The next item, therefore, is the Member debate under Standing Order 11.21 on criminal justice, and I call on Jenny Rathbone to move the motion. 

Motion NDM6665 Jenny Rathbone, Jane Hutt, Bethan Sayed, Dai Lloyd, David Melding, Julie Morgan

Supported by David Rees

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Regrets that:

a) criminal justice policies for England and Wales have failed to halt the rise of the number of people incarcerated;

b) the conditions in which too many Welsh prisoners are held, highlighted by the recent Inspection reports of HMP Swansea and HMP Liverpool, are not conducive to rehabilitation;

c) 47 per cent of prisoners re-offend within one year;

d) most of the 2007 Corston Report recommendations on the treatment of women offenders have not been implemented, ignoring the evidence that the imprisonment of women for relatively minor offences causes major, costly and unjustifiable disruption to their children’s lives.

2. Calls on the Welsh and UK Governments to:

a) trial alternative models of punishment of non-violent Welsh offenders in Wales in order to prevent the disruption of family, housing and employment links which are essential ingredients of successful rehabilitation;

b) promote better joined up working between health, housing and criminal justice services to combat the escalation of homelessness and mental illness amongst people leaving prison;

c) develop a distinct Welsh penal policy based on the evidence of what works;

3. Calls for the eventual devolution of criminal justice, along with the resources to deliver a preventative, restorative rehabilitation of offenders that puts an end to the revolving door between prison and re-offending.

Motion moved.

Diolch, Llywydd. We lock up more people in England and Wales than any other country in western Europe. If we go on that way, we are going to catch up with the United States, which currently spends more on its equally ineffective prison system than they do on the education of their children. Ineffective, because it doesn't lead to change in people's behaviour. Even by the UK Government's own admission, two thirds of prisons are overcrowded; people are locked up most of the day; rates of self-harm, suicide and murder are at an all-time high. By no stretch of the imagination can the conditions in Her Majesty’s Prison Swansea or Her Majesty’s Prison Liverpool—described in excruciating detail by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons—be considered rehabilitating. That isn't to dismiss the heroic efforts of individuals who work with prisoners in disgraceful conditions, but we have to acknowledge that the system as a whole is not working and a change of approach is needed. For far too long, penal policy has been dominated by the high-pitched headlines of the tabloids. Until recently, the top politician in charge of the misnomered Ministry of Justice thought it was a whiz idea to deny prisoners books until it was thankfully ruled unlawful by the High Court.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

Populist as opposed to effective penal policies are not the sole preserve of the Tory party. During the last Labour Government, I worked in Holloway prison and I vividly recall the then Home Secretary cancelling a children's Christmas party simply in response to some lurid newspaper headlines that completely ignored the needs of children. We constantly had to remind ourselves that the mantra 'every child matters', which had been introduced as a result of the Victoria Climbié scandal, did not apply to the child of a prisoner.

There is no official record of how many children of prisoners there are, but the Ministry of Justice admits to estimates of something in the region of 200,000. We have to bear in mind that some prisoners will not disclose that they have children when they're taken in. The Families and Friends of Prisoners here in Wales estimates that 12,000 children of prisoners are living in south Wales alone. They found that 95 per cent of these children had had to move home when their parent went to prison, which also means moving school and losing your friends. It is little wonder that this upheaval in the child's life leads to depression and behaviour problems in school.

The Visiting Mum project set up by the Prison Advice and Care Trust does enable Welsh children to visit their mums in Eastwood Park in Gloucestershire once a month. For some children, this is 150 miles away from where they live. The evaluation of even this visibly brief contact shows that there is a reduction in anxiety, improved behaviour at home and in school, and less self-harm amongst the mothers.

So, the work that voluntary organisations like PACT and FFOP continue to do is extremely valuable but cannot disguise the fact that having a parent in prison triples the chances of that child themselves becoming a prisoner in later life. For boys, the outcome is even grimmer: two thirds will follow the path of their parent into prison. 

It's now 11 years since the widely applauded Corston report recommended the need to consider the best interests of children in sentencing policy, and the replacement of all women's prisons with small custodial women's centres. Unfortunately, little has changed. Women continue to be more harshly treated than male offenders, and we now have over 13,000 women entering the prison system every year. Nearly half of these are on remand—much greater numbers of them than men—and less than half of those women are found guilty when it comes to court—or less than half of those women found guilty are given a prison sentence once the case is heard. So, they could have avoided going to prison in the first place. Women are twice as likely to be sent to prison for a first offence. Overwhelmingly, they are there for theft rather than violence or other serious offences. Eighty per cent of that theft involves shoplifting. Often they're stealing to feed their kids or to support their partner's drug habit. About half these women have been the victims of crimes much more serious than the ones for which they are being imprisoned.

Many men go to prison for non-violent offences too, and given the prevalence of mental health issues amongst prisoners, it's deeply disappointing that courts in England and Wales are not using the mental health treatment requirement available as a sentencing option since 2003. It directs an offender to undergo mental health treatment as part of a community sentence or a suspended sentence order. They have the potential to reduce the prison population very significantly, but their numbers have been falling in the last nine years and they're now at their lowest point in a decade. In the last five years, they've only been involved in less than 1 per cent of all community orders or suspended sentences, and this is failing to get to the heart of the problem, which is the reason why people are going into prison at all, and why the reoffending rate is so high. In fact, it is higher than similar offenders serving a community sentence. So, being in prison makes it more likely that you will reoffend.

