Alternatives to Custody
Good afternoon. The first item of business this afternoon is a debate on motion S1M-3149, in the name of Jim Wallace, on alternatives to custody, and two amendments to that motion.
Alternatives to custody are central to our justice agenda. I believe that, where they are effective in reducing reoffending, they are an essential weapon in cutting crime. During our recent debate on the prison estates review, we agreed that Parliament should have the opportunity to debate alternatives to custody. I welcome the opportunity to lay out our approach here in Aberdeen.
I will try to put the debate into context. There are two complementary components to the Executive's correctional agenda. On the one side, we recognise that there will always be offenders for whom prison is the right and proper answer. Public safety is our prime concern, so serious and violent criminals and drug dealers should and will be imprisoned for a considerable length of time. We should not be shy of stating that serious criminals should be jailed. Indeed, the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill, which is currently before Parliament, is strengthening our laws further to ensure that the public are properly protected. Therefore, Scotland must also have a prison estate that holds prisoners securely, provides them with decent conditions and allows the Scottish Prison Service to deliver rehabilitation programmes to address prisoners' offending behaviour. That is at the core of the prison estates review.
However, today's debate is about alternatives to custody. Although prison is right for serious and violent offenders, I take no satisfaction from the fact that prison numbers in Scotland are high. That is why I believe that community disposals are important in offering our courts an effective way to deal with offenders who do not need to be imprisoned. It is important to acknowledge that, in 2000, more than 80 per cent of prison receptions were for sentences of six months or less. The use of community disposals has increased from 5 per cent of all sentences in 1990 to 11 per cent in 2000, but the use of custody has also increased over that period. [Interruption.] I hope that my microphone is picking me up.
Yes, at the moment, it is.
We have a criminal justice system that makes considerable use of short prison sentences, some of only a few days. In western Europe, only Portugal imprisons more people per 1,000 head of population than do Scotland and our neighbours in England and Wales. In England, we recently heard the head of HM Prison Service and the Lord Chief Justice calling publicly for a rethink of penal policy.
By continuing to make high use of short custodial sentences, we put our prison system under a tremendous strain for little apparent benefit. I want the SPS to do more work with prisoners to reduce the likelihood of their reoffending. I believe that it can do that more effectively if it is not overloaded with a large number of offenders who could be dealt with just as effectively—indeed, in time, possibly more effectively—in the community.
We should also take account of the impact of prison on individuals' ability on release to break the cycle of offending. Prison weakens the links to families, housing and employment—the very links that can help to prevent further offending. Therefore, I can understand why research consistently shows that, for the right group of offenders, community disposals can be more effective than prison. In the words of HM chief inspector of prisons to the Justice 1 Committee on 14 May:
"Imprisonment increases that marginalisation. We should explore alternatives that reintegrate them into a more inclusive society."—[Official Report, Justice 1 Committee, 14 May 2002; c 3556.]
Does that not happen already? If we check the records of offenders who have been imprisoned, do not we find that they have been before the courts at least five or six times and imprisonment was a last resort?
Having spoken to sheriffs, I am aware that there is a small core of offenders who come back to court time and again and who are then sentenced to imprisonment. Equally, there are people in prisons who would be more likely to break the cycle of reoffending if a range of non-custodial sentences were available and if some of those alternatives were pursued. I will shortly come to a range of such alternatives.
Let me put to the minister the pertinent words of Clive Fairweather on HMP Cornton Vale: he said that about 50 per cent of the female prison population could be dealt with by different measures.
The contributions that many people, including Clive Fairweather, have made to addressing the imprisonment of female offenders have helped to inform the activities of the ministerial working group in which my colleague, Richard Simpson, was involved. The group produced the report "A Better Way: The Report of the Ministerial Group on Women's Offending" and we are now giving active consideration to promoting alternatives to imprisonment. In particular, we are committed to the time-out centre, which offers an important way of taking that agenda forward.
For the reasons that I have described—including those that I have mentioned in response to interventions—the Scottish Executive has promoted the use of alternatives to custody, not in isolation but as part of our strategy for tackling crime more generally.
I have said that our prime concern is public safety, so we have made effective enforcement a priority, for example through our investment in policing and new initiatives such as the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency. We are seeing the benefits: there is a record number of police; recorded crime is down by more than a quarter over the past 10 years; the clear-up rate by the police is at its highest since the second world war; and, as the Scottish crime survey reported earlier this month, fear of crime is on the way down.
I believe that that is a result of an approach that balances a tough stance on enforcement with a commitment to tackling the causes of crime. We want to support programmes that address offending behaviour, both in our prisons and in the community.
I want to focus on community disposals and consider how we have developed their range and availability over the past few years and what we are doing to increase confidence in their use.
The Executive has developed a broad framework of community disposals and we are making those available progressively to courts across the country. Throughout the 1990s, probation and community service orders were the standard community sentences, and they remain at the core of our strategy. Probation combines supervision with work with the offender to address offending behaviour. Community service provides the courts with a sentence by which the offender makes restitution to the community through unpaid work.
The pattern of offending has changed dramatically over the past few years, with increased drug misuse and the crime that that creates. The figures suggest that approximately 70 per cent of cases that are dealt with by Scottish courts have a drug-related element. In response,
we need new disposals to address the new situation that the courts face.
Therefore, we have introduced drug treatment and testing orders—DTTOs. The orders focus on the acquisitive crime that is committed to fund drug misuse. They aim to reduce the level of crime and of drug misuse. With random drug tests, access to treatment facilities and regular reviews by the court, they enable sentencers to monitor progress. They are up and running in Glasgow, Fife, Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire and, in anticipation of the positive evaluation of DTTOs that is due to be published next month, we have announced a roll-out of DTTOs to a further seven sheriff courts.
Is the minister aware that, in this part of the country, the waiting time for entry into drug rehabilitation programmes for people who have not yet entered the criminal justice system stands at 14 months? Are the drug rehab facilities adequate?
I understand that there have been 24 drug treatment and testing orders in this part of the world. Mr Stevenson's point was about those who are not in the criminal justice system. The overall approach for drugs is co-ordinated by my colleague, Richard Simpson, who I know is acutely aware of the issues and of the importance of rehabilitation.
Drug treatment and testing orders form an important part of our action to tackle crime, including drug-related crime, as well as to provide a route to rehabilitation. I note the recognition by Stewart Stevenson—and I am sure that other members recognise this too—that Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire are among the areas where the orders are being rolled out.
The Glasgow drugs court has built on the successes of DTTOs. It has a dedicated multidisciplinary team that includes the judiciary, procurators fiscal, addiction workers, medical staff, criminal justice social workers, court staff and the police. They work together in an initiative that combines the authority of the courts with the expert knowledge of drug treatment and rehabilitation services.
We are also using new technology. Although the Scottish Prison Service acknowledges that it can do little to rehabilitate prisoners during short prison sentences, there is an argument that even a short sentence stops prisoners offending while they are locked away. We now have another alternative. From 1 May, courts throughout Scotland have been able to impose restriction of liberty orders, which allow them to restrict the movement of the offender for up to 12 hours a day for up to 12 months. If there is a pattern of offending behaviour, for example in the evenings, the offender can be restricted to where they live at that time. If the offenders offend on a Saturday afternoon, that is when the restriction order can apply most effectively.
Unlike prison, restriction of liberty orders can accommodate useful activities, such as going to work, maintaining employment, undertaking training or taking children to school. Of course the order is monitored electronically. The so-called tag is so sensitive that if the offender goes into the garden or to the ice-cream van during a restricted period, the electronic monitoring centre is alerted immediately and immediate action will be taken. The orders are not an easy option compared with a short spell in prison. Indeed, one offender said:
"The 3 months on the tag was harder than I ever thought it would have been."
RLOs and electronic monitoring have the added advantage that they can bring back structure to chaotic lives. When I opened the new monitoring facility in East Kilbride, I learned about the experience of people who have found advantages to the orders; family ties were renewed or established for those who had to be with their families in the evening. That has helped offenders to start anew and to move away from offending behaviour.
In the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill we are making powers to make electronic monitoring a condition of a probation order or a drug treatment and testing order. That will mean that we can restrict liberty and stabilise the offenders' lifestyle at the same time as addressing offending behaviour, which all assists in the rehabilitative process.
At the other end of the spectrum, it is a little known fact that just under 8,000 people are admitted to custody for fine defaults, compared with just over 10,000 directly sentenced receptions. The average time spent in prison for fine defaults is less than 3 days, but the cost to the prison system of dealing with such a large number of fine defaulters is substantial. The system is inefficient and works to the benefit of no one.
We have introduced supervised attendance orders to offer the courts an alternative to imprisonment for fine default. The orders impose a time penalty in place of a fine along with attendance at classes on subjects such as debt management or a requirement to undertake unpaid work. I believe that that is more efficient for the criminal justice system and harder for the offenders than are a few days in prison. The Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill contains provisions that will allow us to pilot new ways to encourage greater use of supervised attendance orders.
In describing the range of community disposals that are now available, I want to mention diversion from prosecution schemes, which enable procurators fiscal to divert individuals who have committed minor offences where it is not in the public interest to prosecute. The individuals receive help in sorting out the underlying problems, but the procurator fiscal retains the right to prosecute them if they fail to make sufficient progress. Diversion from prosecution schemes are now being made available throughout Scotland.
I want to ask a question that follows on from what Keith Raffan said earlier. The minister has mentioned a range of alternatives to custody. Where does the time-out provision fit into that and how does it differ from the measures that he has already explained?
Time-out provision relates specifically to our attempt to find better non-custodial alternatives for those who might otherwise be sentenced to a period of imprisonment in Cornton Vale. It provides an opportunity for young women to try to get order back into their lives and it assists in the rehabilitative process. We certainly see the provision as an important part of the general range of provisions that are directed specifically at trying to reduce the female prisoner population.
As I indicated, there is a good range of disposals, including not just alternatives to custody but disposals that prevent offenders from progressing up the tariff ladder towards custody. Our strategy is to target disposals so as to reduce the frequency and seriousness of offending and to provide the courts with more constructive and less costly options. Community disposals involve penalties that often last longer than a short prison sentence. They offer offenders the opportunity to undertake work in the community, which is where they will continue to live and face the strains of daily life. We believe that addressing offending behaviour in that setting has more chance of being successful.
There is evidence that community disposals are effective. The reconviction rate for those who were given a custodial sentence in 1995 was 17 per cent higher than the reconviction rate for those who were given a community service order in 1995. That figure remained the same one, two, three and four years after conviction. That is important, because our ultimate objective must be to reduce the impact of crime on the lives of the people of Scotland.
We have done a great deal to improve the support and services that we provide for victims. The Scottish strategy for victims supports a raft of initiatives to improve the position of victims in the criminal justice system. The Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill proposes the introduction of victim statements, which is a crucial milestone in the promotion of victim issues. However, we all know that what victims want most is a reduction in the level of crime that blights their lives.
As I said, the rate of recorded crime is on the decline. I want to ensure that that continues. That is a central aim of our criminal justice policies and we must do whatever is most effective in reducing reoffending. Public protection comes first, but the public can be protected best by preventing recidivism in the way that is most effective for the offender in question. That does not necessarily mean prison, which is expensive and ineffective for many less serious offenders.
That is why we have increased the range and availability of community disposals. We are also investing substantial new resources, with an increase from £44 million to £62 million over the past three years. I note that the justice committees' new report on the budget concludes that the £67 million planned for next year is not enough. I take encouragement from the fact that the justice committees recognise that the policies on alternatives to custody are working. I share their commitment to improving those services further and look forward to a discussion on where the additional resources might come from. We will respond more fully to the report later in the year.
Our existing level of investment is a clear indication of the priority that we attach to this area of work, but we know that investing in quantity is not enough. It is critical that the courts have confidence in the quality of community disposals. To achieve that, we must work to improve the effectiveness of alternatives to custody in Scotland.
That leads me to our plans for modernising criminal justice social work. Although we now have a broad range of disposals and extra funds in place to support them, we must look to local authority criminal justice social work to ensure the delivery of a consistently high-quality service. In the 1990s, the introduction of national standards did much to raise standards in the service. The tough option initiative has moved that forward and, working closely with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and local authorities, we have restructured the service into 11 mainland groupings plus the three islands areas. We did that to build the capacity of the service to cope with the ambitious agenda that we have set.
