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Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman anticipates me. I had the feeling that he might wish to be better informed about the matter, and I was about to come to it.
Electronic monitoring also has the potential to enhance the security of the public and the management of offenders who are released at due time on licence without HDC. What I am talking about now is different from the home detention curfew. The arrangements for release on licence currently apply to all adult offenders sentenced to 12 months or more, to young offenders aged 12 to 21 serving any period in custody, and to any prisoner released on temporary licence.
The Bill provides for electronic monitoring for such prisoners. It may be helpful if I explain to the House the arrangements for the release of both short-term and long-term offenders. Those who are sentenced to a year or less are released at the halfway point without licence. They are also eligible for HDC. Under the Criminal Justice Act 1991 offenders sentenced to between one and four years are released automatically at the halfway point of their sentence. Those sentenced to four years or more can be considered for parole at the halfway point, and must be released at the two-thirds point. In respect of both the shorter-term prisoners sentenced to between one and three years and the longer-term ones sentenced to four or more, the licence operates until the three-quarter point of the sentence.
Electronic monitoring, for which the Bill provides, will reinforce the licence conditions in a direct way and may provide significant improvements in the offender's resettlement, the better to protect the public.
I commend the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Bercow) on his ability to remember column numbers, as some people remember train numbers. It is an entirely innocent habit. I am sure that there are worse things that could be said about the hon. Gentleman, but I will not mention them. As he said, on 29 November 1999--I think in the debate on the Loyal Address--I told the House:
The availability of electronic monitoring for sex and other high-risk offenders should not in itself influence the parole board when making decisions on their release, and I will be directing the board to that effect.
In answer to the parliamentary question to which the hon. Member for Buckingham referred, my right hon. Friend the Member for Brent, South stated that, in finely balanced cases, the availability of electronic monitoring as a condition of licence could be considered. That may be the case for certain offenders, such as those serving more than four years, who may need the punishment of a longer sentence but who pose no wider risk to the public. The existence of electronic monitoring will not be a consideration in decisions on parole for sex offenders or other high-risk offenders.
The new electronic monitoring provisions will be a valuable added protection for the public. Under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, we gave the courts power to impose extended sentences--up to 10 years--in respect of serious sexual and violent offenders. The Bill will enhance that extended supervision by electronic monitoring.
The Bill also provides better protection for victims of domestic violence or stalking through the creation of a new exclusion order. It will use reverse tagging to deter an offender from approaching a certain place or places, such as the home of a spouse or partner against whom the offender has been convicted of violence. It will also be generally available as a licence condition.
There is the clearest evidence of a link between drug misuse and crime. In the drug testing of arrestees research programme, more than three out of five of those surveyed tested positive for an illegal drug. In some places, the total was nearly four out of five, with a third of them testing positive for heroin and more than a quarter positive for cocaine. We must do all we can to break the link between drug abuse and crime. To do that, we need a joined-up criminal justice system that deals with the problems posed by offenders at every stage. We believe that that can be done. Evidence from one study in the United States showed that prisoners who received treatment during sentence and on release were less likely to be arrested 12 months later than those who received treatment only in prison.
Conversely, recently published Home Office research on the effectiveness of care and resettlement work with drug-addicted offenders highlighted the need for enforcement agencies to work together. It concluded that unless there is an effective multi-agency approach to tackling offenders' drug misuse before, during and after custody, they are likely to relapse and reoffend. I am pleased to draw the House's attention to an announcement that I made yesterday in a written answer--that the new
money announced a week ago by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer included, among other things, £5 million for post-release drug treatment hostels.
The Bill is intended both to deter drug abuse and to identify offenders who need treatment. From the successful introduction of mandatory drug testing in prison, which the previous Administration began, we know that the availability of testing can in itself help to reduce drug abuse. I accept that there are clear differences between the closed environment of a prison and the community, which, by definition, is open. However, there is no doubt that early identification of whether individuals are drug offenders, and appropriate use of that fact either in community punishments or in prison, can help to cut the link between drugs and crime.
