Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill
The next item of business is a debate on motion S2M-3436, in the name of Cathy Jamieson, that the Parliament agrees that the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill be passed.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to open this debate, which takes place at a time when we are engaged in the widest-ranging reform of Scotland's criminal justice service in more than 50 years. The Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill is part of that wide-ranging reform and we will introduce further legislation in due course.
Our reforms will set criminal justice on a different path. As many members said, it is a path that we need to be on: a path that prevents and diverts, that reduces offending and reoffending and that challenges offenders, whether they are young or old, to return to a law-abiding lifestyle. It is a path where offenders are managed in the community and in custody by strong services and where the tasks and goals that those services share are more important than the pressures that divide them. It is a path where the drive to reduce reoffending is common to all; where working in partnership is an operational reality and not just an aspiration; and where effective offender management is underpinned by effective risk management. It is a path whereby we reduce reoffending and restore public confidence in our justice system.
Last year's consultation on reducing reoffending confirmed just how far we must push our reforms. It told us that the current way of doing things is not working. It told us that the system is overburdened and fragmented; that too many people are working in silos without seeing the bigger picture; that there are too many competing priorities and that there is not enough communication and not enough sharing of information. We saw a picture of mistrust between agencies instead of openness and co-operation and a picture of geographical difficulties and boundaries that prevent a more integrated approach to managing offenders.
We listened carefully to the consultation and the bill was shaped by it. The Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill will transform how we manage sentenced offenders, not by quick, administrative fixes but by end-to-end improvements that will get to grips with reoffending. The new community justice authorities are the cornerstone of those improvements. They will bring together local authorities, the Scottish Prison Service and other key agencies to work together in local partnerships and deliver the right services. They will make sure that services are in the right place at the right time; they will improve how we manage offenders both in the community and back into the community; and they will do so with the aim of reducing the likelihood of reoffending. They will also try to join up the range of services that bring law and order to what are sometimes chaotic lives.
The bill is not just about changing structures. We will have a new national advisory body that will provide leadership and much-needed national direction. The bill also contains a number of other important provisions. It will introduce home detention curfews to Scotland. Under strict curfew and subject to electronic monitoring, some of our lowest-risk offenders will be able to serve the last part of their sentence in the community. That will lead to better sentence management, a better grip on the reintegration of people into communities and better protection. We all know that if we ensure that people have the support of family, the opportunity to take up education or employment and the correct supervision to deal with things such as addiction, we will have a better chance of succeeding.
When the minister gave evidence on home detention curfews to the Justice 2 Committee she was questioned closely not only on the standard and voluntary conditions that might be applied, but on the possibility of additional mandatory conditions. In committee, she did not appear to be convinced of that approach. Has the minister rethought that? The committee felt quite strongly that it would be important for the success of home detention curfews to have additional mandatory conditions.
We recognise that there are many people who would be subject to home detention curfews who would require particular forms of supervision or access to particular support services. It is important that we deal with that on a case-by-case basis rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach. That is why I did not favour specific additional conditions that would apply to everyone on a scheme. The important point is that a proper risk and needs assessment has to be done in each case, before anyone is released to home detention curfew.
It is worth mentioning the provision on sex offenders, because I know that members and their communities are particularly concerned about that. Sex offenders and violent offenders often pose the greatest risk. The new powers will ensure that local authorities, the Scottish Prison Service and the police are able to monitor sex offenders more tightly and effectively in the community. Through our amendment, the bill introduces a new post-release supervision regime for all short-term sex offenders who are sentenced to prison for six months or more. Communities will welcome that because it is about better management of those offenders and it offers them better protection.
The bill covers some areas that might not have had as high a profile during its passage. One of those areas is the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. It is worth acknowledging that the bill introduces one more way to discourage offending and to encourage offenders to face up to their crimes. That is absolutely central to everything that we do. We want people to take responsibility for their actions and the bill will enable the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority to recover the cost of compensation from offenders and pay it out to the victims of their crime.