The House of Commons Justice Committee reported that the re-conviction rate for prisoners serving less than a year was 70 per cent in 2008, compared with 38 per cent for those sentenced to carry out unpaid work or other community sentences. This cycle of reoffending costs our economy between £9.5 billion and £15 billion a year. Other countries manage things a lot better. Sweden is closing prisons rather than spending £200 million building new ones. The director general of Sweden's Prison and Probation Service explained in 2014, 

'Our role is not to punish. The punishment is the prison sentence: they have been deprived of their freedom. The punishment is that they are with us'.

So, looking at the needs of their prisoners, he explains, 

'it is not one problem that our clients face, but two or more, sometimes as many as seven or eight...including perhaps drugs, alcohol and psychiatric problems. And these problems did not just appear overnight. These are things that have developed over years. Most of the sentences...are relatively short. The window of opportunity...to make a change is very small, so we need to start from day one. Our strategy is to cover the whole range of problems, not just the one problem.'

Now, Holland, too, has a crisis in their penal system, but it's the opposite of ours—they have a shortage of prisoners. They've already closed 19 prisons and are planning to close even more, unless they can persuade other countries to send prisoners to them. The deputy governor of Norgerhaven, a high-security prison, says, 

'If somebody has a drug problem we treat their addiction, if they are aggressive we provide anger management, if they have got money problems we give them debt counselling. So we try to remove whatever it was that caused the crime. The inmate himself or herself must be willing to change but our method has been very effective. Over the last 10 years, our work has improved more and more.

'Persistent offenders—known...as 'revolving-door criminals'—are eventually given two-year sentences and tailor-made rehabilitation programmes.'

So, a decade ago the Netherlands had one of the highest incarceration rates in Europe, but now, fewer than 10 per cent of them return to prison after their release. This is a great success story. Compare that with England and Wales, where roughly half of those serving short sentences reoffend within two years, and the figure is even higher for young adults. Proportionately, the Dutch prison population is three times lower than that of England and Wales and they save an awful lot of money not sending people to—. Even the most overcrowded jails here are costing us more than a place at Eton.

So, do we have the capacity to change and do we have the political will to change? The new Secretary of State for Justice made a speech yesterday that included some helpful noises about aspirations to bring down the population in prison, and that the prison system needs to be aiming to enable people to go into places of humanity, hope and aspiration. So, I hope that we can persuade the UK Government that we can be allowed to trial some new ways of working on community sentences, on small women's centres or places of detention, and work on the causes of the reasons why people have offended in the first place, so that we don't see them coming back again and again.

In 1920, there were 11,000 prisoners in England and Wales. In 1980, there were 42,000 prisoners in England and Wales. Today, there are 85,500 prisoners in England and Wales. We send many more people to prison than our Edwardian ancestors did. I do find that deeply, deeply shocking, and it is something, I think, that we need to look at very, very seriously.

I believe that imprisonment is an appropriate and a serious punishment for those that deserve it. It needs to be the ultimate last resort that we have for those that commit very serious offences, and those that commit violent offences, serious offences against property, should expect a prison sentence. But the truth is that we have tens of thousands of people in prison who do not qualify under those criteria for the punishment of imprisonment, and, as Jenny Rathbone has eloquently outlined, the actual effectiveness of what we do to those people is highly, highly questionable.

I'm particularly concerned that, as the figures have grown, the focus has gone much more onto containment rather than training and rehabilitation, because those violent offenders usually do come out at some point, and there's a serious job there to ensure that they don't remain a threat to society. They do require very serious treatment and rehabilitation.

I think we ought to look at this whole question from the point of view of the various jurisdictions at the moment, so the jurisdictions that have policy over prisons—penal policy—are England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. While Scotland has a similar pattern of imprisonment to England and Wales, although it is a bit lower, the pattern in Northern Ireland is vastly lower. It approaches much more the best practice in western European countries. I think that if we were to take responsibility for criminal justice, and the reason I've argued, over the years, for criminal justice policy is that it would allow us the most important thing, it would allow us to set sentencing policy and control our prisons. If you look at federal systems around the world, it's very common for community level policing and for most issues relating to criminal justice and the prison system to be at the level of the federal unit, and central Government retains responsibility for very high crimes and misdemeanours, the likes of terrorism and high-security prisons. That division seems to me a very logical one.

I'm very concerned that we don't always realise how bad the situation is in Welsh prisons for which we have responsibility to provide health services and education services. Swansea and Cardiff prisons are badly overcrowded. Both of them are in, I believe, the top-10 most overcrowded prisons; that means over 150 per cent capacity. This, I think, is a serious concern to us.

Jenny has referred to international comparisons, and this statistic that we have the highest level of imprisonment in western Europe certainly makes me uncomfortable. If it were working, I suppose you could then have the basis of an argument, 'Well, you know, we are tougher for very good reason,' but I have to say that I think there is a very, very sound centre-right argument for a considerable reduction in the number of people we imprison. I'd like to go back, if not to the 1920s, when the average prison population fluctuated between 10,000 and 14,000, at least to the 1980s, the age of Thatcher, when the prison population hovered around about 45,000. There was a great increase in the 1990s under both Governments—sorry, both a Conservative Government and then a Labour Government continued this pattern. We really have gone in the wrong direction.

