Member

If you look at what happens in other small nations, as the commission did, you see that a small nation may be able to have a system where you spend less on sending people to prison for a long time, which is what we do in England—we are not quite as bad as some other nations, but we are pretty bad at it—and look again at an integrated system where you think, “Can we use shorter prison sentences? Can we use the resources for keeping people out of prison, and particularly to stop them ever embarking on a criminal career by bringing together youth services, educational services, health services and the like?” That is why, in looking at offender management, which was the purpose of this amendment, it was thought that we could at least devolve that, because one can at least try to move some of the resources that are spent on prisons into a much more productive area. But at least I now know that that is not an option because, for reasons I completely agree with, you need to devolve everything.