Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Earl Attlee Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with much of what noble Lords have said in this debate but I intend to say something new. I look forward to debating the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Brooke; we have talked about them much in the past.

We know from the chief inspector’s reports and our debates that our prison system is absolutely hopeless at preventing minor offenders reoffending. However, few noble Lords have suggested any alternatives to the current situation. The Centre for Social Justice has proposed a new custodial sentence for the adult criminal courts: an intensive control and rehabilitation order. I support this and pay tribute to the work of my noble friend Lady Sater on the project.

The order is wider in scope than any pre-existing community-based order and is applicable to a cohort of individuals who would otherwise have served a sentence of immediate custody within the secure estate. To allow for this to happen, electronic monitoring, together with curfew requirements, would be used to achieve the restraint of liberty necessary to satisfy the punitive element of the sentence while offering sufficient protection for the public. At the same time, and because of the environment in which it is served, the sentence would enable those candidates deemed eligible to maintain stabilising relationships and engage in rehabilitative activities and requirements in the community.

Those sentenced to an ICRO would attend periodic reviews before the court—in the form of a problem-solving court—to monitor progress and enable the court to make the necessary adjustments to the condition of the order as the sentence progresses. An ICRO would be appropriate when a suspended sentence order would have an insufficient punitive or rehabilitative effect, and normally limited to cases involving no more than three years of custody. Crucially, the court must be satisfied that the defendant has demonstrated sufficient will to comply with the conditions of the sentence. I urge noble Lords to study the CSJ’s proposals.

I have already made my own proposals to your Lordships for drastic reform of the Prison Service in respect of prolific minor offenders; I recently inflicted on your Lordships an electronic copy of them, which I am sure was welcome. I propose this new sentence: to be detained for training at Her Majesty’s pleasure, or DFT. It would take over when the ICRO is not appropriate, and will be extremely controversial because it does not use the secure estate and makes extensive use of ROTL. DFT has much more compulsion—or strong incentives, at least—built into it, and release is dependent on reaching the required levels of education, training and conduct rather than having served a certain length of time inside a prison with no discernible improvement. Of course, there would have to be a legal cap on the length of time that could be served.

The ICRO and DFT fit closely together and would have the effect of avoiding using prison when it is so obviously useless for the intended cohort. In Committee, I will move suitable amendments to debate DFT. I have no intention of asking your Lordships to agree to them; rather, I hope that we can test whether my proposals are fit for purpose. I therefore hope that some noble Lords—or their advisers—will read my proposals.