We certainly do not want to lose the local dimension that makes criminal justice social work responsive to the concerns of local communities, but we want to ensure that the service has a national standing alongside other criminal justice agencies such as the Scottish Prison Service, the prosecution service, the police and the courts. It must also be able to build on and share its expertise in working with particular groups, such as high-risk and sex offenders. Criminal justice social work must be clearly accountable for delivering improvement in the quality of the services.
Much of that depends on the existing professionalism and commitment of criminal justice social workers. The new structure provides them with the opportunity to forge a service that builds on those strengths. It will make it easier for them to win the confidence of the courts and the public for the work that they do. This year, we are introducing an accreditation system for criminal justice social work programmes. The getting best results initiative has been promoting best practice for the past three years. The next step is to set up an accreditation panel, which will be responsible for accrediting programmes that address offending behaviour.
There is now a strong body of evidence on what works in addressing and reducing reoffending. That evidence shows that accredited programmes that meet agreed criteria and which are delivered in the community have the best record of success. To support that work, we have set up a criminal justice social work development centre as a joint venture between the University of Edinburgh and the University of Stirling. That resource will help local authorities to prepare programmes for accreditation.
There is still a question about whether the programmes are effective. All our new initiatives in criminal justice social work are piloted first and then subjected to an independent evaluation, to test their effectiveness before they are rolled out. That was the case with diversion schemes, drug treatment and testing orders, restriction of liberty orders and, now, the drugs courts. Local authorities and voluntary sector bodies who deliver programmes, for example for sex offenders, young offenders or those convicted of domestic violence, are expected to monitor the programmes and routinely evaluate the results. The best way to demonstrate what works is to ensure that the programmes are evidence based. An accreditation system will deliver that.
The Justice 1 Committee's survey of public attitudes to sentencing makes it clear that the public will accept high-quality and highly effective community disposals. It shows that people favour a less punitive approach to sentencing when they are asked to consider the details of specific cases and that rehabilitation of offenders is viewed positively. The survey concludes:
"despite initial calls for harsher sentencing, constructive alternatives to imprisonment can"
command public support.
I hope that today's debate gives us the opportunity to reach out and win that support. I also hope that the Justice 1 Committee's plans for an investigation into alternatives to custody will provide for further policy debate.
As Minister for Justice, the question for me is not whether prison or alternatives to custody are mutually exclusive—they both have a distinctive and complementary part to play. However, if our prison system is to operate efficiently, we must provide the means to manage prisoner numbers. That is why our strategy depends on having high-quality alternatives to custody, which are delivered consistently across the country and which can reduce reoffending effectively without compromising public safety.
I move,
That the Parliament commends the Scottish Executive's commitment to developing a range of high quality alternatives to custody which fit the changing pattern of offending behaviour across Scotland, and recognises the importance of ensuring the delivery of consistently effective community disposals which have the confidence of the judiciary and the public and also have the potential to reduce re-offending without compromising public safety.
I suspect that there is a great deal of agreement in the chamber this afternoon.
There is obviously a custody crisis in Scotland—we know that because we have higher prisoner numbers than ever. That is rightly seen as a problem that must be addressed. However, before we talk about alternatives to custody, we must consider why we imprison people and what kind of people we imprison. We need to be clear about what we expect from our penal system. That part of the equation is sometimes missing.
Everyone understands the concepts of punishment, protection of society and deterrence. However, prison is by far the most expensive form of punishment that is employed by our criminal justice system. Many prisoners are repeat offenders, so it is not clear that prison is much of a deterrent. The truth is that unless rehabilitation is at the core of a prisoner's experience in prison, the benefit that is gained through protection of society from an offender for a limited period is just that—limited. If the system is just going to turf him—it is usually a him—out of prison unaltered, other than perhaps to be made worse, there has been only a short-term gain and no long-term benefit, either to that individual or to society.
As far as punishment is concerned, recent figures show that 41 per cent of all those who are sent to prison are there because they defaulted on fines. That is a massive percentage. It means that almost half of all prisoners in Scottish jails at any one time are there because they have not paid fines, although I appreciate that they are in prison sometimes for only short periods.
In case Dr Simpson is wondering, I said "sent to prison" and not "in prison". There is a distinct difference between the two.
That figure is in stark comparison with the situation in England where, in 2000, only 2 per cent of those who were sent to prison were fine defaulters. In England, sentencers are required not to send offenders to jail for non-payment of fines, unless there is no alternative.
The member was right: I was struggling with her figures. She missed out the number of remand prisoners, although I understand that. Of those who are sentenced, 41 per cent are imprisoned because of fine defaults. However, at any one time, there are only 60 fine defaulters out of 6,600 prisoners in the daily population. That is the problem with incarceration.
That still adds up to a great many prisoner days per year being taken up by fine defaulting. We must consider the matter in that context.
Payment supervision orders are used in England and have made a significant impact on the jailing of fine defaulters. In effect, many people—but not everybody—end up in prison because they are poor. There is something of an irony in the fact that fining those who are well enough off to pay is not much of a deterrent, whereas fining those who are too poor to pay is, in comparison, a disproportionate punishment.
We already know that prison is the most inefficient way of punishing. It would cost £100 a day less than putting them in prison if we were to give fine defaulters supervised attendance orders—our equivalent of payment supervision orders—which have not yet even made it past the pilot stage in Scotland. I think that we are all agreed that that would be far more effective in the long run. Right now, Strathclyde police alone holds more than 27,000 warrants for fine defaulters. Obviously, many people who default are not caught.
What other alternatives to custody are there? The minister mentioned several. There are probation orders, community service orders and compensation orders. Those are the three most common disposals after fines, but their use is low, at 6 per cent, 4 per cent and 3.9 per cent respectively. The total numbers are relatively small. In addition, those disposals all predate the Parliament by a considerable time—in the case of probation orders by 90 years. We have the newer restriction of liberty orders, which are known colloquially as tagging, but they still are not in widespread use. We also have drug treatment and testing orders, which have been around since 1998, but they are still geographically restricted. I look forward to their evaluation next month, and to their subsequent roll-out over a much wider area of Scotland.
Those last two disposals exemplify one of the problems with alternatives to custody, which is the fact that they are not available in every jurisdiction. That generates a great deal of frustration, with the potential for accused persons to be dealt with very differently, depending on what is available where. I know that sheriffs do not like that, and if more accused persons were aware of the situation, I dare say that they would object, too.
Does Roseanna Cunningham agree that if we are to roll out DTTOs and drugs courts further and faster—which we all want to do, given the initial results that will come out next month—we need far more community programmes, day programmes, residential beds for treatment, halfway houses and so on?
We need a vastly expanded infrastructure to deal with the problem at every level, whether it is a health or justice problem that we are addressing.
Although we can say that alternatives to custody have not yet resulted in a reduction in the number of people who are sent to jail, we can also say that one of the reasons for that is that the alternatives can often be more apparent than real.
I hope that we are on common ground. Does Roseanna Cunningham accept that in examining alternatives to custody, our approach of piloting and evaluating before roll-out—which I accept means that the particular disposal is not available throughout Scotland—is the proper course to follow?
I appreciate what the minister says, but sometimes the pilots last a long time and we often wait for the roll-out for even longer, if it happens at all. The problem is that the alternatives are often not available in all jurisdictions—that is before we enter the debate about resourcing of existing alternatives, to which Keith Raffan referred.
At lunch time today I visited the Safeguarding Communities Reducing Offending programme in Aberdeen, which is working extremely well. It offers in Aberdeen things that are not available in other cities. In other cities, things will be offered that are not available in Aberdeen. That disparity in the Scottish justice system concerns me ethically.
On 15 May this year there were 6,661 prisoners in Scotland's jails, which is the highest figure ever. It is the third highest prison population per capita in western Europe, after England and Portugal. It does not seem that the powers that be envisage the prison population getting smaller, because a projected rise in the prison population to 7,700 is the basis of the prison estates review. That means that the minister is accepting in advance that alternatives to custody will continue to fail—either that, or we are planning to build prisons that we do not need. We cannot have it both ways.
Is custody achieving its aim? In many cases, custody is plain wrong. In one case that I have just come across, and about which I will be writing to the Minister for Justice, a drug addict who is a double amputee has been sent to jail for six weeks for possession. That prisoner must spend his time in prison in a hospital bed. He also spent two days in solitary at HMP Aberdeen at Craiginches, because there was nowhere else to put a wheelchair user. He will be unable to participate in a drug rehabilitation programme while he is inside for probably no more than about three weeks. We know that short-term prisoners are the least likely to have access to such intervention. We must ask: what on earth is the point? That man comes from north-east Scotland. Perhaps if a drugs court operated in north-east Scotland, the outcome would have been more sensible for him and, in the long run, for the community.
That case highlights the absurdity of much imprisonment. Imprisonment is too expensive and ineffective and can store many problems that the justice system must deal with later. To compound the problem, nearly 14,000 people were placed on remand in 2000, which is the most recent year for which I have a total figure. That is an average of 894 people on remand on any day. Half the people who are placed on remand do not receive a custodial sentence; that must be addressed. Bail offences create much negative publicity, but we must be more creative about minimising their likelihood.
Custody has a necessary place in our criminal justice system, but it should not have its current predominance. We should do much more. Many more alternatives to custody should be available to the courts in practice and throughout the whole of Scotland. The courts should make better use of existing alternatives. The low use of such alternatives is a matter of some frustration for the minister, but it has been suggested to me that sheriffs in particular would make more use of them if they were more readily available in their areas.
All the arguments about reducing the number of people in custody in adult jails apply several times over to young offenders. That is a separate issue that relates to places for secure units, which is not part of today's debate.
Overall, the high number of people who are in custody is causing an immediate accommodation problem that must be addressed but, for the long term, I ask the minister to have more confidence in his plans for alternatives to custody and to rethink the new prison set-up that he has in mind.
The minister talked briefly about public attitudes to sentencing. Often, we ignore those attitudes. When we have such debates, we talk about the professionals rather than the public. Much negative reaction can be expressed about the use of alternatives to custody, particularly by members of the public who are not fully aware of the effectiveness and usefulness of many alternatives. Much of the negative reaction is media driven, and most of us agree that public education is an issue.
There is some good news. The minister referred to the Justice 1 Committee's report. That was set in train when I was convener of the then Justice and Home Affairs Committee. Research into public attitudes to sentencing was needed to find out what people think, as opposed to what some of our tabloid newspapers report that they think. Not much research had been conducted on public attitudes, so the exercise was useful and informative. Some of what was reported was fairly predictable, but I will describe the most interesting findings from the report that relate to the debate.
The report showed that most people were unaware of non-custodial disposals other than fines and community service orders and that even though people thought that the courts were too lenient, when they were asked to examine scenarios, they chose sentences that were similar to those that had been imposed by the courts. The report showed that there was widespread support for treatment rather than jailing of drug offenders, and that people doubt the effectiveness of prison at preventing reoffending, especially for drug offenders. That is good news for the SNP's approach to the system. The report also showed that although the principle of community service orders was supported, the orders needed to be implemented more visibly.
Overall, the Justice 1 Committee's report emphasised the need to restore public confidence in the system, but said that an opportunity existed to engage the public in a constructive debate about alternatives to custody. We have not had that debate with the public. That is a big part of what we should do. All of us should regard the Justice 1 Committee's report as good news and as a challenge to us.
I talked about some of the current problems and I will talk briefly about some SNP ideas that have been put into practice or might yet—I hope—be put into practice.
You have four minutes left.
I think that I will manage.
The SNP is committed to the provision of creative sentencing alternatives; we are in the process of examining a number of them. The SNP has talked about parental responsibility. For the past two years, we have urged the Executive to look more closely at increasing parents' direct responsibility for the behaviour of their children. Before the Tories start to jump up and down about the European convention on human rights, I will tell them that similar systems to the one that the SNP proposes exist in other western European countries.
It is clear that some elements in the Executive have begun to address the issue and I hope that we will see movement before the end of next year. I read Johann Lamont's letter in The Herald this morning and found much in it with which I agree. Problems of youth disorder are not confined to the inner cities or to peripheral housing schemes. They are surfacing in small towns, urban and rural, throughout Scotland.
