Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Part of the problem with this debate is that we cover two areas, which we were discussing earlier. First, there are dangerous people from whom society needs protection, and we have to deal with them within our criminal justice system. Secondly, you do not need to be in this job very long, or to visit very many prisons, to realise that there are people in our prisons who have no place there and who, with a proper policy of rehabilitation in its broadest sense, can be stopped from reoffending. We are really fighting on those two fronts. On whether there should be a glide path into work, perhaps that is where we can get the work-in-prison regimes working properly. That in itself can help in that direction. The other thing that I am also very enthusiastic about and would like to see developed, and where the voluntary sector is superbly equipped to help, is mentoring schemes, and finding people who are willing to act as mentors. That could have a powerful effect. I do not think that there is division in the Committee on that. We are trying the perhaps revolutionary idea of joined-up government in making sure that the move from prison to a proper, productive, law-abiding life is not aborted at those first steps through the prison gates because of lack of basic support.