There are some categories of this question that I think need particular reflection, as well: the number of care leavers in prison is something that we need to be very much aware of. Lord Laming's report last year, or just the year before, into the number of looked-after children that are brought into the criminal justice system because of patterns that are not applied to their peer group, but get applied to them because they are, quite frankly, seen as liable to be potential offenders, again, greatly troubles me.

But I do not think this is a particularly partisan issue. There are very, very sound arguments both on the left and the right for a better prison policy than we currently have, both on grounds of humanity, but also in terms of the effectiveness of what we're doing. At the moment, the system is failing, and it needs to change.

Plaid Cymru ultimately believes, with many of these points on this motion, that they won't have a realistic chance of being brought forward until we have proper criminal justice devolution and we can develop a distinct Welsh criminal jurisdiction. I would argue that this is becoming more and more imperative, in part because, as we pass more and more distinct Welsh legislation—particularly over issues that directly affect criminal rehabilitation, such as health, social services and housing—it is becoming more necessary as a natural step to take. We have those powers already, as has been mentioned earlier. Why, therefore, do we not have legislation to administer criminal justice? But my concern is that the Welsh Government doesn't seem to have the fire in its belly to really press this issue, nor are they adequately attempting to boost the legal sector in Wales so that they can cope with any changes in the devolution of criminal justice.

Devolution also becomes more difficult if we accept a larger and larger prison estate in Wales, which is being designed for England's surplus prison population. If the proposed prison in Port Talbot goes ahead, there will be around a 2,300 surplus of prison places in Wales, compared with the total number of prisoners from Wales across the whole of the UK. It's clear that any new prison in Wales is not being developed to meet the needs of Wales, because we already have that capacity. The more prisoners from England serving their sentences in Wales and vice versa will make it very difficult to do the things the Welsh Government says that it supports. Just yesterday, Carwyn Jones voiced his support for the concept of looking at a separate Welsh penal policy, yet he shrugged his shoulders to a huge new prison in his neighbouring constituency. We need a clear position from the Welsh Government, which isn't contradictory, to form part of this debate we are having here as a Parliament, and more broadly, as a country. 

In terms of rehabilitation, we must start moving away, too, from the idea that we can ship prisoners across country and expect an effective rehabilitation at the end of a sentence. The review into prisons by Lord Michael Farmer last year calls family relationships 'the golden thread' to help reduce reoffending, and research shows prisoners who receive visits from a family member are 39 per cent less likely to reoffend.

Will you take an intervention? I've got particular concerns around this question because there are no facilities in Wales to incarcerate women offenders. In general, I think there should be far fewer women in prison, but what can we do in terms of ensuring that we don't have to send women who have to go to prison as far away from their families—even to a different country?

And I would agree with you on that, and I think that's what I was coming onto, as Jenny has mentioned earlier: where we can, try and put policies in place so that they are not put into prison, and whether they're in different types of centres that are developed here in Wales is something that I know you and others—in Plaid especially—have been advocating for many years, and especially with regard to family relationships. It's often the case, although not in all circumstances, that the mother is the main carer of a child, and if they are sent as far away as possible from, say, the Rhondda, to somewhere in the middle of England, well, that's not going to facilitate that relationship that they have with that child. And so I think that's why it's integral that we look at the issues surrounding women and the support that we give to women.

I did want to add a little to bit to this speech that I haven't written today, in that I've had a personal experience recently of being—. My husband's flat was burgled last year, and his court date is imminent. I have a different view to him as to how he should potentially be punished. And what I think is important—this person, I think, is a repeat offender—is how that person can realise what he does, and how the victims' voices are heard. I think the cost to ourselves financially has been enormous, but the cost emotionally is enormous. When you realise that somebody's come into your home at 2 o'clock in the morning to steal your property and to steal your car, it's something that you can't quite get to grips with unless you've been through it. I think what's important is, potentially, more schemes for offenders to meet with victims, as is the case, potentially, in other circumstances, for them to really, really understand how that, perhaps, one piece of jewellery or that one watch might not mean anything to them, but might mean something sentimental to the person that they've engaged with. So, I don't really advocate throwing away the key, but I really do advocate, as Jenny mentioned earlier, looking at rehabilitation, trying to make people understand that what they're doing is going to turn lives around and to try and encourage them to follow a better path in the future.

I close by reminding Members that Wales is blessed with a unique opportunity here—with a blank slate, in many respects. Just as we discussed welfare reform and the necessary ways we should really have some control over welfare reform, we can do things differently here in Wales. Just because England wants to build superprisons does not mean that Wales has to follow its path. We can lead on this agenda. We can show that we can do things better and differently. Much of this has to do with our social environment, poverty. If we can look at anti-poverty initiatives, if we can get people out of the situations they're in, from the outset, they may not then resort to taking part in these types of offences, and therefore they will not be affecting people like me, or somebody down the road who will tonight experience the same thing that I did last year and be put into that anxiety. We can be positive about what we can do here in Wales and I hope that the Minister will be able to reflect that in his response.