Although it might not be immediately obvious that some of the ideas that are being widely debated fall into the category of alternatives to custody, it is hoped that they will head off some of the problems that eventually result in custody. The SNP first proposed the idea of drugs courts in the run-up to the 1999 elections. Those courts now operate in Scotland and, thus far, we agree that drugs courts are a success. They will go on being a success as long as sufficient back-up resources are made available. Keith Raffan rightly said that there is a need for infrastructure. Perhaps the minister might indicate more clearly how long it will be before the appropriate infrastructure will be made available to extend drugs court more widely in Scotland.
A number of members have highlighted the serious drugs problem that exists in the north-east of Scotland. Indeed, the members' debate today is on that subject. There is a need for more drugs rehabilitation places to be made available, particularly in the north-east. The case that I mentioned further highlights that need. It is unimportant whether the assistance comes out of the justice budget or the health budget; what is important is that the money that is spent now results in far greater savings down the line.
The SNP has suggested ways in which to help the problem of fine defaulting. We propose a unit fine system that takes full account of ability to pay. First, the sentencing judge would impose a fine, which would be expressed as a number of units. Secondly, the convicted person's means would be assessed and the value of the units related to his or her means. Such a system would impose fines more equitably and cost savings would result because the determination of the unit value is an administrative matter, which in turn would lead to the acceleration of court procedures. The cost of pursuing defaulters would be reduced, which would lead to further cost savings. The result would be that fewer people would end up in prison. Such a system is already in place in Finland, Sweden, Austria, Germany and France. That option is achievable for Scotland and I urge it on the minister.
I also urge the minister to examine closely the expansion of bail supervision, because that alternative is available only in a few areas of Scotland. Bail supervision needs to be available throughout the country, which would enable us to reduce the huge number of people who are placed on remand because they do not have a fixed address or a way in which the authorities feel that they can properly monitor them.
Ultimately, it is important that a variety of alternatives are put in place and that they are available throughout Scotland. Unless we do that, the available alternatives become more apparent than real and we will be kidding ourselves if we expect them to make a difference. The key point of the debate is that we need to find effective and sustainable initiatives that will make a difference.
I move amendment S1M-3149.2, to leave out from "commends" to end and insert:
"regrets the failure of the Scottish Executive adequately to develop a range of high quality alternatives to custody which fit the changing pattern of offending behaviour across Scotland; recognises the importance of programmes which are well-resourced and available across every jurisdiction in Scotland, and believes that a greater element of restorative justice should be introduced into the Scottish criminal justice system whether dealing with adults or young offenders."
I call Lord James Douglas-Hamilton to speak to and move amendment S1M-3149.1. The member has 12 minutes.
In addressing alternatives to custody, I stress that we have repeatedly made proposals for a complete overhaul of the juvenile justice system. At present, when young offenders appear before children's panels, they find little that is of deterrent value. The shortage of secure accommodation means that children's panels, on the advice of social workers, cannot choose the option of secure accommodation—there is not enough secure accommodation for serious serial offenders.
For many months, the Conservatives have been highlighting that problem and have been putting forward detailed proposals. However, it seems that the First Minister and even the Scottish National Party have only just wakened up to the importance of the problem. We make no secret of the fact that we want more secure accommodation places. We want young offenders to face evening and weekend detention. We want community service and supervised attendance orders and compulsory grounding to be available as options. The earlier the intervention, the less likely it is that young offenders will reoffend. We feel that the present system has not been working, and that the Administration needs urgently to take action.
Although we believe that alternatives to custody have an extremely important place, we also feel that early intervention is essential to avoid young people leaping on to a conveyor belt of crime. Community-based disposals can be appropriate at the earlier stages of offending. In 1991, the Government introduced 100 per cent funding of services related to criminal justice social work, which meant that local authorities would be reimbursed for the cost of all services related to offenders. It follows that, wherever appropriate, the Conservatives would support nationwide introduction of all appropriate community sentences including community service orders, supervised attendance orders, probation, drug treatment and testing orders, restriction of liberty orders and enhanced deferred sentences.
I recall being in Aberdeen when the first supervised attendance orders were introduced in Scotland and meeting a youngster who, after refusing to pay the fine for non-payment of his television licence, was working on an appropriate programme. To be frank, it contributes a service to the community to give a community-based disposal to a young person who commits such a relatively minor misdemeanour. Similarly, if youths are caught committing acts of vandalism, disposals such as the removal of graffiti or the commission of environmental improvements contribute to the community as a form of restitution. We whole-heartedly support such measures, and we should be able to widen the range of community-based programmes depending on the demands and profiles of each considerable area where the community has made its wishes known.
However, there is a need for balance in addressing those issues. On the one hand, we need to protect the public from dangerous criminals; on the other hand, we must have rehabilitation, especially for less serious offenders who can make some form of community-based restitution. In that respect, I welcome the comments that Cathy Jamieson made on 20 September 2001. She said:
"Nor do I think that we should be considering alternatives that put further pressure on parents. Sometimes parents are struggling to make ends meet. Sometimes parents themselves have not had a particularly good experience of life and might need support."—[Official Report, 20 September 2001; c 2641.]
She was right then, and maybe the Executive will confirm today that it will ditch its ludicrous plans to send young mums to jail because they cannot control their teenage tearaway children. It is important that we deal with—and that we be tough with—offending youths and that we do not penalise struggling mothers.
Will the member give way?
I want to elaborate on that point.
I mention in particular a case that David McLetchie highlighted in the chamber of a youngster who was turning 15 and who had committed almost 300 offences involving theft, vandalism and violence, but whose three older brothers and two younger sisters had not behaved in such a way. It would have been grossly unfair to victimise the parents when the record of their other five children had presented no problem. Just as the sins of the fathers should not be visited on the sons, so the misdeeds of youths cannot always be attributed to the parents. We need a sense of perspective in that respect; it is to Cathy Jamieson's credit that she recognised that in the past.
Do the Conservatives accept that it was never the Scottish Executive's policy to jail parents for their children's problems, and that it would be wrong to say in the chamber that it ever had been?
I am grateful for Mr Rumbles's comments. I will be glad if ministers on the front bench make their position absolutely clear, because they speak with the entire weight of the Administration behind them. I hope that some of Cathy Jamieson's wise counsel will rub off on the Deputy First Minister, who apparently wishes still to lock up loving parents for not disciplining their children. Perhaps when he winds up, the minister will also clarify that point.
As I said, we want a range of disposals to be available to children's panels. We see a need either for wider powers for those panels or for the introduction of youth courts. What matters—
Will the member give way?
Given her principled stand on the issues and the change from the previous position, I will give way to the member.
I presume that I should take that as a compliment. On the question of parental responsibility and parents ending up in jail, could Lord James Douglas-Hamilton outline his position on parents who do not take the responsibility for sending their children to school, thereby denying their children the liberation that education offers to all our young people?
Johann Lamont is absolutely right that parents should be given maximum encouragement to act responsibly, but it is wrong to penalise them unfairly. Let us be realistic; if a mother is sent to prison, that mother will be in no position to help her children. The people that we want to concentrate on are the teenage tearaways, and that is precisely what we would do.
In each and every case, the most appropriate disposal should be given to the person concerned. That would mean making the full range of community sentences available throughout the system, to children's panels and to youth courts. In working out the best contributions that can be made by individuals to the community, the needs and aspirations of victims, as well as of offenders, should be taken into account.
It makes sense to use electronic tagging where appropriate, as an alternative to remand, in cases in which the protection of the public is not under threat. However, we must ensure the effectiveness of the tagging system, because commission of further offences while tagged is not unknown. Where the protection of the public is under threat, we believe that the punishment should fit the crime and that sentences should mean what they say. We do not believe that remission should be an automatic right. Instead, we want sentences that better reflect the decisions that are passed down by the courts. We argue for more realistic sentences that have deterrent value, so that everybody can and will feel properly protected.
The sanction of imprisonment is used in only 13 per cent of sentences, so alternatives to imprisonment should not be used as an excuse to empty prisons of dangerous criminals. Instead, community-based alternatives should be used wherever they are appropriate and where they will guide accused persons back onto the straight and narrow.
Against the background of people spending longer in prison and more people being in prison, where does deterrence come in? As far as one can see, prison does not seem to be a very effective deterrent.
That depends on the crime. A person who has committed a dangerous crime and is a threat to the community should be in prison until they no longer pose a threat. We do not see remission as an automatic right; we believe that it is a right that should be earned. We would not give automatic entitlement to it, which is an entirely different approach from that which is taken by Robert Brown.
There is also an overwhelming need for more resources for prosecutors. As I said, we want an overhaul of the courts system, starting with more resources for prosecutors. We must have more fiscals operating at the sharp end. It is no good to have police officers out there arresting criminals if those criminals never come to trial and are never punished. The worse the log-jam gets, the easier it is for offenders to work the system to their benefit. We believe that we must tackle all ends of the justice system to restore confidence and effectiveness.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton is a fair man, and I know that he would acknowledge the additional resources that the Administration is giving to the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service. Perhaps he can tell us what his party did to support that service when he had responsibility for home affairs in a Conservative Government. I do not remember much being done at a time when police were catching criminals but could not satisfactorily bring them to justice because of inadequate funding of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service under the previous Conservative Government.
The problem that fiscals face now is infinitely greater. The Deputy First Minister will remember that the Chhokar inquiry report made it quite clear that fiscals were overworked and had inadequate resources. That report made a strong recommendation for more effort to be made in that connection. I am pleased that the minister is responding, but I have to say that, since 1997, numbers of police have gone down substantially. We believe that there is also a great need for far more police officers in neighbourhoods. That is extremely important.
We believe that alternatives to custody should not include sending 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds to children's hearings when they commit offences that should be dealt with by the courts. Far from helping young offenders back on to the straight and narrow, doing that, delaying effective punishment or considering plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility would send out the wrong signal and invite higher crime rates.
In pursuing a policy in which there are sufficient alternatives to custody, it is essential that we ensure that there are more police officers on the beat. It was remarkable that The Sun reported on 6 May that just 30 cops were free to tackle crime in the centre of Edinburgh, while 60 traffic wardens were out chasing motorists.
Our vision is of a neighbourly society reclaiming the streets. We want to reduce the fear of crime and we propose earlier intervention in order to reduce reoffending. To do that, we need a substantial increase in the number of police officers and we need to ensure that there are enough prosecutors in place to back them up.
Will the member give way?
I must continue; my time is running out.
The member is in his final minute.
We must discuss the matter, because the prisons are packed to capacity. The Minister for Justice will have anguished decisions to make if he is to retain the confidence of the Parliament and the people. I hope that there will be consistency in sentencing patterns and conferences on tariffs for judges.
We are determined to do everything in our power to pioneer a return to safer communities and streets, which should be free of crime and the fear of crime. In the jubilee year, we will do everything possible to safeguard the Queen's peace, which is no more than every Scot's birthright.
I move amendment S1M-3149.1, to leave out from "commends" to end and insert:
"warns against the widespread extension of soft non-custodial sentences simply to empty Scotland's overcrowded prisons without sufficient regard to the protection of the public; notes with concern the plans paraded by the Scottish Executive to send the parents of young offenders to jail, and calls upon the Executive to put in place sufficient resources to make Scotland a safer place in which to live and work."
I am proud to open for the Scottish Labour party and to explain why the safety and security of Scotland's families are at the heart of Labour's plans. I am also proud to set out how the proper balance of punishment and rehabilitation fits in with our democratic socialist values and to welcome the Executive's and the Labour party's plans to take new action, which is clearly needed.
We have heard that the UK locks up more people proportionately than almost any other European country does. It is slightly disturbing that that rate is increasing while Portugal's is falling. There is no doubt that we will soon top that unenviable league. Is that because we are the most criminally minded nation in Europe? I think not. The Executive and I believe that we need safe and appropriate alternatives to custody and imprisonment where it is justified and necessary.
We all remember Tony Blair first speaking of Labour being tough on crime in 1997. Some expressed surprise at that, but it was no surprise to me or to others in the Labour party. We know that the brunt of crime and anti-social behaviour is borne by people in communities that we represent. Muggings, assaults and drug dealing must be dealt with firmly and harshly, but we must also deal with low-level harassment, verbal abuse and knocks on doors with stones and eggs, which make lives miserable. Such offences also have victims.
