Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jeremy Wright and Jack Lopresti

Tuesday 13th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)]

14. What plans he has to increase public confidence in community sentences.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

The Government are determined to ensure that community sentences deliver punishment, rehabilitation and reparation. We are legislating to require courts to include a punitive element in every community order, as the public would expect, and to enable the electronic tracking of offenders.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Wright]

I am disappointed not to receive an invitation to Tamworth. None the less, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is important that we move forward with the work being done in Staffordshire and elsewhere with neighbourhood justice panels. We want to see what work can be done by and in communities to ensure that low-level offences are dealt with appropriately. The broader point about restorative justice is also right. This is an important innovation, and we can get a great deal out of it—mostly for victims, although there are reoffending benefits as well.

[Jack Lopresti]

Can my hon. Friend assure me that community orders will continue to address the problems that have caused—or at least contributed to—offending behaviour in the first place, such as drug abuse, alcoholism and mental health problems?

[Jeremy Wright]

Yes, I can. We are saying that there should be an element of punishment in every community order, unless there are exceptional circumstances, but that does not prevent a sentencer from passing whatever other measures in the order they believe appropriate for the purposes of rehabilitation. My hon. Friend is right to identify some of those, but there are of course many more. This is all about reducing reoffending. That is partly about punishment, but it is also about ensuring that someone does not go right back to the same cycle of offending.