I think Bethan is quite right: we are different, we can do things differently and we are leading the way in many things—domestic violence, modern slavery, recycling; we're doing lots of things. We are a thriving nation with capacity to empower people and serve our people, but we are failing one area here. We are failing the citizens who have to go through that system and their outcomes. The problem is, perhaps, that the system is not under our control. It's the system that currently exists, it's a penal system we have imposed upon us, and it's a system that is actually putting our citizens—and those of neighbouring nations, to be fair; it's English prisoners as well—at severe risk. It's failing to deliver an improvement on reducing reoffending, and it's failing on the safe management of the inmates in the system.

Now, evidence from various reports has been mentioned before, including Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons, and its last annual report from the chief inspector, Peter Clarke, identified that several establishments are bad. They're not considered fit for purpose. They're failing inmates, they're failing the inmates' families. He stresses that too many of our prisons have become unacceptably violent and dangerous places. The proportion of prisons that have been considered good or better, following inspection, has fallen from 76 per cent to 49 per cent in just one year. Now, this failure is echoed by representatives from the Prison Governors Association and the Prison Officers Association, who continually raise their deep concerns over the impact that reducing budgets has had on the service and its ability to improve delivery of services against the set targets that it's given.

The recent report on Swansea prison demonstrates that the service is overstretched and struggling to meet the demands placed upon it to manage the penal system and ensure that it's able to help inmates rehabilitate into their communities, thus reduce reoffending rates in Wales. Now, whilst this may be used as an argument to—. Well, basically, because Swansea is, actually, as you highlighted, the most overpopulated prison, percentage-wise in the UK—. Just because you've got more spaces, it doesn't mean to say that the system works. So, it should be ringing alarm bells, actually, to talk about sentencing guidelines and are they suitable for the modern day and the Government's ambition to reduce reoffending rates.

The difficulties faced by prisons across England and Wales are well documented, with many instances of unrest in establishments, some requiring specialist teams to restore order; serious assaults—an increase of over 200 per cent since 2013, according to the Ministry of Justice's own figures; injuries to prison staff and increases in self-harm rates of inmates, including suicides. These all indicate a need to take more radical action to improve the existing service and look at many aspects, which may fall outside the remit of various aspects. At the moment, it's outside our remit, in one sense, but we should be having that, and perhaps we'll come back to that point later.

The former Secretary of State—. We talked about the current Secretary of State—I think it's David Gauke. The former Secretary of State, David Lidington, stated his reasons last August that there need to be moves to reduce the prison population—yes, reduce the prison population—but then they spend £1.3 billion—not £200 million, £1.3 billion—on increasing the prison population. So, it doesn't seem to fit in quite well. We need to reform the penal system, amend the sentencing guidelines, and consider alternative approaches other than incarceration, which would reduce the number of individuals who are given custodial sentences. It's well overdue, and perhaps these changes should now be given to us in Wales because we can act on it, because we will not let it become overdue.

Yesterday I asked the First Minister a question based upon the conclusions of research into the size of prisons that smaller prisons have better outcomes than larger ones, both for prisoners and communities. Small prisons are often more effectively run. They have lower levels of violence, better staff-inmate relationships, greater focus on resettlement, better facilities for contact between prisoners and their families, and, as someone mentioned already, the Lord Farmer report highlighted these aspects. 

Will you take an intervention? Do you recognise as well that there are better outcomes in public prisons as compared to private prisons?

I think it's the way that prisons are being operated in the private prisons. I'm not a supporter of a private prison service. I think the problem they have is the funding to ensure the outcomes can be delivered. If there are budgetary constraints and we have the austerity measures now—[Interruption.] Well, they're getting wages and they're providing a profit for the private owners, aren't they?

But, ultimately, we want to be able to see various issues, and the fewer people in prison the better—alternative mechanisms will be a better solution. We know—everyone knows in this Chamber I have a strong opposition to large prisons, particularly one in my town. I believe—in fact the evidence supports—that large prisons do not work. Berwyn is an example. Just go to Berwyn. I said yesterday: 15 fires, 46 cells have ended up out of use with the damage. Three call-outs to the national tactical response group. That's in six months, and that's not even half full. It does not work.

Dirprwy Llywydd, I'll conclude because I can see that time is against me. We've been shown statistics that 47 per cent of prisoners reoffend within one year. We are setting people up to fail in the current system. Reoffending rates in Denmark fluctuate at about 27 per cent—20 per cent lower than us. Why? Because prisoners are treated with dignity and as though they have the capacity for reform, whereas ours are locked away. They don't have a system of prisons that are degrading and morally disgraceful.

We overuse the prison for petty and persistent crime. We have the highest incarceration rates in western Europe—it's been mentioned. People are wrongly incarcerated and put into a system at a rate that will overtake capacity. We need to take lessons. Our European neighbours actually can show us the way forward, and it's not increasing prison capacity. It's taking alternative mechanisms.