Some members have spoken of confusion and uncertainty in the past couple of weeks—indeed, at one point, we were told that youth disorder is not really a problem. The news from the front line is that it is a problem and the Labour party recognised that some time ago. What matters most is not who said what, when and to whom, but the difference that policies will make to the lives of ordinary people who share our concerns.
I want to make things plain. I am proud that the Labour party and our Liberal Democrat colleagues in the Scottish Executive are taking firm and innovative action to deal with crime and disorder. We are committed to challenging and changing the behaviour of young offenders, with an investment of £25 million in community programmes for young offenders. We will not shy away from punishing persistent young offenders who commit a vastly disproportionate level of crime.
It is also worth recognising that the reporter to the children's hearing already has the power to refer someone under the age of 16 to the procurator fiscal—such a power is not just the other way round.
I am proud that my party is working, through its democratic policy-making process, on new ideas to place before the people of Scotland in its manifesto for next year's elections. I am a member of the Scottish Labour party policy forum and I take my duties on that forum very seriously. The debate within the party on crime and justice is central to the forum. Other Labour members and I see that a small number of young people are causing a disproportionate number of problems in our communities. For the vast majority of children in trouble, the children's hearings system provides a route out of offending, but it does not do so for a very small minority. In the same way, our adult courts have difficulty in dealing with a small number of persistent adult offenders. I do not want to resort to the ultimate sanction of taking away a child's liberty and I do not want to have to extend anti-social behaviour orders to those under the age of 16. However, if that is the sort of radical action that is needed to give respite to some of our communities, perhaps we will have to consider making those difficult decisions.
If we give parents every opportunity to play their part, if we offer them help to help their children and ask them to act responsibly, and if they wilfully refuse to do so, it is incumbent on us to introduce measures such as parenting orders. I do not want to see parents being locked up for refusing to play their part, but there is a fine line between a child's behaviour being beyond parental control and a parent refusing to exercise parental control.
Does Mr Barrie agree that if we are going to deal with this problem we must be fairly thoughtful about it? Does he support the excellent truancy pilot scheme that was introduced by a Labour minister—Sam Galbraith—and piloted at Alloa? It has been very effective. Truants often go on to become young offenders, but in this case the truants went to the pilot scheme and to the people in that unit rather than to their parents, and that arrangement worked.
I agree with Mr Raffan. One of the most damning statistics is the disproportionate amount of crime that is caused when youngsters truant from school. That is one of the major problems. If we tackle the truancy problem within our schools, there is a good chance that we will also tackle the youth offending rate.
Some members have said that anti-social behaviour orders do not work, as they are too difficult to enforce and too time consuming to obtain. Like all innovations, they take time to bed down, but I find it interesting that different local authorities are having different experiences. For example, 32 anti-social behaviour orders have been granted in my own Labour-controlled authority in Fife. Communities have been spared further problems in 32 instances of anti-social behaviour.
In neighbouring Clackmannanshire, which is SNP controlled, not one anti-social behaviour order has been granted. Perhaps the Deputy Minister for Justice could tell me whether that is because there are no instances of anti-social behaviour in Clackmannanshire. I very much doubt it.
Does Mr Barrie accept that Labour-controlled Inverclyde has more than double the population of Clackmannanshire and also has no anti-social behaviour orders?
I was making the point that the situation varies. I took the example of two local authorities that I know well—my own local authority and one not three miles from my constituency boundary.
Both Executive action and Labour party action are important. Both are a million miles from the policies of our political opponents, the nationalists and the Tories. We expect no better from the Tories. They still do a fine line in the rhetoric of lock ‘em up and throw away the key. However, Phil Gallie, not a person with whom I would necessarily agree, admitted recently that the failure of the Tories' policies on crime was lamentable. He also lamented the inaction of the Conservatives on the victims agenda. That agenda is now being addressed in the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill, which is before the Parliament. Such action is long overdue. While the Conservatives are full of rhetoric, Labour is addressing the real issues. The Conservative party's 2001 general election manifesto made no mention of alternatives to custody or challenging the behaviour of young offenders.
Will the member give way?
No thank you.
Even the Conservatives' recent proposal to allow no television, no videos, no Game Boy and no Pokémon does not offer an effective way in which to challenge offending behaviour.
The Tories' failure and confusion pale beside the hypocrisy, bandwagon jumping and sheer crass populism of the nationalists. For example, let us take compensation orders, which are a fine by any other name. While attacking suggestions that parents should be penalised through the welfare system, Roseanna Cunningham, Michael Matheson and several other SNP members called for parents to be fined. Will one of the SNP members explain what would happen if the fines were not paid? What would the next step of enforcement be?
If the member had listened closely to what was said, he would know that compensation orders would not be applied only in financial terms but could involve repairing damage to property. Both physical work and financial penalties could be involved.
That is called the children's panel system.
Exactly. That system is in place and is well used—I have been involved with it. I want to know what enforcement would be required when financial compensation orders were not paid.
The SNP's justice spokesperson said that its proposal on secure accommodation places was the first properly costed commitment for the SNP's manifesto. We have it straight from the horse's mouth that all the other measures that SNP members have gone on about for the past three years are mere rhetoric. They are uncosted, wish-list, fantasy proposals from their fantasy economics.
In considering the Scottish prison estates review, the Parliament and its justice committees have been rightly concerned about the rehabilitative aspect of custody. I am on the record as stressing that issue when the Minister for Justice made his statement on the review last month. If it is important to consider rehabilitation for adults in prison, it is equally important to consider rehabilitation for youngsters in the secure accommodation system. When costing her expensive secure-places pledge, what research evidence on rehabilitative impact did Roseanna Cunningham consider? Perhaps as important—given her stance in the public-private prisons debate—is she proposing that secure places should be provided by the private sector, as is the case for most places at present?
I spoke earlier about the small number of youngsters who cause a disproportionate amount of difficulty. Of the million or so youngsters in Scotland who are under 16, 0.2 per cent are a problem. By anyone's standards, that is a small percentage. As I have said, our children's hearings system works well. It compares favourably with the youth justice system south of the border and is envied by those who work in that system. I have said this before and I make no apology for repeating it: prior to 1990, when national standards were introduced into the criminal justice social work service, the courts received an incredibly variable service. Since 1990, the situation has improved dramatically. The approach is now more consistent, more measurable and fairer.
I ask the Minister for Justice and the Minister for Education and Young People to consider seriously a proposal that would provide adequate resources for the children's hearings system to ensure that disposals from that system are dealt with in the same way as in the courts.
In any justice system, it is important to have disposals that punish the criminal and protect the victim. For some offenders, prison is the only alternative, but for others, community disposals are appropriate both for the offender and for society. The Executive's way is to use alternatives to custody when they are safe and appropriate and to use imprisonment when it is justified and necessary. That is what members are asked to vote on today.
Recent debates on youth crime have brought the issue of crime and punishment to the fore. Although members may differ in the approaches that they take towards the criminal justice system, I hope that we all agree that the system should be designed to create a safer, more secure society. We must find the correct balance between punishment, deterrence, exclusion by incarceration and the rehabilitative opportunities that are offered by non-custodial options. We should recognise that, for many offenders, non-custodial sentences are usually significantly more challenging than prison. Alternatives to custody should not be thought of as an easy option, as the Tories have suggested.
There are times when prison must be used and the use of long prison sentences for our most violent and persistent criminals is necessary. However, a significant number of those whom we imprison do not pose a serious threat to society. We must find ways of dealing with those offenders that challenge their behaviour and offer the opportunity for change. We must examine the sentencing options that are available for groups of offenders such as fine defaulters and those who serve short sentences.
Community service orders have been available to our courts for around 30 years and have provided sentencers with an alternative to custody. However, I believe that the time has come to review the way in which CSOs work. When CSOs were introduced, the relationship between hard drug taking and criminal behaviour was much less pronounced. Today, there is a far greater likelihood that those who are given a CSO will have a serious drug problem. It is self-evident that, when a convicted criminal has a chaotic lifestyle as a result of drug or alcohol misuse, they are highly unlikely to be able to comply with the demands of a community service order. If we do not take steps to deal with the underlying drug problems, the chances are that the use of a community service order will fail. We must ensure that, when it is appropriate, community service orders are preceded by, or run concurrently with, drug treatment and testing orders.
A similar recommendation was made by the Halliday report, "Making Punishments Work", which was published by the Home Office and relates to English and Welsh law. The report states:
"courts should have the power to impose a single, non-custodial penalty made up of specified elements, including: programmes to tackle offending behaviour; treatment for substance abuse or mental illness; compulsory work; curfew and exclusion orders; electronic monitoring; and reparation to victims and communities. Supervision would be used to manage and enforce the sentence, and support resettlement."
I spoke recently to SACRO and know that it is also keen for sentencers to be provided with appropriate information, support and training regarding the range of non-custodial sentences that are available.
The Halliday report also proposes the introduction of custody plus—a scheme whereby the sentence is split between a period in prison followed by a period of supervision and rehabilitation. At first sight, that may appear to be a soft option but, with custody plus, the sentence means what it says. If a convicted person is sentenced to six months, they are jailed for part of that period and released under supervision for the remainder. During the supervision period, prisoners are liable to be recalled to prison on breach of conditions. That contrasts with the traditional sentence, which often leads to early release. I ask the minister to examine the possibility of creating similar sentencing options in Scotland.
There are no easy answers to the problem of finding effective sentences. Alternatives to custody are not always popular with the general public, but finding effective ways of reducing crime in our communities is a common aim. If alternatives to custody prove to be effective in dealing with a certain section of those who offend, we must ensure that those options are available to our courts and that the infrastructure is in place to ensure that community-based sentences are delivered effectively.
I have three points to make. First, the status quo is not an option. Although we have heard numerous partisan speeches from members of all parties, we accept the fact that the status quo cannot continue and that the situation has to change and be addressed.
My second point—which I will address in greater detail in due course—is that alternatives to custody are not soft options. I think that all members have taken it as read that some people must be imprisoned because they are a danger to the public; it is also taken as read that some youngsters must be placed in secure units. One irony about those whom we require to place in secure units is that they are a danger not only to the public but often to themselves. They require to be remanded in a secure unit not only because they may endanger someone else's life, but because they are often a danger to their own lives through suicide or something else.
My third point is that we need to resource non-custodial alternatives. They may be expensive but there are social and economic benefits to be accrued as well as cost savings. Those three matters must be addressed because there is a problem. The status quo is not tenable; it is a blight on our society. We should be ashamed that the number of prisoners per thousand of the Scottish population is significantly high compared with the situation in not only western Europe, but the whole of Europe. That is something that we all—
On a point of order, Presiding Officer. As a matter of courtesy, if nothing else, after a speaker has finished speaking during a debate, should they not stay behind and listen to the following speaker?
There are no rules to that effect, but the Presiding Officers have commented that it is appropriate for members to remain in the chamber after they have spoken. Mr MacAskill can continue.
There is a saying that when one is in a hole, one should stop digging. Perhaps the analogy in criminal justice would be to say that if banging up people in prisons is not working then perhaps we should stop building prisons. We must consider a better way.
Another shameful matter that has not been addressed is the fact that, demographically, given the decline in the number of youngsters, there should have been a decline in the percentage of youngsters in the prison population. I remember being a practising defence agent in the 1980s and 1990s; the number of youngsters going through the system then was going down, not because Edinburgh was becoming better behaved but because the percentage of youngsters was declining in our society. That is where, pro rata, much of the problem exists. The SNP has said—and there is a political acceptance in Scotland of the matter—that as we have a declining population, with all the problems that go with that, we should have some dividend in terms of the size of the prison population. That that has not happened is a problem.
We must also recognise that non-custodial alternatives are not a soft option. I am not the only former defence agent in the Parliament who will have heard people say that doing time is the easier option. Those who say that are often recidivists or the hardest offenders. They would rather do a short period in prison than do a non-custodial alternative. Therefore, we must stop believing that banging up people in prison is a way of dealing with them. Those who are serious offenders and who are dangerous to others must be dealt with in that way, but banging up those who are not a danger to others is expensive and is not working. We must consider alternatives.
Will the member take an intervention?
Will the member take an intervention?
No. Mr MacAskill has just gone into his last minute.
