Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill (Second sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateRob Butler
Main Page: Rob Butler (Conservative - Aylesbury)Department Debates - View all Rob Butler's debates with the Home Office
(4 years, 2 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
Mr Dawson, in evidence this morning, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation said that many terrorist offenders often come from a stable family background. Does that not undermine the typical view that we have of rehabilitation—that having a job, a home and a family are necessary to prevent reoffending? In fact, are terrorism and terrorism offences not driven by ideology? The rules are different.
Peter Dawson: I think I would say the reverse, actually. As a parent, I think stable homes with good parents sometimes have very difficult teenagers and people grow up in a very chaotic way, often—
Q
Peter Dawson: But I think it is the case. I do not think a stable home protects someone from the ideology, but for someone coming out of prison, particularly after a long sentence, a stable home and relationships with people who have kept faith with you and who have belief in your future are absolutely the things that help someone as a mature person. This goes back to the issue of maturity. For a 35-year-old, those relationships are completely different from the relationships that they would have experienced when they were 18. I just think that that continuity, and the willingness of people to continue to provide hope for a future, is absolutely crucial to rehabilitation. It is not a protection against ideology in a teenager, but it is a protective factor for rehabilitation.
Q
Peter Dawson: Yes, there were. I worked in local prisons and in a female prison. Local prisons of course do hold terrorist offenders. They hold them in the early stages of their sentence, when they are often at their most—well, “disruptive” may not be the word, but when they are coming to terms with what has happened to them.
Q
Peter Dawson: I am not sure that I would seek to draw any conclusions. People often behave differently as prisoners. I do not underestimate at all the difficulty of making a risk assessment based on the way someone has behaved in prison, compared with how they might behave in the community. It is not an easy thing and not a certain science. But what I would say is that if you want people to behave in a civilised, law-abiding way when they leave prison, the way you treat them in prison is absolutely critical. You must provide a model that people can follow and that they see as fair. If we do not do that, the chances of change are radically diminished.
Q
“New subsection (5) establishes that statements or physiological reactions of the offender in polygraph sessions cannot be used as evidence in proceedings for an offence against the released person.”
Does that provide you with the comfort you were seeking?
Les Allamby: Yet again, it provides me with a very limited measure of reassurance. It is absolutely right that you should not be able to take someone back to court to suggest a new offence has been committed on the basis of the polygraph, so that provides a measure of reassurance.
But I am mindful that if, for example, you are released on licence and you fail a polygraph test, it can be used to revoke your licence and place you back in prison. That is a pretty severe consequence for technology that has not been piloted. The reassurance is welcome in those terms, but you have to understand where else the ramifications of—