Before I finish, I want to acknowledge the hard work of everyone involved in taking the bill through Parliament. I particularly offer my thanks to the bill team; to the members of the Justice 2 Committee for their careful consideration of a range of quite difficult issues; to the committee clerks for their solid work behind the scenes; and to each of the many organisations and individuals that fed in their much welcomed views during the consultation and throughout the bill's passage through the committee stages. I add particular thanks to Hugh Henry who worked so diligently at committee stage and to deal with the amendments today. As members can hear, I will be lucky to get to the end of today without my voice giving out completely, so I am particularly grateful to him for that.
I emphasise that while we were taking evidence and listening to people, we took serious account of all the views that people gave. We took them on board, then revised and improved on the original proposals. Of course, that is how the Parliament and its committee system are designed to operate.
I genuinely believe that the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill sets us upon the different path that I spoke about earlier. We have built a huge amount of consensus around a way forward. There are challenges for everyone out there to put into practice the things that they told us that they wanted to do, and for them to deliver the kind of criminal justice system that many of us have long sought and long worked for. It signals a new era for offender management in Scotland, where the common cause of reducing re-offending brings services together in the pursuit of excellence, whether sentences are in the community or in custody. In so doing, the bill will go some way towards restoring public confidence and making Scotland a safer place.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees that the Management of Offenders etc. (Scotland) Bill be passed.
We, too, are happy to commend the bill to the Parliament. We pay tribute to all those, including the minister, involved in bringing the bill forward. We accept that the bill will not provide an overarching solution to Scotland's criminal justice problems, but it will address the variety of areas that the minister was correct to mention.
We recognise that there is no silver bullet to address the many problems that communities face. Despite the mantras that may be chanted by different political parties, the myriad problems require a multitude of solutions that will each need to be considered. On other days, other bills will be introduced that we might welcome or take issue with, but the bill that faces us today—the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill—is one that we are happy to support.
I echo the minister's comments on criminal justice authorities, which will ensure best practice. We recognise that best practice has not always happened and that there have been faults. Those may have been systemic or structural or, sometimes, they may have occurred simply because personality issues have arisen. In the best circumstances, perhaps criminal justice authorities would never be required, but the fact is that the existing failings and flaws need to be addressed.
We know that concerns about the proposed criminal justice authorities were expressed not only by island authorities, as Mr Wallace mentioned during the stage 3 debate, but by mainland authorities. However, provided that the Executive takes on board the fact that there can be no one-size-fits-all solution, we believe that bringing criminal justice matters together will ensure that the necessary systems and parties—both those from different authorities and those from different departments within the same authority—will work together. For that reason, we fully support the proposals.
Clearly, the management of sex offenders has been a significant cause for concern, not only in the newspapers but in our communities where problems have been caused. Members have raised the issue in many different debates and it is a significant problem. The provisions in the bill will go some way towards addressing the problem but they will not solve it. At the end of the day, we live in a society of human beings—and to err is human. Problems will still arise, but we believe that the bill will provide some reassurance.
We take on board the minister's comments that criminal justice social work will be fully resourced, but we reiterate that the bill will clearly have significant resource implications. The term "wrap-around care" is sometimes used to describe the supervision that serious offenders require, but some offenders will require almost exactly that. For some, a visit from a social worker may be required daily or even several times a day. Such supervision is about ensuring not just the well-being of the individual on whom the social worker is checking up, but the safety of the community in which they live. Given that many such offenders are potential dangers, they will require to be watched—either by social workers or by police officers—with great care. Accordingly, resourcing is a pivotal issue.
Another reason why the bill will be beneficial is that it will provide powers that, to some extent, were perhaps already being exercised even though, in many instances, such powers did not exist. The bill may simply legitimise what is already the practice of many police officers and social workers, who have sought to look after the best interests of the community. There is an obligation on us to ensure that such actions have the full authority of the Government and the Parliament.
Probation orders—such as drug treatment and testing orders and home detention curfew orders—will be beneficial, but they will not be a silver bullet. On their own, they will not provide a solution to the problem but they take us in the best direction. We are happy to accept that.