There are cost options. Putting people in prison is damaging to them and their families and gives a licence to learn in academies of crime. In my days as a practising defence agent, I represented people from Greenwich in south London who carried out armed robberies in Bonnybridge and Livingston. They did so because they had been on remand with prisoners from Scotland who told them that there were easily accessible places that they could go and rob. They did so because they had learned how and where to do the robberies when they were in prison. We must recognise that if we are to prevent the fragmenting of our families we must keep people out of prison, especially fine defaulters and women prisoners. The social and economic costs of banging up those who are not necessarily a danger to others are greater than the cost of providing the necessary resources. We must provide the resources.
No matter how partisan some speeches have been, there seems to be a consensus on the three matters to which I have referred. We need to work around the consensus that the status quo is not an option, that alternatives to custody are not necessarily a soft option and that we must provide the necessary resources. Providing the resources will free up other methods that will provide cost savings.
There has been a degree of hypocrisy today in comments that have been made on the evils of prison. In other debates in the Scottish Parliament—whether they have been on the abuse of women and children, people dealing in drugs or parents who refuse to send their children to school—the use of prison has been advocated by members in parties across the chamber.
There is also a degree of hypocrisy in the Deputy First Minister talking about tagging as if it were a new initiative by the Scottish Executive. In relation to the Crime and Punishment (Scotland) Act 1997, Michael Forsyth raised the idea of tagging. At that time, out of 101 people who responded to a Government consultation paper on the issue, only one—me—was in favour of tagging and everyone else was against it. Representatives of the parties of all of those who were against tagging sit in the benches opposite today.
I remember the debates on that subject in 1996 and assure Mr Gallie that the SNP did not set its face against tagging. I know that because I was the person speaking for the party at the time.
I referred specifically to the 101 responses to the consultation paper, not to the debates. Only one response was in favour—it came from me and I was ridiculed for it at the time. Perhaps the message from that is that we could make better progress if ministers listened more often to my ideas on such issues.
I go along with Kenny MacAskill's comments on prisoner numbers. However, Scott Barrie had a point when he said that I had criticised the previous Tory Government's policies. The matter I referred to was the introduction by Tory ministers of methods of reducing prison sentences by 50 per cent automatically. I believed that to be wrong at the time and I believe that it has proved to be wrong. I challenge all members to consider that policy and come to a position that sentences should mean what they say they mean and ensure that any remission is earned. It is not only the punitive element of prison that is important but the rehabilitation element. It is important that we try to get some good out of sending people to prison. As Kenny MacAskill said, there is no benefit for the individual when they are sent to prison for a short period and only slight respite for society.
The problems that are faced by the Procurator Fiscal Service were mentioned. Perhaps if people who had been sentenced to serve sentences of a reasonable length served those sentences, we would not clog up the Procurator Fiscal Service and the remand system to the extent that they are clogged up today.
We think of rehabilitation in prison as presenting an opportunity to wean people off drugs and take them away from the drug scene. Could the minister confirm that it is now the practice in Scottish prisons to wean people off drugs when they enter prison but to prepare them to re-enter society by weaning them back on to drugs again before they leave prison? I believe that to be the case, but I will accept the minister's word if he says that it is not.
Mike Rumbles has been shouting about flogging while I have been speaking. I will not disappoint him and will rise to his bait by issuing a challenge to him and, perhaps, Johann Lamont. I ask them to carry out a referendum in their constituencies on the issue of bringing back the birch. We cannot seriously promote that option, but it would be interesting to take the public's view on that issue.
It was Winston Churchill who said—no doubt when he was a Liberal—that one can judge how civilised a country is by the state of its prisons. I believe that the effectiveness of the penal system must be judged on its record in breaking the cycle of reoffending. That means that the emphasis must be on rehabilitation rather than punishment. That is not being soft on crime, it is being sensible on crime.
I was glad to read that the editorial in The Herald on 10 May shared that view. It said:
"Rehabilitation is the proper way to combat recidivism".
As the editorial said, we do not need the
"headline-grabbing, superficial populist panaceas"
of which we have heard far too much in recent weeks. We need the thoughtful and intelligent approach of the Minister for Justice that dismisses crude knee-jerk reactions and policy that is made on the hoof.
That debate is for another day, because today's debate goes back a stage. Too many people are sent to prison who should not be. In an earlier intervention, I quoted HM chief inspector of prisons Clive Fairweather's view that 50 per cent of the female prison population in Scotland could be dealt with by different measures. Too many are sent to prison for minor offences: 84 per cent served less than three months in 2000. Too many are being sent to prison for fine default. Indeed, in the last decade, more were sent to prison for fine default than on a direct sentence.
Far too many drug addicts are also sent to prison. The latest figures—which the Minister for Justice, when I asked him a few weeks ago, said were the most robust figures—say that we have 55,000 injecting heroin addicts in Scotland. Those figures are from Neil McKeganey from the centre for drug misuse research.
The figure of 55,000 is the estimate of total drug users; 23,000 is the figure for injecting heroin addicts.
I do not agree with that, but I will not get into an argument with the minister. I am speaking in support of him today; indeed, I will encourage him to go further. I hear that he has occasionally had a hard time in other meetings, but I want to give him support in the chamber.
The Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee's report on its inquiry into drug misuse and deprived communities made the point that, in Glasgow alone, property to the value of £190 million was stolen or shoplifted to finance drug habits. I understand that the latest figure is 50 per cent above that, at about £300 million. That means that the figure in Scotland as a whole must be well above the £540 million that was estimated in that report when I was a member of that committee.
I welcome the apparent success of the DTTOs and the drugs courts. The DTTO pilot has apparently reduced addicts' drug habits by 90 per cent. The average cost of a DTTO is a quarter of a 12-month prison sentence—just under £8,000 compared to £28,000. The drugs courts pilot has also been successful, with 80 per cent of those appearing before such courts completing their orders. We have been much more successful north of the border than south of the border with DTTOs and drugs courts and, indeed, with the methadone programme, which is internationally acknowledged to be far more effective in Scotland than in England and Wales. A significant amount of money has also been saved because of the reduction in drug crime.
I agree with the minister on pilots and the evaluation of pilots. However, when such pilots are regarded as successful, we must be ready to roll out such programmes further and faster, as we want to do. That means more community programmes and more residential beds, not the ridiculously low 120 that we have in Scotland. Florence Nightingale had more beds in the Crimea. I will have more to say on residential beds later, if I catch the Presiding Officer's eye in the members' business debate. We need halfway houses and we need to shorten the waiting time for the methadone programme. We want to get addicts into treatment when they are at rock bottom. We do not want to have to make them wait so that they relapse and get back into the cycle of drug addiction.
We must take a radical approach and a sensible approach. The Minister for Justice is following just such a sensible approach.
The use of imprisonment is still and will probably always be the ultimate sanction in sentencing, as we will, I hope, never see the reintroduction of the death penalty in Britain—although, from listening to Phil Gallie about 20 minutes ago, I am not sure what current Conservative thinking on that is. The upward trend in the use of prisons coincides with the increase in the average length of sentencing. Scottish courts remain consistently tough in their dispensation of Scottish justice.
The Tory amendment
"warns against the widespread extension of … non-custodial sentences simply to empty Scotland's overcrowded prisons".
That is the only bit of the amendment with which I agree, in that the strategy on alternatives to custody should not be a response to overcrowding, but a strategy that provides a better way to reduce reoffending in the longer term. It is vital that we break the vicious circle of drug taking that can lead to offending that can lead to a fine that is not paid that can ultimately lead to jail. The recent success of the DTTOs is exciting news, as diversionary schemes have an important place in the infrastructure of the types of responses that are needed in a democracy such as Scotland.
The same is true of women offenders, who are caught up in a vicious circle of prostitution and drug taking and usually end up in Cornton Vale prison. These women's lives could only become more chaotic and desperate with further short periods of imprisonment. Prison might be viewed as a hard option, but it achieves absolutely nothing for them. It is a fact that there are not enough suitable alternatives to custody for women, and it is about time that more were made available.
The Prison Reform Trust has stated that the number of women who pose a danger to society could probably be counted on one hand. The development of the first time-out centre in Scotland, which has been mentioned by my colleague Sylvia Jackson, is a crucial one. It cannot be put in place quickly enough. I hope that the minister is listening to the point that I have to make about this. We should not make the same mistakes that we did about the management of secure units, which are not a demand-led resource.
Glasgow City Council has been given the opportunity to run the first tender for Scotland's first time-out centre for women. It will primarily benefit Glasgow women prisoners—and rightly so, because they constitute the largest number of women in prison—but I believe that that centre should be a national resource and that, where appropriate, women from elsewhere should benefit from it. I look forward to the development of other time-out centres around the country, and I would like the minister to advise Parliament, if he is able to do so, of the timetable for other such centres.
There is a place for tagging, mediation, restorative justice and orders for lifelong restriction, and there may even be a place for further diversion for young offenders. However, before we set in stone the new infrastructure—and I support the phrase that Roseanna Cunningham used earlier in this regard—to allow a sophisticated approach to be taken to serious crime, we must first ensure that our objectives are clear and that the measures that we take are appropriate to the problem.
In our approach to young persons' offending, the children's hearings system has to be strengthened as a matter of priority, and the range of disposals available has to be broadened. It is the under-16 age group that should be addressed first.
I welcome the £10 million increase in the budget of the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service, but I ask the minister to assure Parliament that the additional finance will be used on front-line services for procurators fiscal.
I welcome the debate and sense that there is quite a bit of consensus in the Parliament on this subject—a consensus on which we should build.
The tabloid newspapers would have us believe that anything other than a lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key approach means being soft on crime. As someone who spent many years at the coalface of criminal justice social work, I can say that nothing could be further from the truth. I will never forget the time when a persistent offender who found himself on a probation order for the first time and who was having to address his offending behaviour complained to me, "Could you no just have let me do the time? This is daein ma heid in." Make no mistake: when it comes to community alternatives, many offenders would prefer the softer option of what is usually a short prison sentence, during which rehabilitation does not rear its challenging head.
There will always be offenders and offences for which a custodial sentence is the only option. Public safety must be paramount. One of the most obvious deficiencies in the current system is the scandalous shortage of secure places for young criminals, who, as Kenny MacAskill rightly said, are a risk not only to society but to themselves.
Let us accept it as our duty as elected politicians to base our policy decisions on the evidence and research that is available. It is not our job to make policy on the hoof, and we should not succumb to the latest knee-jerk reaction from a spin doctor who thinks that a particular soundbite might win a few votes.
We have to face the fact that 70 per cent of all criminal offences are committed by people under the age of 21. We have to accept that the vast majority of the young people concerned come from areas of deprivation. It is the most disadvantaged areas in our nation that suffer the double whammy of poverty and the misery of crime in their communities. Putting the offenders in jail has proved futile—the recidivism rate is over 78 per cent. There is a revolving-door syndrome of 30 days here, 60 days there and offenders come out with the same underlying problems that contributed to their offending behaviour.
I will give a wee example of what I mean. I challenged a young man about the proceeds of a burglary that he had committed, one of which he described as "a wee ring". When I asked how much he got for it, he said, "A tenner in the pub and they'll get it off their insurance." He was totally unaware that all the insurance money in the world would not replace a beloved grandmother's engagement ring.
If we want to reduce crime, we must consider what works, rather than what we think should work. My time is too short to talk about all the effective interventions that are being carried out in community sentencing, such as supervised attendance schemes and restriction of liberty orders, which have been discussed. Feedback on most of the schemes seems to have been positive.
However, as usual, I have to say that new Labour rhetoric is falling far short of new Labour reality. When I was a criminal justice social worker during the awful Tory years, many of my colleagues thought that the answer to all the problems would be the return of a Labour Government, but they have found that things can only get worse.
There is a lack of resources for drug and alcohol programmes, there are huge waiting lists for detox and there is a lack of bail hostel places. Worst of all, social services are facing their biggest crisis in retention and recruitment, as we are 500 social workers short. Morale is at an all-time low. Is it any wonder that my old colleagues are saying, "See old Tories, see new Labour"? I ask ministers to give them the resources, because they will give society the results.
I welcome the healthy interest that the Liberal Democrat and Labour members have taken in the debate, an interest that is shown by the large number of Labour and Liberal Democrat members in attendance. It is crucial that we focus on alternatives to custody. They should not be about the something-for-nothing approach but about the quid pro quo approach, which will give us something for something in our communities.
