Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I entirely agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has just said and I feel immensely privileged to have heard it. It tackles the only part of the amendment that I have any trouble with, which is proposed new paragraph (b). Deprivation of liberty has a function—at least to the extent that my noble friend Lord Onslow and I experienced it in our youth. You need to manage the peer group of some of these young men. In particular, a lot of young men look to their peer group for socialisation and for a lot of what they get out of life. They value themselves according to the way that they are looked at by their peer group. If a person has got into the wrong peer group, you need to find some way of breaking that. To put them into a situation where their peer group can be managed is important. If that is to succeed, you then need a way to take that experience and translate it to the lives of these children. That is one of the main difficulties in having such a sharp divide between custody and life outside. They learn to survive inside; if it is a good place, they may well develop some good habits inside, but all their old mates and all their old ways are waiting for them when they get out. With something graduated, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has just described, there may be a real hope of using custody as a means of breaking a bad cycle with a child and then letting that child back out into their own community in such a way that they can take that learning with them. At least it is worth trying. It is wonderful to listen to these conversations, but I have great doubts about whether the Government have any real interest in rehabilitation. In the main prison estate, they are expanding numbers and cutting budgets. Where do they think those budget cuts fall? On security? No way. Prison governors are judged by whether people escape or not. The budget cuts are falling on education and time out of cell. Prisoners are spending more and more time in front of television. If daytime television is a way to learn better habits, I do not know what the Government wish us all to become. An emphasis on rehabilitation takes money, time and effort, which is not what the Government are giving the Prison Service. It would be wonderful to live in a world that is governed by the noble Baroness, Lady Stern, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, but we do not have it at the moment.