Before I begin, Deputy Llywydd, I believe that I should declare an interest in that I have been a sitting magistrate, a JP, for 15 years, and I'm still technically a JP. My desire to make a contribution to this debate is that I wish to defend certain aspects of the British judicial system and those who administer it, and to reassure the general public who may hear this debate that, in all the time I sat as a magistrate, including a number of years as chair of the bench, I never witnessed anyone being sent to prison unless all alternative interventions had been fully and unequivocally explored. Indeed, throughout my years as a magistrate it was emphasised to all those involved in the judicial—. Yes, sorry, Jenny, of course.

I just wonder, then, if you can explain why it is that we still send women to prison for not paying a television licence. I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't pay their television licence, but there have to be alternative ways of making them comply.

Well, indeed. Throughout my years as a magistrate it was emphasised to all those involved in the judicial system—magistrates, judges and of course the probation service—that incarceration was to be the final and ultimate form of punishment. Yes, on rare occasions mistakes may be made, but that is true of any institution, especially one, such as a judiciary, dealing with almost insurmountable problems linked inextricably to a rising tide of serious crime.

Will you take an intervention?

Of course.

We heard earlier on how, under Michael Howard, when he was Home Secretary, the prison population was 45,000 and within five or six years it had gone up to 80,000. How can that have happened if what you are saying is correct?

Excuse me, I'm just explaining that. I'm saying that it's dealing with almost insurmountable problems linked inextricably to a rising tide of serious crime. This rising crime rate includes violence against the person, sexual offences and widespread trafficking of drugs, as acknowledged by this Ministry of Justice report of 2013. We can add to this new forms of crime increasingly associated with the internet, such as child exploitation and fraud. Yet item 1(a) in this debate seems to suggest that it is the criminal justice policies that have caused this rise in the prison population and it has nothing to do with the rise in crime itself. [Interruption.] Of course.

I thank the Member for taking an intervention, and I bow to his experience as a magistrate. But the question is the sentencing guidelines and the alternative mechanisms that we could be looking at, in which we can work with individuals who are found guilty of an offence. Do you agree, therefore, that we need to refresh those sentencing guidelines, because there are people who are being incarcerated who should be incarcerated? There are different ways in which we can still punish a person but not put them in jail.

Well, I'm sorry, David, I'm very au fait with the sentencing guidelines and I can assure you they are there not to send people to prison.

I will say here that I have a great deal of sympathy with the views expressed in items 1(b) and 2(b). I believe that there should be a substantial expansion in secure mental facilities as an alternative to normal prisons and that some, but by no means all, of our prisons lack the facilities needed to rehabilitate prisoners. I will just note here, David, and I declare no bias one way or another, that there are many in this Chamber who opposed a prison at Margam, which would be able to offer many of the facilities to Welsh prisoners. 

I wish now to turn to item 1(d) and item 2(a) listed in this debate. The first item again suggests that women in this instance are sent to prison for minor offences. This is patently not the case, unless there are multiple minor offences involved. And, again, I reiterate that all other interventions would have been comprehensively explored. Only when the person convicted of a crime refuses to engage or accept the alternatives is the option of prison even considered. 

Item 2(a) suggests that alternative methods of punishment are either not available or are not being used. Again, this is an utter fallacy. Fines, probation, community orders, including work in the community, curfews and electronic tagging are all considered and used extensively before anyone is committed to prison. One extremely worrying consequence of these two clauses is the inference that if the perpetrator of a crime is a mother she should be treated differently to any other person who commits similar crimes, whether they be petty or otherwise. What signal does that send to all the hundreds of thousands of mothers in our society who do not commit crime, even though their circumstances may well make them vulnerable to turning to this alternative?

I will add that non payment of fines is not a minor or petty offence: it means that it is left to the good, honest, hard working and often poorer members of society—[Interruption.] no, David, I have to finish now, I'm sorry—to pick up the bill. 

Finally, although I believe the proposals contained in this debate are well intentioned and those proposing its contents are well meaning in presenting it, I contend that it is ill conceived, naive and does not accurately reflect the British judicial system. I will go on to say that I will agree with all the comments made in this Chamber by all those who have contributed to this debate to say that, post sentencing, we have a diabolical situation within all our prisons and interventions post sentencing ought to be our first and total priority.

I'm very pleased to take part in this debate, initiated by my colleague Jenny Rathbone. I would reiterate her comments and the comments made by the majority of people who have spoken here today that we do lock up far too many people and that we should be having a radical change in our approach to locking up people. I think, actually, we've heard far too often from different justice Ministers from Westminster saying, 'Yes, we're going to stop locking up people, we're going to go and work in the community', but it never happens. I certainly do support the devolution of the criminal justice system to give us an opportunity to try to have a more effective system, because it's clear, whatever David Rowlands says, that the system that he is describing does not work. What we need to do is to make policy based on evidence.

So, I want to reiterate, really, many of the points that have been made here by my colleagues today. But, in particular, two weeks ago—I think it was about two weeks ago—David Ramsbotham, the former chief inspector of prisons, talked about this issue on Sunday Supplement. I believe David Rees was on the same programme. His remarks, unfortunately, were misinterpreted by the media, and they were reported as saying it was a call for a women’s prison here in Wales, which is exactly the opposite of what he said. Certainly, the last thing that we want is a women's prison here in Wales, because there's absolutely no doubt that the number of women who are at such a risk to the public that they need to be locked up, with all the consequent trauma to their families, is just not sufficient to justify a women's prison in Wales. In fact, the number that are actually a risk to society is probably one or two.