However, further debates will need to be brought back to the chamber on other days because the major issue is not so much what happens when people are released from prison but—despite what the Conservatives may trumpet—the numbers of people who are in prison, which remain too high. That issue still needs to be addressed. Sadly, society will always have a requirement for prisons to deal with those who commit serious offences for which, in society's view, the only suitable punishment by which the offender's card can be marked is imprisonment. For our protection, dangerous offenders must be taken out of our communities, but we have far too many people who are in prison because they are, to some extent, the flotsam and jetsam of our society. Until such time as we address those social problems, we will not be able to address the wider issue.
My final point is that, although overarching bills will be needed to address how the Sentencing Commission determines who goes to prison and other issues such as, to some extent, the period that prisoners are required to serve and how they will be released, we must nevertheless recognise that social problems cannot be solved by the criminal justice system. Matters that are connected with the economy, deprivation and drink and drug abuse are social matters, which criminal justice authorities—whether prison officers, police officers or social workers—cannot solve; society must solve them.
I am grateful to Miss Goldie for waiving her closing speech. For that reason, I will give her more latitude in her opening one.
In the chamber at stage 1, I outlined the Conservative party's two principled objections to the bill. We are concerned by the introduction of the eight criminal justice authorities. In my view, we have achieved useful co-ordination of activity and co-operation between agencies since 2002, through the 14 funding and planning units that were constructed on the basis of local agreement and consensus. I should have thought that there was merit in allowing those partnerships to continue, because they meet the aspirations of and provide the necessary flexibility for different areas of Scotland. Mr Wallace's amendments highlighted that important dimension.
It is also the case that our social work departments are bearing an intensifying workload and that we expect them to discharge an exacting level of responsibility. Much of that is attributable to legislation that the Parliament has passed. Do we really need to impose further statutory bureaucracy on those hard-pressed departments? From the evidence that was submitted, it did not seem to me that the case had been made.
As has been signalled, our second objection is the introduction of home detention curfews, while automatic early release continues. That will simply allow prisoners out of jail even earlier. I do not accept that the people of Scotland regard that as desirable or sensible. During the debate on amendments, I was struck by the lively and robust contributions that weighed in from every sector of the chamber. Normally that means one thing—that a raw nerve has been struck. I express my profound disappointment that after trails in the media, hints from the Sentencing Commission and big words from our First Minister, at the end of the day we will be no further forward in ending the scandal that is automatic early release of prisoners in Scotland.
Quite simply, it is a disgrace that a prisoner serving less than four years is released halfway through that sentence, regardless of their behaviour, and that someone serving more than four years is released after only two thirds of it. That sends out a message about our justice system, and I do not think that it is a good one. I certainly do not think that it is a deterrent message.
The Executive can come up with all the excuses that it wants. The fact remains that amendment 1 in my name would have allowed it to end early release on a day of its choosing. Mr Henry criticised that provision and seemed to regard it as a deficiency, but I was trying to address the specific concern that he articulated at stage 2. For the moment, the Executive is the devolved Government of Scotland, so for the moment it has the power to end early release. That is why I tried to give it the flexibility that it seems to think would be helpful.
Actions speak louder than words. Clearly, the Executive has no intention of ending early release for short-term and long-term prisoners. Through the bill, it will allow some prisoners out of jail even earlier. That is not justice.
With regret, because there are subsidiary measures in the bill that have merit and that I do not want to diminish, I say that on the two principled grounds that I have outlined the Conservatives are unable to support the bill and will therefore vote against it.
I call Jeremy Purvis to open for the Liberal Democrats. I will give him some latitude in exchange for his having waived his closing speech.
I add my thanks to the staff of the Justice 2 Committee, to the witnesses from whom the committee heard and to both ministers for their openness throughout the process. The confidential pre-legislative briefing that the committee received from the bill team was constructive and provided evidence that there is a mature relationship between Parliament and the Executive.
At stage 1, I said that there should be little doubt that one of the biggest factors in overall crime rates in Scotland is reoffending. There is consensus on that issue. The paper "Costs, Sentencing Profiles and the Scottish Criminal Justice System", which was published this year, shows that of the 16,607 custodial disposals in 2003, 53 per cent were for less than three months and 21 per cent were for less than 60 days. It is not hard to cross-reference that fact with the Audit Scotland report on rehabilitation in prisons, which shows the reduced benefit for short-term prisoners of services that start in prison but do not continue in the community.