As Fergus McCann once said to a famous Dutch footballer at Celtic Football Club, let us take a reality check. Let us look at our communities—for example, Dennistoun in my constituency, which Richard Simpson was kind enough to visit last week. In Dennistoun, two elderly gentleman live in such fear that they board up their windows. That is the reality in our communities. Shopkeepers in Blackhill decide not to roll up their shutters, because the windows will be smashed almost immediately. People dare not walk outside the entrance to their close for fear of youths loitering there. I could bring many other matters to the Parliament's attention.
I have reflected on the many views in the community that I have heard and that Richard Simpson heard last Thursday evening. The majority of people are in favour of a system that ensures that offenders correct their behaviour. I disagree with the point that Phil Gallie made. Most people in our communities want the end result to be that the offenders' behaviour is corrected.
Perhaps the member did not hear my comments. I pointed out the value of prison for rehabilitation That is very important indeed and relates to the point that he is making.
On the visit to Barlinnie prison that members of the Justice 1 Committee made, we met an offender who had spent three years in prison without having had an interview to decide his leaving date. There had been no preparation for his release into the community. I do not believe that prison is the best way of dealing with offenders.
The system fails when the community cannot see the offender facing up to and showing genuine remorse for their crime. Scott Barrie made the good point that disposals are available to children's reporters. My experience in my constituency—and this view is shared by many others—is that there is no evidence that those disposals are being used effectively. We must ensure that the disposals that Scott Barrie mentioned are improved and developed to ensure that people face up to their crimes in the community.
I also want to touch on a point raised by Roseanna Cunningham. There are far too many pilots for the rehabilitation of offenders. The Executive must ensure that a Government programme is rolled out throughout Scotland so that rehabilitation programmes are in place. Far too many pilots have been launched, but not tracked effectively to ensure that we are correcting the behaviour of those who offend. The effectiveness of all such programmes can be evaluated by when the two elderly gentlemen in my constituency are able to take down the boards from their windows. If they are unable to live in their community without the fear of crime, our rehabilitation programmes have not been effective.
Paul Martin is right to describe the effect of crime on individuals and local communities. The real issue that underlies today's debate is why such things happen and what we can do about them. Criminal actions are the product not of the justice system, but of deeper social problems. Many, if not the majority, of offenders suffer from mental health problems or learning difficulties. That is particularly marked among prisoners: seven out of 10 people in prison suffer from mental disorders. Another stark statistic comes from the Basic Skills Agency report, which found that 60 per cent of the prison population had literacy and numeracy skills that were so low as to make them ineligible for 96 per cent of all jobs.
Many offenders live in fractured communities in which normal role models and structures are absent. As members have said, many offenders begin as truants from school and alcohol or the need to feed a drug habit fuels a large proportion of crime. That is not the whole story, but is a large part of it. Those are the risk factors and causes of crime that we need to tackle. We cannot tackle them by knee-jerk reactions or populist solutions. Liz Barratt of Barnado's, which has long experience, said it all:
"Sending parents to jail is ridiculous and fining people already in poverty smacks of stupidity".
Scotland has one of the largest prison populations in Europe and sentences imposed by the courts are getting stiffer. Prison and detention do not work, except for the limited purpose of protecting the public, rather than deterring the offender. Protecting the public is welcome, and sometimes inevitable. However, Scottish Office research from 1998 found that punishment-based incarceration interventions were least effective at reducing recidivism because they isolate young offenders and hold back maturation. In my view, the basic problem is to get young people through the period until they are about 23 or 24 years old with the least disturbance to the public. By that time, and with luck, they may have grown up, got married or formed a relationship, settled down and stopped troubling the public.
The Tories had 18 years to try out their ideas. They really go for the lock them up, short, sharp shock stuff. If it did not work for the Tories, it will not work for anyone else. The Scottish Executive has done much to produce solutions to such problems. The action programme to reduce youth crime, support for victims, drugs courts, drug treatment and testing orders and electronic monitoring are all based on the proper form of long-term thinking. I congratulate Jim Wallace and Cathy Jamieson on their work on that.
We all know that much more needs to be done. We need more resources, more joined-up thinking and more national rolled-out programmes. The children's panel system, far from being replaced or sidelined, needs to be given the tools to do the job. In Glasgow, how can the panels do the job when the social work department is so far below its complement that it struggles to do court and panel reports, let alone supervise properly children who have been placed under supervision orders? The consequence of that and other delays means that the system often does not provide a speedy or effective response.
In concluding, I mention one other matter.
Will the member take an intervention?
I am in my last minute.
In Washington DC, a radical and successful youth court has been established. In that court, young people, some of whom have been offenders, sit in judgment on other young people. That is linked with community service. The youngsters are paid credits for being involved. Apparently, that scheme has had a dramatic effect on crime levels. I also mention the Islington experiment with acceptable behaviour contracts.
The first duty of the state is protection of the public. The public is best protected by stopping offenders from offending.
In an otherwise good debate, there have been one or two discordant voices. Some people have sought to take partisan advantage. I hope that we can rise above that and move on to the several areas on which we agree.
First of all, the Tories have adopted shock tactics by saying that somehow the bad guys will be let out and there will be dangerous people on the streets. Frankly, we can ignore that. There is consensus and agreement around the chamber that the bad guys will not be out on the streets. Any attempt to misrepresent that fact is misleading.
There is also agreement that we are talking about those people who are put into the system inappropriately. The figures have already been quoted: in 2000, 41 per cent of people who went to prison were sent there for defaulting on fines; again in 2000, 65 per cent of people who ended up in prison were not initially sentenced to imprisonment but ended up in prison nonetheless. The Scottish Parliament information centre revealed those figures this afternoon.
For many people, the option of going to prison has proved to be ridiculously expensive and utterly futile. I think that we agree with what Mr Wallace said about the need to allow lives to resume so that people can structure their rehabilitation.
I have some suggestions about the scale and range of available measures. I am afraid that the measures available depend upon resources. We know about the bills that are going through Parliament at the moment. We know about the additional measures in the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill to which the minister referred. However, we are still unclear about whether the additional funding will be available to match those measures. We also have a quote from SACRO:
"We know that the judiciary is frustrated at present because the full range of community sentences is not available in every court and capacity is limited by resources."
That is not a party-political point.
Even where there is good practice—and I recognise the evidence of an 85 per cent success rate for supervised attendance orders—we must roll out those schemes more quickly, as Paul Martin said. In one of his usual asides, Kenny Gibson said, "All of these pilots—are any of them landing?" That is the right question because we must ensure that such schemes are rolled out much more quickly.
On innovation, the SNP has tried to bring something new to the debate. I would like there to be more debate about unit fines. Roseanna Cunningham listed the eight countries in Europe that are using unit fines. We should at least examine that as a proportionate means of making sure that offenders are tackled effectively.
The subject of restorative justice has also not been addressed properly. The Executive is seeking coherence for its strategy. I understood that that was the point of including victim statements in the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Bill. The Executive's philosophy on justice was meant to be going that way. If that is the case, let us consider more innovative means of restorative justice.
I have two questions to finish with.
Will the member take an intervention? Does he agree that we have restorative justice programmes in 16 local authorities and that the Executive proposes that those programmes will be available in all local authorities? We are undertaking such projects.
That is correct, but I am asking that the Executive considers similar schemes throughout the world. Most of the countries in the new world are way ahead of Scotland on restorative justice. We have a great deal more to learn and we do not have any room for complacency.
On rehabilitation in prison, given that 82 per cent of custodial sentences are for less than six months and 55 per cent are for less than three months, is it possible that we are not catching people at the right point in their sentences? Many programmes do not kick in until a later stage. Is there a more appropriate point—not after a week but perhaps after a month—when we could start to rehabilitate people? I do not know the answer. I simply ask the minister to consider those questions.
We should consider the international situation. There is a range of United Nations charters on the subject. The UN Standard Minimum Rules for Non-custodial Measures, or the Tokyo rules, is one example that the minister will be aware of. There are two important things for us to take forward. The first is international co-operation in research and technical assistance and the second is comparative studies. We do not need to reinvent the wheel in Scotland. There is a lot of good work out there. I know that Richard Simpson tends to look to international examples and I hope that he will do so.
Finally, on the question of public involvement, the evidence that the Justice 1 Committee took was clear: the public in Scotland hold many misconceptions, but if we come up with alternatives and sell them properly, people will accept them. If we give no alternatives and simply implement change in a vacuum, it will not go forward. If we use the mass media properly, if we have a conversation with people and if we inform, consult and engage, we can go forward. There is a consensus in this chamber that it is time for change. Let that change not be implemented in a vacuum and let it be informed.
I am happy to declare an interest: I have recently rejoined the Howard League for Penal Reform.
I welcome the debate and its tone, but I am concerned by the Conservative amendment. Lord James has applied his undoubted experience and intelligence but has come up with an amendment that fundamentally undermines the consensus in the rest of the chamber on restorative justice, as members have clearly expressed in their speeches.
I wish to add a couple of details that have not been mentioned. First, in her speech about the ring and the granny, I thought that Kay Ullrich was going to talk about an effective strategy of getting the criminal to meet the victim and to listen to and talk through the victim's story. That strategy has been tried in a few places and I believe that it has been extremely effective in deterring young people from committing further crimes. In fact, it has been remarkably effective in many cases—up to 70 per cent effective.
The second detail that I wish to add to the debate relates to an experiment that has been effective in Europe. For people who are in jobs and who have families, night jails have been used, where appropriate. They allow people to carry on with their work and to meet their family briefly, but they still provide the punishment of the deprivation of liberty.
There are also weekend jails.
I thank Roseanna Cunningham for that.
I pay tribute to those who have explained so carefully and in detail the problems of people who are in jail. I believe strongly that banging people up in jail is not a soft option. In fact, when we bang people up in jail, we stop thinking and we abandon our collective responsibility to them. Robert Brown and Keith Raffan explained the problems that people in jail face. I pay tribute to Keith Raffan's work over the past three years as convener of the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on drug misuse, which has kept the issue before us. The huge majority of people in our jails have enormous problems, which we are not addressing by banging them up.
Finally, I stress my total agreement with what Robert Brown and Scott Barrie said of the importance of the children's panel system. There is a danger that the system will not be able to work as effectively as it should because we are not funding it or social services to the extent that we should. I worked happily on a children's panel, although it was difficult. The system is one of the jewels in the crown of what we do in Scotland to help young people who get into trouble.
I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate. Issues relating to crime, disorder and what I describe as community bullying matter hugely to my constituents and to people across Scotland. That should be not just a pious assertion, but a view that shapes and determines Scottish Executive, police and judicial priorities.
I will reflect on youth crime and disorder. In any strategy to deal with crime of whatever nature, victims' rights are central. Those rights can be acknowledged in simple ways, such as the way in which a person is treated when they report a crime, the police's response and how people are kept informed of what has happened to those who perpetrate crimes. The crucial first step is acknowledging that a crime has been committed, that the crime is unacceptable and that it deserves a response. The concern is expressed repeatedly that youth disorder is not even recorded or acted on. I would welcome the minister's comments on how such under-recording or non-recording will be monitored and addressed.
The debate is often falsely characterised to be divided between those who think and care about the causes of crime and those who are thuggish, who care little about the causes of crime and who want to lock offenders up and throw away the key. I have had discussions with people who wish to characterise the debate in that way and wish to characterise my approach as unthinking. They say, "The trouble is that people just want to lock offenders up." If upwards of 20 youngsters were outside my door, harassing my neighbours and me and intimidating my children, I, too, might want them to be locked up. I think that that would be true of everybody.
If we want to win people round to the argument that non-custodial options are serious, we must convince them that such options will have an obvious impact on their experience. The challenge is to make non-custodial options credible not only in theory, but in reality in our communities.
As a teacher, I worked for many years with young people who were marginalised and who often displayed difficult behaviour. A constant balance had to be struck in my classroom, as it had to be elsewhere, between the individual's needs and the broader group's rights.
That balance must also be struck in the broader community. We must understand why people offend and, at a point, we must deal with offending behaviour. We do young people no service by telling them that they do not need and deserve that. In addressing youth disorder in our communities, we must acknowledge that youngsters in general are being stigmatised and, more seriously, can suffer violence and limits on their actions. In challenging youth disorder, we often assert the rights of young people.
