3. What discussions has the Welsh Government had with the UK Government on offender rates in Wales? OAQ53276

I thank the Member for the question. In the most recent year for which figures are available, recorded crime rose, but self-reported crime continued to fall. Responsibility for data on offending rates lies with the UK Government, while we continue to work with UK Ministers to ensure that Welsh interests in this area are properly understood.

Thank you for that answer, First Minister. As Leanne Wood said earlier, the recent report on custodial numbers in Wales is especially shocking, given that the crime rate here is lower than in England. The National Association of Probation Officers in Wales has highlighted that appropriate sentencing and effective rehabilitation is fundamental to resolving the issue. The UK Government's disastrous transforming rehabilitation reforms, disintegrated probation, failed the public, and deprived offenders of rehabilitation opportunities. Will the First Minister challenge the UK Government on this, call for a fully unified, properly resourced, public sector probation service, and what further discussions has the Welsh Government had with the probation service regarding the reducing reoffending strategy and steps that can be taken to support rehabilitation?

I thank Jayne Bryant for the question. I entirely agree with her that we have to recapture the ground that the probation service traditionally occupied, and occupied with such success. We know that the transforming rehabilitation reforms were brought to us by that well-known emblem of successful administration, Chris Grayling—'failing Grayling' as he's known across the House of Commons—and this is yet another area in which his dead hand hands on difficulties to those who come after him. Now, we have the right prescription, we know what we want to do, and it is the one the Member set out—a reunified, properly resourced, publicly run probation service, in which public service and not private profit is at the heart of what that service does. We continue to have discussions with Welsh interests. The real answer is to put the probation service in Wales under the control of this National Assembly, where we could make sure that it does the job that delivers in the courts and delivers in the community as well.

First Minister, Dr Robert Jones's report for the Wales Governance Centre says that more people are being jailed in Wales even though Wales has a lower crime rate than England. And we all understand that we are the worst country in Europe for putting offenders in jail, here. The Ministry of Justice is considering banning prison sentences of less than six months in England and Wales, unless the sentence is for a violent crime or a sexual offence. Short-term sentences provide little opportunity to rehabilitate offenders and lead to high rates of reoffending. First Minister, what discussion has the Welsh Government had with the Ministry of Justice on the potential alternatives to short-term prison sentences in Wales, please?

Dirprwy Lywydd, can I agree with what Mohammad Asghar has said, that short prison sentences often do a great deal more harm than they do good, that they disrupt the lives of the individuals concerned and make it more likely that their lives will be prone to reoffending on release than if that sentence hadn't happened? And we will definitely have discussions with the Ministry of Justice on the proposal that was floated—I don't think you can go much further than that—a few days ago.

I do just say, Dirprwy Lywydd, that the field of criminal justice is littered with unintended consequences, and it is not beyond the possibility that some sentencers would react to not being able to pass a sentence of six months by imposing a sentence of nine months instead, and that if this isn't done properly you could actually see longer sentences and more people being dragged up the severity of the system than the intention, and I appreciate that it is the intention of the Ministry of Justice suggestion that fewer people would end up in custody. So, it will need to be thought through carefully. There will need to be defences to make sure that unintended consequences, perverse outcomes, don't follow, but the basic proposition is one that we agree with and we look forward to working with the Ministry of Justice on the detail.