrent in the way that it should. The fourth and final purpose of a prison sentence is to provide an environment in which offenders can be rehabilitated. For serious offences, it is not perverse to assume that such rehabilitation could be a lengthy and complex process. By ending the automatic halfway release from prison, these changes will also ensure that the most serious offenders have more time with specialist support in prison to rehabilitate them and prepare them for release into the community. Of course, it is right that they will still be subject to strict conditions on their release.

In the manifesto that we were elected on with a substantial mandate, we vowed that we would introduce tougher sentencing for the worst offenders. Like other colleagues have said today, I had some reservations about moving the goalposts from an automatic halfway point to two thirds, because for some victims this may seem like it is not enough. However, I was really encouraged to hear the Minister talk about this as the first step that our Government can achieve quickly to begin to deliver on that election promise at the earliest possible opportunity. I will certainly follow the sentencing White Paper with close interest to ensure that victims are represented fully in the legislative process. I support this statutory instrument as a step towards proving to victims that we are on their side.