Prison Capacity

Rob Butler Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Alex Chalk]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and I remember when IPPs came in; they were created by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. I was a barrister at the time and I remember that under the legislation we were required effectively to apply for them and that judges were required to hand them down. There has been an understanding, in the intervening 20 years, that they have not operated as they should. They have created a sense of total despair, hopelessness and, most importantly of all, injustice.

How we deal with this issue is difficult in circumstances where the Parole Board has judged that people remain a danger to society. That is the issue. There is no easy solution where we say simply, “Let people out”, because we know in doing so that they could commit crimes and harm our fellow citizens. So we cannot do that, but what we will do is take every step, including providing additional psychological support so that individuals can prepare for parole hearings, and we will look at the issue of licences. We will not compromise on public safety, but we will do everything we can to scrub out the stain of those misguided sentences.

[Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)]

The success of our prisons is not about having the highest possible number of prisoners in them; it is surely about prison rehabilitating offenders so that there are fewer victims of crime in the future. I strongly welcome the measures that the Lord Chancellor has announced today, especially on not putting people in prison who do not need to be in prison. Does he agree that we can cut crime substantially with much more effective use of technology, including the GPS tags that he mentioned, creating almost a virtual prison? That will be justice for the digital age under this party rather than for the Victorian era, which the Labour party seems to prefer.

[Alex Chalk]

My hon. Friend speaks clearly and persuasively, with the benefit of great experience as a magistrate. In my experience, magistrates courts overwhelmingly want to ensure, of course, that the punishment fits the crime, but they also want to ensure that the individual is taken away from the path of crime and ultimately rehabilitated. So of course my hon. Friend is right. Other countries have used technology very effectively. Where there are lessons to learn, we should learn them, but we will not compromise on ensuring that there is punishment. We can just deliver punishment with technology even more effectively.