Ed Davey
Main Page: Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat - Kingston and Surbiton)Department Debates - View all Ed Davey's debates with the Ministry of Justice
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
In the spirit of developing a cross-party consensus on prisons, I welcome the Government’s apparent conversion yesterday to the Liberal Democrat policy of axing the vast majority of prison sentences of under a year. When will the policy be implemented? Has the prison building plan that the Minister announced yesterday to the Justice Committee factored in such a policy change?
Rory Stewart
The argument that I was making yesterday is that the recent evidence from our Department shows very clearly that people sentenced to short prison terms are more likely to reoffend than somebody with a community sentence—in other words, they pose a greater threat to the public at the moment of release. They also pose a destabilising factor in prisons: they are disproportionately connected to drugs and violence.
At the same time, as has been pointed out, we have an obligation to protect the public and be careful about who exactly we are talking about within this category. An enormous amount more discussion needs to take place. I would be very happy to sit down with the right hon. Gentleman to discuss ideas. This is not an easy one to resolve, but the data is driving us in a particular direction.