Non-custodial options are important weapons in our armoury, but custody can work for some and a false division exists between the tough and the soft. In some circumstances, prison is the appropriate sanction. When offenders are in jail, work can be done with them. We must ensure that non-custodial options are constantly evaluated and that, like all good youth work, they are seriously challenging. The consequences should be visible for victims of offending and for people who might otherwise be drawn into disorder.
Diversion from court and non-custodial options are sensitive issues. We may think that they are rational, but it is important that society marks out serious and unacceptable crimes. That is why women's organisations have argued long and hard that domestic abuse cases should not be subject to pre-court diversion, because society should take such crimes seriously, regardless of their underlying causes. Sometimes, the greatest distress has been caused by a disposal that seems to belittle the experience and feelings of people who have suffered as victims of crime.
The biggest challenge that we face is closing the gap between the experience of crime in our communities and the response of those who are responsible for approaches to crime. We have a serious job to do, because victims have no faith in the system and feel that the approaches that are being adopted almost wilfully fly in the face of their experience. We must be open-minded, vigilant about what does and does not work and responsive to what people in our communities say about their experiences.
Only a few members have been in the position of imposing custodial sentences, far less their alternatives. During my justice of the peace training and while I sat on the bench, the sentencing options were relatively few. On a finding of guilt, most disposals were by way of a fine or a term of imprisonment, but I remember the days before fiscal fivers. We could not hand down a custodial sentence unless we had seen for ourselves what we were committing miscreants to. Visiting establishments to which I might consign convicted people was a sobering experience. I remember my first visit to Barlinnie, which was some 10 or 11 years ago. I also remember a more recent visit. We still have slopping out, so there is not much change there.
Sixty days was the limit that I could impose on consecutive sentences. To the best of my recollection I never handed down a maximum sentence, although I was always happy to see a higher court take over when I thought that my powers were not sufficient.
Some of the newer options would have been useful tools, even at district court level. Drug treatment and testing orders would have been helpful, as many of the cases that I heard had drug misuse overtones. It was depressing to see so many offenders whom I knew had made, or would make, regular appearances before me or colleagues. We must do more to help those who are suffering in that way by providing rehabilitation in the community. We should do that rather than force offenders to commit crimes to get help.
I would also have found community service orders to be a popular disposal. There should be a strong link between those who are convicted and their victims. The people who always seem to feel left out of proceedings are the victims.
Community service orders allow a person to stay at home. One of my biggest complaints is that the justice system bends over backwards to be fair to the accused but seems to say to hell with the consequences for the victim. I am sure that other MSPs share that sentiment, which goes some way towards explaining why the Minister for Justice is getting such a hard time from Labour back benchers, if not from his own back benchers. The coalition can only take so much. It makes me wonder whether the car is worth it.
I would have used community service orders if they had been available to me as an option. I agree with Roseanna Cunningham that it should be obvious that someone is paying a debt to society. The main point—
Lyndsay McIntosh talked about sitting on the bench as a justice of the peace and said that she would have used community disposals if they had been available. However, the Conservative party's amendment refers to them as soft options. Which bit of the amendment does she agree with?
I will get to that point.
The main point that I wish to raise is the use of RLOs. There are a number of views of the effectiveness of wearing an unobtrusive transmitter on the wrist or ankle. Having visited the monitoring unit in East Kilbride and seen RLOs in operation, I have to declare that I am a fan of them, but I am a fan who has reservations.
I like RLOs not just because they keep down prisoner numbers but because they are a better disposal for someone who is the breadwinner in a family. One of my main concerns about jail sentences is that it is not only the convicted person who serves the sentence. Other innocent family members also suffer and that cannot be the intention—the offender, not the family, should pay the price and pay their debt to society.
In his speech, the minister mentioned that RLOs afford offenders the opportunity to renew family relationships. That is the view that I formed when I researched the matter. I also heard evidence that RLOs could put relationships at risk—it is possible to have too much of some people's company.
The dark grey or black bracelets have their uses. A full range of disposals should be used in order to make Scotland a safer place in which to live and work. Paul Martin highlighted the reality of life in his constituency and in other areas. The reality that he described cannot be acceptable. Effective use of alternatives has to be the way forward, but we must use them in the sure and certain knowledge that, where appropriate, prison will always be an option to ensure the protection and safety of the law-abiding majority.
Phil Gallie and I were probably teenagers at the same time. I remember talking about punishment with my father. We explored the possibilities of various punishments including birching, which has been mentioned today. My father told me that, in his role as a deputy medical officer for health, he had attended the birching of a boy who had burned the roof off Paisley Grammar School. He said that there were no circumstances in which he would ever advocate that kind of punishment. When my father told me that story, he had a look on his face that I will never forget.
I make no apology for suggesting that we try to reduce the number of people who need to be sentenced. Robert Brown touched on that point. Although there is no fail-safe mechanism for doing so, school staff can distinguish potential troublemakers. A sufficiency of psychologists and other support staff for the child and his or her family might go some way towards reducing the number of children who graduate to prison.
Although social inclusion with jobs, good homes, positive leisure activities and a rebirth of a sense of community interdependency would reduce crime, it would be naive to suggest that they would eliminate it altogether. We must introduce incremental mechanisms that demonstrate to the potential malefactor that he or she is on a rising scale of risk and might be in line for a court appearance or imprisonment.
Despite mentioning the Scottish Labour party about 90 times in his speech, Scott Barrie managed to touch on the subject of anti-social behaviour orders. They are a rarely shown yellow card, which if used more frequently might prevent situations that can result in court appearances and imprisonment and might minimise human misery. Like Paul Martin, I have unhappy constituents who have been harassed, abused and threatened at the hands of neighbours. The number of such criminal offences could be reduced by the use of ASBOs as a last resort. However, no mediation was offered to my constituents, who had to establish their own closed-circuit television system and compile a 9,000-word diary to collect evidence before taking out an interdict.
Inverclyde Council, which has been mentioned, has not used ASBOs at all, whereas Fife Council has used 32. That alone demonstrates the complete lack of uniformity in the application of such orders, which is unsurprising given that, in its 1999 response, the Scottish Executive left the development of ASBOs totally up to local authorities.
The number of ASBOs is small: nine were taken out in 1999 and 52 were taken out in 2000. However, the statistics for the last full year will not be available until the end of August, which is an appalling time lapse if we are trying to monitor the situation. As a small step towards reducing the need for sentencing and as a means of deterring more serious offences in the pressure-cooker atmosphere that bad neighbours induce, we should make more use of ASBOs.
Unit fines have been mentioned. In administrative terms, the payment of a fine at the bar costs £1.25, whereas imprisoning a defaulter costs £837 a day. Unit fines have an equal impact on the rich and poor, result in less fine defaulting and ensure greater consistency in sentencing and greater discretion for the sentencing judge to fit the fine to the severity of the offence. There is no need to adjust the fines in line with inflation and, because determination of the unit value is an administrative matter, court procedures are also accelerated. Moreover, as Roseanna Cunningham said, the costs of pursuing defaulters are reduced. I hope that the minister will seriously consider the measure.
I regret that I am unable to call two members who wanted to speak, as we have to move to closing speeches.
On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I am happy to support and endorse the Executive's motion. I have personal confidence in the excellent intentions of Jim Wallace, Richard Simpson and their Executive colleagues. However, although they are definitely travelling in the right direction, I am concerned that they are travelling only a few yards instead of miles in that direction. I urge the ministers to have the confidence of their own and our convictions. If they move further in that direction, they will not be stabbed in the back.
The problem is to reduce crime and to protect the public. In order to do that, we need an adequate number of modern jails with proper sanitation and rehabilitation facilities, cradle-to-grave facilities in the community and a means of encouraging people to have a better life to ensure that they do not fall into crime. We also need proper and strong—not wet and feeble—alternatives to custody to keep people out of jail.
To do that, we must invest in rolling out—to use that awful cliché—those successful local pilot schemes of which we can all give examples. Although such schemes help a dozen people here or 20 youngsters there, we need lots of them. For example, in every debate on the subject, we all say how marvellous Freagarrach is. It has been going for years, is highly successful and is cheaper than jail; however, it has never been copied or rolled out.
We need the sort of schemes that work well in individual areas to be implemented across the whole country. The evidence shows that those good alternative-to-custody schemes work better than jail and are cheaper than jail. I honestly cannot see why the hell—if I may be pardoned the expression—we do not pursue such schemes with more vigour than we do, especially as I know that both the ministers believe in them. Let us go for it.
Of all the figures that are available, there is one that I would like to quote. Seventy-six per cent of people on SACRO schemes did not reoffend within a year and 78 per cent of young people sentenced to jail did reoffend within a year. It is quite clear that sentences of six months or fewer are a complete waste of time and we should not have them.
So what do we need? First, we need a ministerial group to make proposals for reducing the prison population and to make alternatives to custody really work. We should put on ice the prison estates review until that ministerial group reports.
Secondly, we should have a national non-prison service to co-ordinate all services to keep people out of jail and to support people when they come out of jail. We need that national non-prison service to display as much determination in a better cause as the Scottish Prison Service displays in its pursuit of private jails.
Thirdly, we need real funding across the whole of Scotland for such admirable schemes as restorative justice, which involves the community, the parents, the victim and the offender. Everyone gets involved in the right sort of way. We need mediation, reparation, community service orders and adequate supervision by social workers. As Robert Brown said, social work departments are short of people. To ensure that all that was done, we could use some of the money that would be saved from the health budget, because we would greatly improve people's health by reducing their distress. We would also save some of the jail money that would not be needed for building new blocks. We should also deal with the sentencing issue by getting together with the sheriffs and helping them in other ways.
Do we accept that we in the first modern Scottish Parliament and its Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition Government will preside over the highest ever Scottish prison population, at the top of the European league? I am sure that none of us wants that. It is simply unacceptable. We must act together. Let us have some collective political leadership and determination to reduce crime by using our brains and not by pandering to ill-informed prejudices. We must win public support for this cause. Scots are not worse than other people; they merely suffer under a worse system.
I must confess to a prejudice. I do not like people who commit crime. However, the purpose of this afternoon's debate, and the Executive's purpose, is to keep people out of prison. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that, provided that public safety is not prejudiced.
As the minister frankly admitted, serious and violent offenders must go to prison, but what of the others? The others who are going to prison may not have committed particularly serious or violent crimes in many cases, but they are persistent offenders and the problems that such people cause in society should not be underestimated. However, it is clear that we should explore the available alternatives to custody. Those alternatives are frequently not used and we must ask why that is the case. As Jim Wallace recently admitted, the courts feel that alternatives to custody do not work and they do not have confidence in them. The public see them as a soft option, as indeed they are in some cases.
Let us consider some facts. In answer to a recent parliamentary question, Richard Simpson told me that a quarter of community service orders are breached. Social work departments regard a 75 per cent compliance rate as satisfactory. Community service orders are made as a direct alternative to custody. Frankly, a 50 per cent compliance rate clearly sends out the wrong message.
I say to Jim Wallace, with respect, that his figures were slightly misleading. It is obvious that more people who have come out of prison reoffend than those on community service, but that is because they were much more persistent and serious offenders, otherwise they would not have been in prison in the first place. That must be considered.
We wish the drugs courts all the best. However, there are interesting matters to consider. In Glasgow, it is not regarded as worthy of sanction that only four out of six appointments for drug testing are kept. I thought that a drugs court would insist that a person stay clear of drugs, but that is not the case—apparently, it is recognised that such people will still be on drugs. Is it not unfair that the quickest way of getting on to a drug rehabilitation course is to offend? Currently, that is the case in Glasgow. Social work accreditation is all very well, but I suggest to the minister that we think through whether CSOs should be administered by social work departments. In some cases, CSOs certainly work and, if there is a suitably robust approach, they could work more often. However, they currently have no deterrent value.
Roseanna Cunningham and others properly dealt with the question of admissions to prisons through non-payment of fines. I recall that there were some 8,000 such admissions in a year. That wastes resources. The simple way of avoiding such admissions is to ensure that fines are paid. Why cannot fines be deducted from benefits, for example? Just as many people would rather go to jail than carry out CSOs, many people would rather go to jail than pay fines if the alternative to a £200 fine is three days—and sometimes only two days—in prison. That is the reality of the situation.