At stage 1, the Justice 2 Committee heard much evidence about the difficulty of successfully rehabilitating individuals. I was impressed with the evidence from the prison governors of Polmont, Cornton Vale and Edinburgh. Although I believe that they are working hard, they must overcome two main obstacles. One is that prisons have insufficient time to work with many prisoners on their offending behaviour. In addition, there are insufficient tools in legislation to ensure co-ordination of services in the community.
Therefore, in the context of the Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill, which I hope will be passed today, we asked whether we take the right approach to legislation and whether we ensure that rehabilitation services are strategically developed, properly led and enthusiastically managed. We also asked whether we are taking the right sentencing approach. That matter is outwith the scope of the bill, but after my question to the First Minister at lunch time, Parliament will be aware of my views in that regard.
In many cases, it is hard to rehabilitate successfully—we all know that. Mr Stevenson made that point extremely clearly during earlier scrutiny of the bill. However, the system actively discourages rehabilitation as a result of long delays in cases being brought to trial and because of an unfortunately high level of short-term, and in some cases, very short-term prison sentences.
Community justice authorities, which we hope to approve today, will give a focus to what the Justice 1 Committee asked us to do in its recent work on rehabilitation in prisons. That committee wanted a clearer definition of rehabilitation and it wanted to know what is required to make rehabilitation more effective. We have heard that we would not require CJAs in an ideal world, but we do require them, as we also require the sharing of best practice. I hope that that will be a crucial area of responsibility of the new CJAs.
I understand why the Conservatives will not support the bill: they believe that the case has not been made for a statutory change to structures, which is the ground on which they dissented from the committee's stage 1 report. In response, I quote the governor of HMP Edinburgh, David Croft, who said in evidence:
"On the quality of the partnerships, one of the questions asked was why it is necessary to create a structure to make all this work if it is working okay just now. There is nothing in my management experience that contradicts the view that without a structure we will never get anybody accountably delivering anything. I am talking about the size of the present reoffending problem in Scotland. That is where I believe the proposed structure would be a benefit."—[Official Report, Justice 2 Committee, 19 April 2005; c 1538.]
I am anxious to establish a balance of evidence. Does Mr Purvis take the view that the Association of Directors of Social Work was overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the proposed new structure?
I was not convinced by its evidence because we need to build on existing social work groupings. When Jim Wallace was minister, he piloted those and started the process. I want to continue that process and for it to have a bulwark of legislation behind it so that Parliament and, through it, our constituents know that there is a duty to co-operate.
I am aware that the Justice 2 Committee's work on the bill is limited inevitably to the scope of the bill, but without a proper and mature debate on earlier intervention, offenders will never be properly integrated back into society. As the minister said, the bill should be seen in the context of much wider work not only on reoffending but on rehabilitation.
I return to structures. The bill has been attacked because of the duty to co-operate. In the stage 1 debate, the Conservatives questioned that duty to co-operate. One simply cannot argue that the system has to be structured to create support for communities and then claim that people should not have the tools to do that. We would be no further forward than the status quo and the status quo is not sufficient. If we are being lectured about needing action and not words in one area of the bill, then we need that in a much bigger area of the bill—namely, action to ensure co-operation between agencies. That is important for early intervention, for rehabilitation of individuals and for having fewer offenders who reoffend on release, and ultimately, it is important to ensure safer communities.
As the deputy convener of the Justice 2 Committee, I wish to place on record my thanks and—I am sure—those of my colleagues for the efforts of the clerking team in its support of the committee through the stages of the bill. I also take the opportunity to wish the Minister for Justice many happy returns because it is her birthday today.
The Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill aims to reduce levels of reoffending and to improve management of offenders by greater integration of the work of the criminal justice agencies. I welcome the provisions of the bill as agreed by Parliament because I believe that they provide the basis for a more coherent and integrated approach to addressing offending in Scotland. It is my view that when the bill is enacted it will ensure that, as part of a broader package of reforms, local authorities and the Scottish Prison Service will focus on consistency, quality and co-ordination. Given that, for example, in the two years following 1999, 60 per cent of offenders who were released from prison were reconvicted of other offences, it is right that Parliament will act today to meet that challenge.
