Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I support the amendment with the qualification that most of my reasons for wanting to support it were expressed in my remarks on Amendment No. 1 yesterday, and it would be taking a liberty to repeat those arguments all over again. Whatever I think of my noble friend from time to time, most of the time he is a decent chap trying to field a difficult wicket. Having said that, he is literate and he knows very well what we said to Amendment No. 1. It applies equally strongly today. I want to take up warmly the point made by the noble Earl. We are in a muddle conceptually about what we are doing. If a child is not aware that he has transgressed, then punishment is wrong. The point is to help the child to understand how they have transgressed. It is a social educational point because society failed that child in one way or another. Even in the context of the family, the child has been failed. It does not have the sense of right and wrong that we all take for granted; not that we always live by it. Sooner or later one has to bare one’s chest: I believe that the concept of punishment has more to do with assuaging society’s emotional needs than with getting the situation right. It is often emphasised to appease the wilfully ignorant popular press. It seems that as one who will never give up on the fight for rehabilitation being the principal objective, because it makes so much sense—I have said it so often that I will not say again why it makes so much sense—of course the noble Baroness is right that there are some people who know perfectly well that they have done wrong and it needs to be pointed out to them that that is not acceptable in society. I would be happier if we could get back to old-fashioned language in this context and talk more about corrective action to break a deviant in society: ““come on board””. But I worry about the social and psychological implications of punishment and its real motivation, conscious or subconscious.