I advise Roseanna Cunningham and Duncan Hamilton to think carefully about unit fines, which were tried in England.
They were very successful.
They ended in disaster. Tremendous difficulties and injustices were caused. If they were so successful, why were they done away with? However, that debate is for another day.
Members should consider the other alternatives. Tagging should be considered, but the jury is out on its effectiveness, as are offenders. The fact is that, if people are restrained to their private dwelling-houses during times at which they are likely to commit offences, their behavioural pattern frequently changes. However, down south, there have been a number of cases in which those who have been tagged have carried out offences.
Scott Barrie not only used the dreaded "S" word, but spoke about the democratic process in the Labour party—most of us would have thought that those terms were mutually exclusive. He also said that the Labour party's manifesto would contain provisions for dealing with youth crime. I say to him and to others in the Labour party that there is an ideal opportunity for them if they have any intention of being tough on youth crime—certainly, they have recently spoken about youth crime in a tough way. Scott Barrie and I are members of the Justice 2 Committee and I look forward to Executive-supported amendments that will legislate for proposals that he and his colleagues have made. However, I suspect that I will wait in vain.
The debate has been constructive. There is much common ground on the potential benefits of alternatives to custody, although I am not sure whether Phil Gallie's bid to bring back the birch will carry much weight.
Our nation locks up more people than many other western European nations do and there is clearly a need for more alternatives to custody. If we are to believe the figures in the prison estates review, the likelihood is that our prison population will continue to increase over the next eight to 10 years. Our society has become too dependent on custodial sentences. We lock up individuals who should not be in jail.
There are those—some of them not too far away from us in the chamber—who subscribe to the simplistic notions that we should lock people up and throw away the key and that if prisons are overcrowded we should build more prisons. However, as a new Parliament, we have a responsibility to ensure that we have a mature debate about how we reform our penal system. Any modern society should be willing to question whether the current system is operating effectively. Kenny MacAskill made that point in his speech.
For politicians to suggest that we should lock up fewer people is potentially a rather risky strategy. Members will be aware that there are no votes in prisons and there is a misconception among members of the public that we do not lock up enough people. The figures show otherwise. We are locking up too many people. As politicians, we should be big enough to challenge that problem.
Karen Whitefield highlighted the point that alternatives to custody are often treated as if they are a soft option. They are not a soft option. Alternatives to custody are often more difficult. As Bill Aitken highlighted, some people will choose to go to prison because they know that a community disposal could be more difficult for them.
Prisons will always have a place in our society, to ensure public safety, but we should change the balance in our penal system, so that prison does not have the weight that it has currently. Roseanna Cunningham highlighted a number of cases of people who should not be in prison wrongly being placed there.
A number of members have questioned whether the Executive is doing enough to address the problem of prison numbers and whether the current alternatives to custody are sufficient or effective in what they are meant to achieve. One of the Executive's targets is to tackle youth crime. We know that there are inadequate secure places for young people in Scotland. It is now a common occurrence for 14 and 15-year-olds to be placed in adult prisons.
As Paul Martin correctly pointed out, if we are to prevent young people from going into a life of crime, we must be prepared to support and provide adequate funding to projects that work with young people to address their offending behaviour. Too often, we hear of a project that has been established and which works effectively, but which ends after three years when the funding is cut. We must ensure that there is greater continuity of funding for such projects. As Donald Gorrie said, when projects are successful, we must roll them out across the country.
Some time ago, the Executive set a target to reduce the number of female prisoners in Scotland. In 1998, the former First Minister, Henry McLeish, who has been in the chamber for the majority of the debate, commissioned a report entitled "Women offenders – A Safer Way". The report recommended:
"The number of women offenders who are sent to prison could and should be reduced."
We were led to believe that that recommendation would be addressed, but what has happened since the publication of the report? The population of Cornton Vale has continued to increase. A prison with a capacity of 230 is currently overcrowded, as it has 255 prisoners.
The Deputy First Minister and Minister for Justice referred to the time-out project, which will be set up in Glasgow. He will be aware of the concerns that Pauline McNeill raised in the Justice 2 Committee—the project is meant to be a national project, based in Glasgow, but there are no proposals to have a similar project elsewhere in the country. Female offenders come from throughout Scotland, not just from Glasgow. The majority may come from Glasgow, but there is a need to ensure that there is consistency in the programmes that are delivered. The Executive has failed to address the number of female prisoners.
We have heard that supervision orders, restriction of liberty orders and drug treatment and testing orders are not rolled out across the country in a uniform fashion. I have no doubt that ministers are committed to the idea of alternatives to custody, but if we are to evaluate programmes, it is essential that we waste no time in introducing them and ensure that they apply across the board.
The minister has said, both at the Justice 1 Committee and today, that if we are to use alternatives to custody, they must have public confidence and the confidence of the bench. To achieve that, the alternatives must be sufficiently resourced. There are serious concerns that they are not sufficiently resourced.
I turn to the issues that my colleagues have raised. The SNP has proposed constructive ideas to address the problem of prison numbers and the issue of finding suitable alternatives to custody. For example, the Executive stole from us the idea of drugs courts, which now exist in Glasgow and elsewhere. We are grateful for that, because the system appears to operate effectively. As Keith Raffan pointed out, drugs courts will not work if the support programmes that work alongside the courts do not receive sufficient resources. There is increasing concern that those resources are not being provided.
I turn to fine defaulting and the unit fine system, which Bill Aitken said had been tested in England but did not work. The reason why that system was not rolled out in England was because the then Home Secretary, who was on a drive to be tough on crime, thought that it was a soft option. Interestingly, the people who are most affected by the unit fine system are the richest—the Tory voters from whom the Home Secretary knew that he was likely to lose votes. That is why the Tories did not roll out the unit fine system.
Alternatives to custody are only one element of our penal system. I hope that, in considering the prison estates review, ministers will take the opportunity to examine the penal system as a whole. They should consider how to reform the system so that it is more organised and so that it works for the benefit of the people of Scotland. In the coming elections, the penal system should not be a political football or subject to the whims of politicians who come up with new ideas that sound good but which do not address the problems that must be addressed.
Members have demonstrated remarkable unanimity in their approach, apart from one or two of the usual remarks from our colleagues on the far right.
The debate arises from the prison estates review. Many members, including Roseanna Cunningham and Kenny MacAskill, referred to the rising prison population so I will address that issue briefly. There are two groups in the rising prison population. One is the group of people who are sentenced to more than four years' imprisonment, which has grown substantially in the past 20 years and which is predicted to continue to rise. I make no apology for that because those people have committed serious offences and they should go to jail for a serious length of time. Members are all agreed on that. The number of such offenders has risen from 2,300 to a mid-point figure of 3,400.
The second group are those who serve fewer than three months, although they may be sentenced to up to six months. That group comprises around 80 per cent of those who are sentenced. Members seem to think, relatively unanimously, that it is not appropriate to send such people to prison, except in certain circumstances. I will address later the Tories' suggestion that those circumstances are persistent offending.
Roseanna Cunningham raised the important question of why we imprison people. Do we imprison people as a punishment? If community orders are not a punishment, imprisonment might be appropriate. We maintain that community orders are a punishment. Do we imprison people as a deterrent? If so, given the figures on recidivism, the system is a disaster. The only reasons why we imprison people are public safety and—I add to Roseanna Cunningham's list—to treat and rehabilitate offenders. On rare occasions, it might be appropriate to do that in prison.
Some members suggested that there are circumstances in which custody might be useful or appropriate for punishment and for early treatment. Karen Whitefield mentioned the interesting idea of custody plus, which would involve an initial custodial sentence and then a reparative community service order. That is an interesting suggestion, because the treatment would be continued in the community.
The fundamental challenge for our justice system is the fact that we live in an era in which drugs are the major background factor in crime. Seventy-five per cent of all those who appear in the courts are involved with drugs. I pay tribute to the work of the cross-party group in the Scottish Parliament on drug misuse, of which Keith Raffan is the convener. Lyndsay McIntosh, Sylvia Jackson and other members from all parties have also been involved in that work. The drugs issue is fundamental to the change that we must make to the way in which we consider things. Unless we treat people who have drugs problems appropriately, we will not address the issue at all.
We are trying to introduce measures. We will stick to our programme despite the understandable impatience that is expressed constantly by our SNP colleagues. We must evaluate what we are doing and ensure that it has good effects, good outcomes and the public's confidence—something that my nationalist colleagues have suggested.
Will the minister give way?
I have very little time and a long way to go. I hope that I will not be stabbed in the back, as Donald Gorrie suggested.
Arrest, referral and diversion will place an additional burden on the Crown Office, so increasing Crown Office funding will be important. We start the process even before we get into the courts, and we are diverting people—especially drug addicts—highly successfully.
Of course, we need to address the remand problem, which is ridiculous. There is a daily population of 890 people on remand and there are 15,000 receptions a year—in and out, in and out. Bail information, bail supervision and bail hostels are being tried and we are rolling them out across the country. I hope that we are inspiring confidence in those measures, which will reduce the number of people who are on remand.
Fine defaults stand at 7,000 a year but account for only 60 to 70 of the daily prison population. Eliminating fine defaulting would reduce the daily prison population by only 1 per cent, and that is a real problem. We will consider the unit fine system, just as we will consider any suggestion that is made in the Parliament—with the exception of bringing back the birch, which Phil Gallie suggested—to see whether the system would improve things and whether it works.
Probation has been established for a long time, and the introduction of a range of additional measures has substantially modernised it. Supervision orders are being rolled out across the country and are now available in almost every jurisdiction. We tested them and rolled them out. Community service orders have also been updated. Although the breach rate for CSOs is one in four, that is partly due to the drugs problem. They are being improved. Drug treatment and testing orders are now being rolled out across the country. They have been tested and the results were much better than when they were tried in England. The drugs courts are proving quite successful, although we will have to establish whether they provide added value. They are an intensive and expensive resource, and we will have to think carefully before we roll them out.
I am sorry to interrupt you, but a consequence of the acoustics here is the fact that the background conversation among members is becoming pronounced. I would be grateful if members could hear out the rest of the minister's speech quietly.
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer.
Finally, tagging, or the implementation of RLOs, is also being extended throughout the country.
I do not have time to address the issue of women offenders in depth, as I would like to. At some point we should have a debate on that issue and I will return to it. The time-out centre should be up and running early next year. It will be a national resource although, as it is based in Glasgow, initially it will mainly involve offenders from Glasgow.
The question of youth crime has been raised, and I think that that also should be the subject of a separate debate. The children's hearings system already has enormous powers at its disposal and can involve parents in the process. It can refer a family to a parenting skills programme as a voluntary disposal. We are watching the parenting orders in England to see how successful they are. The first part of such an order requires the parent to attend counselling. The second part, which is more discretionary, requires them to attend to a range of issues. I want to make it absolutely clear that there is no question of jailing any parent who is trying to do their best. Frankly, that suggestion is not worthy of Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, who is usually reasonable about such issues.
Indeed, a collection of stupid remarks were made by Tory spokesmen. Mr McLetchie still has the lead with his remark that this is the only country in which a 17-year-old can assault his wife and then go before a children's hearing. That is utterly absurd. I inform Mr McLetchie that people who commit serious offences will go before the courts—he knows that. His remark was utter nonsense. He is undermining—
Will the minister give way?
Will the minister give way?
No.
He is trying to undermine—[Interruption.]
Order.
He is trying to undermine an attempt to gather evidence about whether something works. That is not worthy of him.
There are pilots, but the majority of orders—supervision, probation, CSOs, tagging and diversion from prosecution—are universally available. Further, DTTOs will now be rolled out across every area. Parliament is sending two messages to us that are being received and which are regarded as appropriate. The first message is that we should roll out well-funded and properly evaluated programmes and ensure that they continue to be evaluated. The second message is that we need to engage the public in a realistic debate.
Parliament should send a strong message that locking people up for three months or less does not do any good. We need to change the situation, but we need the support of the public to do so. We need sentencers to be confident about the alternatives to custody. The Executive is committed to those alternatives and is funding them. I am committed—and I know that Jim Wallace is—to changing the patterns of custody. However, we will do so only if the alternative options are serious and tough and the public has confidence in them.
I urge members to support the motion.