So, I think it is absolutely essential that we move away from this misconception that having a women's prison here in Wales would be a good thing for women, because as far as I'm concerned, it would set back the cause of penal reform hugely were we to have a women's prison here in Wales, and would certainly have to be filled up with women from England in a way that would mean that they wouldn't be able to have any chance of having close family links. What David Ramsbotham was actually calling for was women’s centres, which have been mentioned here by a number of contributors today. We've never had one of this particular type of women's centre here in Wales, but there have been a number in England. They have been evaluated, they do appear to work, and evidence-based policy development would mean that we would develop these women's centres in Wales. I would like to see the opportunity for that to happen. 

It’s worth restating that, in fact, women make up only 5 per cent of the overall prison population, and the vast majority only serve very short sentences. The issue of women prisoners is a graspable policy. The numbers are not so great that you struggle to make a change. It is possible to change the policy for women prisoners, and many of the issues that apply to women prisoners also apply to male prisoners. I think if we could make the move with women's prisons, that would lead us on to do the same with male prisons, because I do want to reiterate the fact of the mental health issues, because I think that is so important. We know that the vast majority of prisoners do have mental health issues that have got to be addressed.  

I think we have to go back to the effect on children. We've been told by Jenny Rathbone about the thousands of children—I know the Prison Reform Trust have put forward a figure of thousands of children who are affected by custodial sentences—and 95 per cent of them have to leave their homes if their mother's imprisonment leaves them without an adult to take care of them. So, there is huge disruption to family life. I don't think we can reiterate that enough. 

The evidence as far as I'm concerned on women's centres is clear and compelling. They're important for maintaining family links, we know that the reoffending rate is lower, and, in fact, they cost less than the very expensive option of building prisons. So, I hope that we will get criminal justice devolved to Wales. It was recommended in the Silk report, and we haven't seen much sign of it happening since then, but I think it is something that we could tackle and where we could make a real change.

Jenny mentioned the Visiting Mum project, and I just want to briefly end by saying that I took part in one of the visits to Eastwood Park. I went with the Visiting Mum volunteers who take the children to Eastwood Park, and I can't tell you how heartbreaking it was actually to see those children being reunited with their mothers in a room that wasn't like a prison, where they had toys, where they had food, where every effort was made by the project to ensure that there were two hours when they could have a normal relationship with their mother. But seeing that, I thought that, really, nothing can justify this. When you saw the reasons why those women were in prison, it is just not justified them being there. 

I agree with many speakers today that criminal justice in England and Wales is a story of regressive and unproductive policies. We would do much better, I'm sure, if we had devolution of responsibility for criminal justice here in Wales. As many have said, we have the highest rate of imprisonment in western Europe in England and Wales—those are Council of Europe annual penal statistics. The percentage of the population—this is per 100,000 of the population—imprisoned in England and Wales is 148.3 compared to 77.4 in Germany, 86.4 in Italy and 98.3 in France. So, if that isn't a matter of different criminal justice policies in those countries, then I would say to David Rowlands: what is it? Are you saying that people—[Interruption.] In a moment. I'm just wondering, are you saying that people in England and Wales are much more criminal minded and criminal in their behaviour and nature than the population of these other countries?

Thank you for agreeing an intervention, John. Actually, what I'm saying is simply that it is the return of so many prisoners—. And I am absolutely in agreement with all those in this Chamber. Jenny Rathbone spoke about Holland and the way they treat their prisoners. It's the way we treat our prisoners that means they are returning back to prison when they shouldn't be. I am in absolute agreement with everybody here that we must do something fundamental and radical about the way that we treat our prisoners once they're sent to prison. I agree with that totally. 

I think if the prisons are grossly overcrowded, as they are, and many of the people there shouldn't be there in the first place, it makes rehabilitation much more difficult. There are much better ways of dealing with these unfortunate people, in many respects, with mental health issues, substance misuse problems—probably they may well be illiterate or innumerate or have very poor skills. There are much better ways of dealing with them outside prison than locking them up and incarcerating them. And of course, the impact on families and prisoners themselves of going to prison is obviously very grave indeed, but the impact on communities is very negative because actually reoffending rates are much higher because of the difficulties of rehabilitation because people shouldn't be there in the first place. It actually makes for more victims of crime than would be the case if we had alternative sentencing in the community.

Many reports, a number of reports, have made these issues. The evidence is stacked up. You know, the distance between prisons and home communities is negative in terms of reoffending and rehabilitation. Welsh women going to prison in England has a negative impact on their families and their children. We need community solutions and diversion schemes if we're going to prevent crimes in the future. We need smaller community units. We must meet the complex needs that prisoners have: literacy, numeracy, skills, mental health, substance misuse. That isn't happening at the moment and people with those problems really shouldn't be in prison in the first place unless it's absolutely necessary.