Mr. Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and Wyre):
In detailing the Bill's drug-testing provisions, will my right hon. Friend confirm that excellent drug arrest referral schemes, such as a pioneering scheme in Lancaster which has attracted a Queen's nursing award and in which nurses have been placed in police stations to work with people at the point of arrest, are entirely complementary to the provisions of the Bill?
Mr. Straw:
I shall indeed confirm that. Under the Bill, police will be able to test at charge offenders who commit high-volume acquisitive crimes, such as burglary, and those whose drug habits are bound up in a criminal life style. Those arrangements will be piloted, and detailed guidance will be provided under clause 42 after consultation with the police service.
The Bill's powers will be complemented by a new drug abstinence order and by existing programmes such as the drug treatment and testing order currently being piloted in three areas. In addition, and this relates to my hon. Friend's point, we are providing an extra £20 million over three years for a roll-out of drug arrest referral schemes across the country. The Bill seeks to build on proven measures such as the Prison Service's programme of counselling, assessment and throughcare--CARATS--which links work done in prison to effective drug counselling and support on release into the community.
Mr. Simon Hughes:
Will the Home Secretary comment on two matters? The Standing Conference on Drug Abuse, which is a reputable body, has been critical of the Bill's proposals; in general, it regards them as likely to be ineffective. More topically, this morning, the Runciman report pointed out that, nationally, 62 per cent. of the budget is spent on law enforcement on drugs, but only 13 per cent. on treatment. Is the Home Secretary minded to work across the Government to ensure that there is a significant increase in the resources for treatment for drugs, inside and outside prison? All the evidence appears to show that treatment is more effective than many of these new and somewhat untested criminal justice proposals.
Mr. Straw:
I have great respect for the standing conference, but I do not accept its analysis. We intend to pilot the arrangements. The history of criminal justice measures under all Governments is that some people always criticise new proposals; they say that they will not
I point out to the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald that, in the late 1980s, when curfew arrangements were proposed, there was great scepticism about whether they would work effectively. That criticism was partly related to the then availability of the technology. However, those arrangements did work and have produced considerable benefits.
I do not accept the view of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey that treatment and enforcement are spending alternatives. I should prefer that those who become addicted to drugs stay out of crime and undergo treatment as quickly as possible. However, the reality is that a high proportion of addicts--especially those addicted to opiates and cocaine--get involved in crime to pay for their habit. We have to break that link. We are putting as much extra money as we can into treatment both inside and outside prisons. I am working closely with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health to ensure that there is better co-ordination of drug treatment in the health service for offenders and for non-offenders.
I shall deal briefly with some of the items in the Bill. Building on the provisions of the Protection of Children Act 1999, the Bill will make improvements in the protection of the most vulnerable in society. Those proposals form a vital part of the measures needed following the terrible abuses uncovered in children's homes and described in the recent report by Sir Ronald Waterhouse.
The measures will provide a comprehensive, integrated system to help stop unsuitable people working with children, and will make it a criminal offence for anyone so identified to apply for or to accept such work, or to offer services that involve it. In particular, we want to ensure that where someone is identified as a risk to children in one sector of work, he or she cannot move with impunity to another.
The Bill will also protect children through tough new measures to tackle truancy--part of our wider strategy for dealing with truancy and social exclusion, and with related juvenile delinquency. On any one day, about 50,000 pupils are off school without permission. As well as being a major contributor to youth offending, truancy can have a devastating impact on a child's later life and prospects.
The Bill challenges the culture that tolerates truancy, and targets the parents responsible for allowing it. The Bill will increase the penalty on parents for failing to ensure that a registered child attends school regularly. By making that failure an offence punishable by imprisonment, it will allow the courts to issue warrants for the arrest of offending parents, to ensure that they attend court. Neither I nor my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment wants any parents to be jailed for their failure to ensure that their child attends school regularly, but under the current law, it is impossible to get four in five of the parents who are summonsed for their child's truancy even to appear in court. Four in five of those parents simply cock a snook at the system and fail to answer the summons. The main purpose of making the offence imprisonable is to ensure that it is possible to enforce the legal process.
We have no plans or intention whatever to provide for electronic tagging to facilitate the early release of serious or sexual offenders.--[Official Report, 29 November 1999; Vol. 340, c. 27.]
I am happy to reiterate that undertaking.
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