No. There is a huge number of innovative things happening in criminal justice in Wales, but one of them is not devolution. 

So, as the Wales Governance Centre found, Wales has the highest rate of imprisonment in western Europe, and although the total number of prison sentences rose in Wales between 2010 and 2017 they fell by 16 per cent in England, where they still controlled the services that the Welsh Government is responsible for in Wales. The report's author stated that

'wider research is need to try to explain Wales' high rate of imprisonment.'

This is particularly relevant given that many of the services required to manage offenders, ex-offenders and to promote rehabilitation are already devolved. Such a difference in delivery, within what is a shared criminal justice system, provides yet another reason why the calls for devolution of criminal justice should not be answered.

The UK Government's commitment to deliver offender management services in Wales that reflect the devolved responsibilities of the Welsh Government is to be welcomed. In 2018, I attended the stakeholder engagement event held in Wrexham by HM Prison and Probation Service in Wales as part of the consultation on future probation services in Wales, under which all offender management services in Wales will sit within the National Probation Service from 2020.

HM Prison and Probation Service in Wales will explore options for the commissioning of rehabilitative services such as interventions and community payback. They will build upon the unique arrangements they already have in Wales through their established prison and probation directorate, and on existing successful local partnerships, better reflecting the devolved responsibilities of the Welsh Government. As we heard, these proposals will allow increasing integration across prisons and probation in Wales, preventing victims by changing lives, with real input from the third sector, utilising people capital.

Instead of recycling this redundant motion, we therefore need the Welsh Government to provide us with a progress report on what is really happening regarding this. This is especially the case in the context of HM Prison and Probation Service's 'Probation Reform Programme' 2019 document, which followed the consultation paper on the future of probation and describes how the new model will differ in Wales. As this states:

'the Welsh Government has legislative competence in respect of devolved matters including health, housing, social welfare and education, and this presents a different delivery landscape for probation services in Wales. The justice devolution settlement allows for distinct arrangements for probation that meet the needs of Wales.'

HM Prison and Probation Service in Wales

'is configured differently to reflect this, with its structure combining prison and probation services within one directorate and alignment in the geographical area'.

Of course, the cross-border nature of criminal activity must be central to the operation of justice and policing in Wales. Calls for this to be devolved fail to acknowledge that criminal activity does not recognise national or regional boundaries. Unlike Scotland or Northern Ireland, 48 per cent of people in Wales live within 25 miles of the border with England, and 90 per cent within 50 miles. The Thomas commission on justice report only includes one reference to any cross-border criminality, in the context of county lines along the M4 corridor and in north Wales. The solution it proposes is joint working across the four Welsh forces in collaboration with other agencies, but no reference to partners across the border.

Well, I recently visited Titan, the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit, established in 2009 as a collaboration between the six police forces in north Wales, Cheshire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Cumbria to tackle serious organised crime that crosses county borders in the region. We heard two weeks ago that all north Wales emergency planning is done with north-west England, that 95 per cent or more of crime in north Wales is local or operates on a cross-border east-west basis, that North Wales Police have no significant operations working on an all-Wales basis, and that evidence given to the Thomas commission by the chief constables and police and crime commissioners in Wales was largely ignored in the commission's report.