Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Richard Drax

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I will bear in mind, Mr Deputy Speaker, the fact that I need to end in time for the Minister’s reply, which I am looking forward to hearing.

The hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) has just given us an interesting vista of a militarised future for young people about which I have some serious doubts. If he wants to consider the consequences of the kind of solution that he proposes, he need look no further than the USA, which imprisons more people than anywhere else in the world per head of population, has a higher recidivism rate, has more brutality in its prisons and has a very large number of privatised prisons in which unbelievable brutality is carried out against individual prisoners. That does not work; it is not a solution.

Countries with a very low rate of reoffending are those that invest more in education in the first place, to give young people a better experience of life and better opportunities, and invest more in a prison service for young people that offers psychiatric and educational support and in which measurement is based on the educational improvements and achievements of those young people.

Members of the Justice Committee, including its Chair, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), visited Denmark and Norway to look at their experiences of dealing with young offenders. They spend far more money on it than we do and have reoffending rates of 20% and less in some cases, because they invest in those people. In this country, we are heading off in another, fairly ludicrous direction by saying that because there is a problem with the service we will hand it over to G4S, Serco and a few other companies that have a proven track record of incompetence and dishonesty, which will be sorted out by the courts.

[Richard Drax]

I did not suggest at any stage that youngsters should be brutalised in a militaristic fashion in a prison. I am suggesting that they should be taken out of prison and given hope and a structure that gives them a chance in life that otherwise they would not get.