I welcome the creation of the community justice authorities, which will be new local government bodies that will ensure co-ordinated delivery of community justice services throughout their areas by local authorities. I believe that that provision is sensible and that Parliament's acceptance of CJAs is appropriate. I believe also that the obligation that is placed on Scottish ministers via the SPS, CJAs and local authorities co-operating with one another in performance of their functions with respect to management of offenders is both sensible and essential. In my view, interaction between the SPS and CJAs is central to achievement of the improvement in management of offenders that we all want.
I record my support for section 11 of the bill, which will introduce a new discretionary power for the SPS to release certain prisoners on home detention curfew. Most of the evidence that was taken by the committee suggested that there was merit in HDCs for certain low-risk prisoners. Only certain types of such prisoners will be eligible. Sex offenders who are subject to notification requirements, prisoners who are subject to extended sentences and prisoners who have a history of domestic violence will be excluded from and be ineligible for HDCs, as is right and proper. All releases on licence will be remotely monitored. Time on HDC will depend on the length of a sentence, but it cannot be more than 135 days.
Members should take comfort from the evidence that was given by the police, who are the custodians of law and order, to the effect that they are generally supportive of HDCs. I would have thought that that would have given some comfort to the Conservatives, but apparently it has not. I believe that it is unfortunate that they will dissent in the vote on the bill. In my view, HDCs are not a panacea, but they will provide a measured and coherent option that we should follow.
The Management of Offenders etc (Scotland) Bill is a practical bill. I have been able to touch on only some of its main provisions, but it is a bill that will do good and which I believe is worthy of Parliament's support.
One of the first things that happens to a prisoner upon reception is a test of numeracy and literacy. Would that such tests were applied to Conservative party members before they took their seats in Parliament. It is entirely against Scottish National Party policy, of course, for me to assist the Tories in any way, but occasionally one has to break the rules.
Let me just flesh out and illustrate the numbers that I gave previously by reference to Peterhead prison, where all prisoners serve a minimum of four years. There are 296 prisoners there and if we abolish early release, which I accept in principle, we would have a capital expenditure of £30 million to £35 million and a revenue expenditure against our budget of £60 million, which gives something like £100 million. Now, of course, if the Tories argue that that is good expenditure, I will listen to them. However, they have not actually given any numbers.
The argument is about what else that £100 million could be spent on. For example, it could be more police, more social workers or more education for people who are in prison to prevent them from reoffending. To be blunt, the Tories are the economic illiterates of Parliament. They do not even recognise numbers when they see them.
I congratulate the minister on reaching her 31st birthday today, as calculated by the hexadecimal system; by that system, I shall reach 40 in five years.
The Tories also show that they are illiterate through their continuing mantra that a benefit is to be derived from locking up people for a long time. I direct members to the United States' experience. All the states have their own legal, penal and criminological systems. Some have the death penalty; some do not. Not one shred of academic evidence shows a correlation between sentencing policy and outcomes. Indeed, with one exception, the states where the death penalty prevails have the highest murder rates per head of population. We must take the Tories' mantras on the matter with a very large pinch of salt.
I join others in wishing Miss Goldie all the best in a personal sense with the poisoned chalice that she is about to accept and with a lame duck second-in-command who did not have the courage of his convictions to put his proposition to his party. I continue to have as much political ill will for her party as I have good will for her.
I knew that it was the minister's birthday when she said that the bill will transform the current situation and get to grips with reoffending behaviour. On a day when she was more sober, she came before the Justice 2 Committee and said that the Executive expected that the bill could reduce reoffending behaviour by 3 per cent. That shows the real extent of her ambitions when it is not her birthday.
For the sake of accuracy, it would be very important for Mr Fox to quote for the record our entire discussion, although I appreciate that he cannot do so because time is limited. However, we made it very clear that the 3 per cent was an initial target and that the national advisory board would be responsible for setting targets in the future.
If I had more time, I could provide the full quotation. However, the figures and claims are already on the record.
The bill attempts to make it seem as if the Executive is moving things forward; in fact, very little in it will meaningfully address the underlying problem of reoffending behaviour. As the Justice 2 Committee report and members in the debate have pointed out, reoffending levels in Scotland are very depressing. The matter is worthy of our time and full consideration, but the bill simply shuffles the seats on the Titanic.