In terms of life after prison, Dirprwy Lywydd, we know that in terms of healthcare, social care and indeed housing, provision isn't what it should be and that then feeds into further reoffending. If we take homelessness, for example, the removal of automatic priority need under the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 that we passed here has in fact made homelessness and rough-sleeping more of a problem for prison leavers. We do have a pathway in place, but unfortunately it's not being implemented and it's not working as well as it needs to. So, we've actually moved backwards and we need to move forwards as far as homelessness and rough-sleeping and prison leavers are concerned. 

Dirprwy Lywydd, I think there's a strong consensus in this Chamber that we could do much, much better in England and Wales in terms of our criminal justice policy. If we had devolution of the criminal justice systems, we would do much, much better. We've heard a lot of evidence here today. Lots of reports point in the direction that Members here would like to move in if we are to reduce reoffending, have fewer victims of crime and fewer of our people incarcerated with the terrible impacts on them and their families. So, I am confident that we will have a much more progressive system here in Wales, a much more productive system, if we have that devolution, and I very much believe that we need to move towards it.

Thank you. Can I now call the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services? Alun Davies.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'll start my contribution very much where John Griffiths finished his, by agreeing very much with the points that John made in his contribution but also in the, I think, very strong consensus there's been on all sides of the Chamber this afternoon. I will say, Deputy Presiding Officer, that the Welsh Government will be supporting the motion this afternoon. I hope that goes some way towards answering Bethan Sayed's request for a clear policy on this area, and I will say to Members that it's something that I recognise there's a very clear demand for further policy on and I will be seeking to bring a statement to this Chamber on these matters in due course.

I will also say this: I agree with the points that have been made by many Members—I think Julie Morgan made the points very clearly—that the current settlement is a broken settlement; it is not delivering a holistic policy; it demonstrates a constitutional settlement that doesn't work. It's important to recognise that this doesn't work for anyone. It doesn't allow either the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice to deliver their policies easily in Wales, and it doesn't allow us to develop a policy either. So, this is not a settlement that fails to work just for us and the people we serve; it fails to work for the United Kingdom as a whole. And for that reason the settlement, I hope, will be revisited. I don't want to prejudge the issues of the justice commission that will look at many of these issues, but I will say that, as a Minister who is active in this area, we do not have either a policy framework, the powers or the ability to deliver a holistic policy, and unfortunately neither does the United Kingdom Government either, so there is real failure in this area.

Members on all sides of the Chamber outlined very well how many of the services that are required to manage offenders and ex-offenders to promote rehabilitation are themselves devolved but that we do not have the powers required. David Melding's point about Northern Ireland and Scotland, I thought, was a very, very interesting point, and it's certainly one that I would wish to take up in the future.

I will also say that the points made by Jenny Rathbone in her opening speech, which were also reiterated by David Rees, about some of the prison conditions in Wales are very, very well made. I visited Her Majesty's Prison Swansea in February, and I saw for myself the conditions in which too many Welsh men are being held. I've also discussed and highlighted the concerns in the inspection report with Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons when we met last month, and I have to say that he was very positive in his response to the points I was making and he recognised the very real difficulties facing prisoners on some parts of the Welsh estate. It is absolutely wrong that we have Welsh men held in conditions that are not fit for purpose. Prisoners' partners and children should not have to visit them in institutions that cannot fully respect the human dignity of both prisoners and their families.

I am concerned that we do not have the ability to join up policy in Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service in Wales, and I'm concerned that we do not have the ability to deliver coherent policy responses for people. We have, however, sought to develop a framework to support positive change for those who are at risk of offending in Wales with the probation service. The purpose of the framework is to improve services for those at risk of entering or are already in the criminal justice system. The framework will also promote continued collaboration in order to further reduce the number of offenders entering the criminal justice system, support offenders not to reoffend and keep communities safe.

A number of Members have referred to the Corston report and to female offending. The Corston report, published over a decade ago, argues that equal outcomes for female offenders necessitate a different approach to that for their male counterparts. I agree very much with the points that have been made, particularly by Jenny Rathbone and Julie Morgan, in terms of ensuring that we do not move down the road of simply saying, 'We want a women's prison in Wales', but, actually, what we need is a different sort of facility that performs a different role in a different way, and that's a very different policy, and I recognise the points that have been made. And I think the points that were made regarding female imprisonment, with many women being given summary sentences for offences that, in many cases, would not result in imprisonment for men are well made. Those short-term sentences can have long-term impacts, in many cases leading to a woman losing her tenancy and may result in children being taken into residential care. This results in additional support for devolved services, risking exposure to further adverse childhood experiences for the children of offenders.

I understand that the United Kingdom Government will announce changes to the way in which female offenders are managed, including, potentially, a different secure estate for women. It is previously indicated that there needs to be changes in the wider probation service. I hope that we will be able to ensure that in Wales we are able to take the approach that's been outlined by Members on all sides of the Chamber this afternoon. 

Deputy Presiding Officer, I have had discussions with the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice in relation to female offending and youth justice, and we have agreed that our officials should work together to explore such work to develop proposals on how a different justice system would operate in Wales. I think we do need to begin to answer the question that was put to us by David Rees as to what a Welsh penal policy would begin to look like. The point he made to the First Minister yesterday was well made, and I felt that the First Minister indicated in his response yesterday that he wanted to look at how we would begin to develop a Welsh penal policy.

