Oral Answers to Questions

John Pugh Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunt]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her endorsement of our policy on addressing mentally ill offenders and delivering on that very substantial element of the Bradley report. There will not be quite the same method of having a liaison diversion service at courts and in police custody suites, but we will be looking at the drug recovery pilots as the model for the future, with local assessment and referral centres that identify the appropriate place for people to get drug treatment in the community.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

16. If he will assess the extent of regional variation in the rate of custodial sentencing of offenders under the age of 17; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Crispin Blunt)]

There is regional variation in the proportion of 10 to 17-year-olds who receive a custodial sentence of between 4% and 8% of those sentenced. There are national guidelines to promote consistency in sentencing, but levels will vary for reasons such as offence seriousness, local practices and criminal justice agency relationships.

[John Pugh]

There is such a thing as good sentencing policy. What are the Government doing to spread best practice in this critical area?

[Mr Blunt]

What we want to do is to begin to transfer responsibility to local authority areas, so that they begin to appreciate the cost of custody. At the moment, youth custody is extremely expensive, but it comes as a free good to local authorities. We want to incentivise them to deliver earlier intervention to divert people away from custody and, indeed, from youth crime in the first place.