The ministers know full well that offending behaviour can be tackled first by addressing the fact that sentencing policy in this country is more about punishing people than it is about stopping their reoffending. As the Justice 2 Committee report makes clear, all the evidence shows that such an approach is doomed. Members have pointed out—although perhaps not enough—that offending and reoffending levels can be addressed by tackling their main drivers, such as social exclusion, poverty, addiction and deprivation.
Because of overcrowding, the lack of adequate programmes and there being too few prison officers who are trained to intervene, our prisons are failing more and more to discourage people from going straight back out and committing the same crimes over and over again. The principal objection that I raised in the Justice 2 Committee's report and that I raise again today is that having carried out a major reorganisation of criminal justice social work in 2002, the Scottish Executive proposes yet another reorganisation. The ADSW and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities have suggested that it would be better to evaluate the experience of the first reorganisation than to set up another one, and they proposed that more powers be given to people on the front line instead of to bureaucrats to police them.
As it has done in so many other debates, the Scottish Executive claims that the proposed legislation is one measure in a basket of measures, one tool in a toolbox, one sandwich in a picnic and one reform in a range of reforms. However, the bill simply shuffles the management structures without addressing the real problem. I dissented in the Justice 2 Committee report on the bill because I agree with the case that was put by ADSW and COSLA; insufficient time has elapsed to allow us to study the full impact of the previous reorganisation. For that reason, the Scottish Socialist Party has not been persuaded to support the bill this evening.
I join others in thanking the clerks of the Justice 2 Committee who, as usual, did an excellent job in supporting committee members during the bill's progress.
I begin by highlighting two of the lesser-mentioned areas of the bill, the first of which relates to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority. I realise that the minister talked about the authority at the beginning of the debate.
It is an extremely important achievement to get the bill through Parliament. I believe that it will be welcomed throughout Scotland and I shall be pleased to see it passed tonight. It is also important that we are tightening up the procedures relating to the release of certain sexual offenders. Again, that is most welcome, although it is a matter that has not received much attention in this debate.
On community justice authorities, it makes perfectly good sense that organisations that are connected with rehabilitation of prisoners should work together. That will help to ensure that people who have just been released from prison are given the opportunity to break free from the downward spiral that all too often ends with them back in prison. Jeremy Purvis cited statistics relating to that. To achieve what is envisaged, structures need to be in place to ensure that, on release, prisoners have a place to stay, assistance in staying clear of drugs and drink and help in obtaining work or training in order to give them stability and some hope for the future.
Despite the best efforts of many organisations, too many prisoners have slipped through the net of the existing system. If we are really serious about tackling the horrific reoffending rate in Scotland, a joined-up approach is crucial, and that is where CJAs will have an important role to play. As many members have said, structures alone do not improve situations; however, adequate resources and what is done with them can and will assist in determining the outcomes when combined with those new structures. The Executive must ensure that whatever resources are necessary are allocated to those front-line services to accommodate the extra responsibilities that will arise from that change.
The ADSW argued that
"the important issues were the provision of services to deal with the underlying problems of alcohol, drugs, housing and the other problems that existed before an individual entered prison."
I certainly agree with that statement, but if CJAs work correctly they will facilitate co-ordination of those services to the benefit of the individuals who most require them.
However, I also believe that it would have been helpful to the committee to have had the minister's response to the consultation exercise on the proposed CJAs somewhat earlier than yesterday. I received a copy yesterday morning from the clerks, but it would have been better if that information had been available to the Justice 2 Committee early enough for members to examine and report on the minister's response. As it was, we were unaware of some of the detail of the CJAs when the bill was going through stages 1 and 2.