For me, Deputy Presiding Officer, I would like to see a system predicated on the basis of early intervention and prevention, considering how we can further divert people away from crime in the first place, but where we do have to work with offenders, that we do so in an holistic and rehabilitative way. I agree absolutely with the points made by David Rees on smaller institutions, and certainly, I think, if we are to look at a Welsh penal policy, that the focus should be on rehabilitation, on skills, on training, on enabling people to play a full role in our communities and our society. We understand the need, as David Melding said very clearly, for a punitive element to imprisonment; we recognise that. However, the purpose is then not to pursue that, but to give people the opportunity, then, to play a full role in our society, and that is why I'm proposing that we do enable prisoners who are on short-term sentences to vote in our elections. They will be able to continue to play a part in shaping that policy—those communities. 

We have made our position as a Government on this matter clear in our draft Government and Laws in Wales Bill, and our position has not changed. This Bill provided for the immediate creation of a distinct Welsh legal jurisdiction, with Wales and England sharing judiciary and court services and the devolution of policing civil and criminal law, and the administration of justice from 2026. The UK Government's Bill, which became the Wales Act, failed to respond to our Bill and did not address the crucial issues of jurisdiction and justice, which I think we all believe require urgent attention. The First Minister's established a justice commission, chaired by Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, to undertake a fundamental review of the justice system in Wales and how to strengthen it in the long term.

I would oppose sending anyone to prison unnecessarily. Equally, however, we do need to protect our communities from harm, and prisons clearly have a role to play in that. We cannot pre-empt the conclusions of the justice committee, but we do need to ensure that we do begin the work of developing a justice policy.

Can I say, in closing, Deputy Presiding Officer, a justice policy, for me, is part of our overall approach to safer and cohesive communities? A justice policy that is holistic, that seeks to bring people together and does not seek to simply incarcerate people—it's a justice policy that is based on some of our work on safer communities, and we do need to have a frank and open conversation with UK departments about what a different approach in Wales would involve. We have begun those conversations with the Ministry of Justice, and I look forward to concluding those conversations and the development of a Welsh penal policy that puts the future and cohesion of our communities at its heart. 

Thank you. Can I call on Dai Lloyd to reply to the debate? 

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer.

Can I commend everybody who's taken part in this individual Member's debate on criminal justice? Some very powerful contributions, and, obviously, a wide variety of issues covered, so it's a bit difficult to—in the time I've got left—try and summarise everything. But can I commend Jenny Rathbone in opening very powerfully, setting the scene very well, and also David Melding similarly so? Bethan Sayed emphasised the 2,300 surplus places that we would have of building the superprison in Baglan and also her own experience of the requirements for restorative justice as a way, also, of making criminals face up to the effects they've had on people.

Can I also commend David Rees for his contribution, as well as David Rowlands in a different way, but also coming together, I think, in the end in terms of that we do need to tackle reoffending? Julie Morgan—a very powerful contribution as regards women's centres; that was a very valid point also. Jenny covered that point and John Griffiths as well. Can I also commend the Cabinet Secretary, not just in supporting the motion, but also in emphasising the need for holistic policies? And can I wish him well on his development of a Welsh penal policy? We look forward to that coming to fruition.

Back in the day, over 35 years ago now, I was a psychiatric doctor in Bridgend—a psychiatric senior house officer for six months—and Bridgend at the time had three psychiatric hospitals: Glanrhyd, that's where I was based, Penyfai and Parc hospital. They're all shut now, for very good reasons, and the Parc hospital site is the site of the Parc private prison now, but it's still housing many with huge mental health issues, much like the old Parc hospital on the same site. Sometimes we think, 'We haven't moved on much, actually', because tackling reoffending is the big challenge to properly rehabilitate offenders to prevent that revolving door of reoffending, as Jenny and others have said.

Yes, as David Melding said, evil people require incarceration, but for many in prison, dealing with the underlying causes and enabling rehabilitation and rebuilding of life and relationships is pivotal. Tackling mental health issues is one of the most important—mentioned by several people, and, really, we have to get to grips with that—from my old psychiatric service back in the day.

Similarly, housing, physical health, social services, education training and employment, drugs and alcohol services—all of these are devolved public services. They need co-ordination and we need offenders having ready access to them. But we suffer from a lack of co-ordination at the moment because, as we've heard, prisons, policing, courts and probation remain non-devolved. So, there's a fundamental disconnect, and thereby there's the huge challenge to tackle the revolving door of reoffending, and we need policing and criminal justice devolved to this National Assembly for Wales—as in now—for all of those reasons, and also we can avoid those out-of-the-blue announcements of a superprison in Baglan. Here in the Assembly, we've only been able to react since the announcement. This huge warehousing of prisoners is not wanted, and will pile huge pressures on our already overstretched devolved public services: mental health, housing, drugs and alcohol and all the rest. Health boards with a prison in them are already poorly compensated now for the additional pressures on local housing, health and education services. That's why the prospect of a superprison on a floodplain, on Welsh Government land designated for business and employment, is viewed with such alarm.

So, I look forward to the Cabinet Secretary bringing forward and marching on with that proud vision for an independent Welsh penal system. That's what's required for all of the people of this land. More power to the Cabinet Secretary. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Therefore, we defer voting under this item until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.