The committee came to the conclusion—although not unanimously, as we have seen this afternoon—that there was merit in home detention curfews for certain low-risk offenders, as Bill Butler pointed out. However, the effectiveness of those curfews will be limited by the amount of support that is available. It is crucial to the success of HDCs that, when additional support services are required, they are included as additional mandatory conditions—a point that I made to the minister earlier—over and above the standard conditions, in addition to their being available as voluntary options where appropriate. The minister responded to my earlier intervention by saying that it is not a case of applying blanket conditions for everybody, but additional mandatory conditions would not be blanket conditions; they would be applied to individual cases and assessed on their merits. However, where additional conditions are necessary, appropriate and helpful, we think that they should be mandatory. That was discussed widely in the committee. It is vital that such additional conditions be properly resourced and in place before HDCs begin.
HDCs will be suitable only for a limited number of prisoners and some categories may benefit more than others. There are far too many women in prison, and the majority of them are inside for non-violent offences. An HDC would allow a prisoner who is the mother of small children the opportunity to rebuild her relationship with her family and to contribute to the well-being of her children in a way that would be impossible if she were still in prison. Surely that is to the benefit of our whole society. Many women prisoners have drug and other problems that HDCs, combined with appropriate conditions and their being properly resourced, could greatly assist with.
Overall, I can see benefits from the use of home detention curfews. Any problems that arise from them will be surmountable. However, neither HDCs nor the community justice authorities on their own will be enough to overcome the problems that prisoners face. The committee took the view that the inclusion of additional mandatory conditions would assist in allowing HDCs to succeed: we want to see HDCs in place, but we want to ensure that they succeed, which was why we took that view. Although I support the bill, which has a lot of good stuff in it, I confess to being a bit concerned that the minister, in evidence to the committee and again this afternoon, has refused to commit to additional mandatory conditions for HDCs when they are necessary. That would have been an improvement.
There has been an interesting exchange of views this afternoon. I thank members for that and I also thank everyone who has contributed to taking the bill through Parliament. I thank members of the Justice 2 Committee and the convener for their detailed work during the committee stages and also thank the clerks for their sterling work in support of those processes. I acknowledge that the process has not always been easy and I recognise some of the pressures that they faced. I also put on record my thanks to the many organisations that gave up their time to provide evidence to the committee and I thank them for their many contributions throughout the process. Those contributions have been valuable in helping to shape what has been a fast-changing process as we have moved forward.
As the Minister for Justice and many members have said during the course of the debate, the bill is about reducing reoffending and making our communities safer. Some specific questions were asked during the debate. I welcome Kenny MacAskill's support for the bill. He rightly said that the legislation alone will not solve the problem of Scotland's reoffending rates. It is important to re-emphasise that it will be the hard work of individuals within the new framework that will bring about the change that we all seek. I have high hopes for what we can achieve, given the positive comments that have been made.
Jeremy Purvis talked about the length of time it takes for cases to get to trial. We acknowledged in our criminal justice plan which was published last December, the importance of faster court processes. That is why we are pursuing landmark reforms to the summary justice system. I hope that that will stimulate some more significant debate.
It was interesting that in the course of the debate Colin Fox and Annabel Goldie came together in a Tory-SSP coalition—a coalition of innate conservatism—to say that there should be and will be no change. Annabel Goldie said that the case has not been made so we should leave the system alone. Colin Fox not only, in an innately conservative manner, supported the status quo, but has not stayed up to date with the changes that have taken place within COSLA and the ADSW. I refer Colin Fox to the ADSW, which welcomes the opportunity to work with the SPS, and I also refer him to the statement from COSLA, which states:
"We are grateful that Ministers have responded positively to the"
case made by local government.
The statement continues:
"COSLA, along with colleagues from across local government, will now direct its energies and commitment to ensuring that the new arrangements are successful."
COSLA has left the innate conservatives behind and has moved forward. It is worth our while not only to remind Annabel Goldie and the SSP what they have done this afternoon, but to remind Parliament and the wider public exactly what the Scottish Socialists are opposing. They are opposing tougher measures against sex offenders, recovery of criminal injury payments from offenders, improved drug testing in prisons and improved ability for ministers to intervene in some of the tragic cases where failure takes place. That is shameful.
If I leave the innate conservatives aside, there is genuine good will for the bill in Parliament and among the many organisations throughout Scotland that want to work together to reduce reoffending. I believe that the bill will be a very useful way forward and I thank everyone for their work. I believe that Parliament will do the right thing and leave some of the dinosaurs behind.