In this afternoon’s Assembly Debate on Prisons and Criminal Justice, Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Local Government, Mark Isherwood AM, spoke again against calls for the devolution of the criminal justice system and blasted Plaid Cymru and Welsh Labour plans for all prisoners in Wales to be able to vote in Assembly and local elections.
Mr Isherwood also spoke of the benefits of the UK Government’s prison reforms.
He said:
“The Wales Governance Centre’s report, ‘Sentencing and Immediate Custody in Wales’, found that Wales has the highest rate of imprisonment in Western Europe - and that although the total number of prison sentences rose in Wales between 2010 and 2017, they fell by 16% in England.
“The report’s author stated that “wider research is needed 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 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.
“These calls also fail to acknowledge that criminal activity does not recognise national or regional boundaries, and that 48% of people in Wales live within 25 miles of the border with England, and 90% within 50 miles .
“As the former First Minister has also pointed out ‘dangerous offenders could (still) be sent across the UK after devolution, to address the lack of category A prisons in Wales’.
Contradicting the claims made in Plaid Cymru’s ‘virtual reality Motion’, Mr. Isherwood emphasised that the UK Ministry of Justice was focused ‘on rehabilitative services, community sentences and reducing reoffending in England and Wales’ and that it was already proposed that ‘all offender management services in Wales will sit within the National Probation Service from 2020’.
Speaking on the UK Government’s prison reforms, Mr Isherwood stressed they are not about increasing capacity, but about replacing ageing and ineffective prisons with buildings fit for today’s demands and stated that ‘Super Prisons’ are not a ‘one size fits all’ model.
He said: “Berwyn Prison Wrexham, is the first custodial facility in England and Wales to be designated a “rehabilitation prison”. It is a training and resettlement prison - divided into three houses, each divided into eight communities – plus a care and support unit.
“Following his recent visit to Berwyn, Labour’s Wrexham MP stated that he was ‘very pleased that there were constructive signs for the future’.
“Sentencing guidelines already state that custodial sentences will only be imposed on young offenders in the most serious cases.
“The UK Government has already rejected community prisons for women in England and Wales, and will instead trial 5 residential centres to help women offenders with issues, such as finding work and drug rehabilitation in the community.
“The Ministry of Justice is also considering banning short prison sentences in England and Wales, with Ministers stating that short jail terms are less effective at cutting reoffending than community penalties, where ‘such sentences were long enough to damage and not long enough to heal’.
Criticising Plaid Cymru’s call, echoed by Labour Ministers, for prisoners to have a right to vote in Welsh elections, Mr Isherwood pointed out that the proposals are not mentioned in either of their 2016 manifestos and said they ignore the human rights of victims.
He said:
“'Not voting' is just one of the facts of life arising from being in prison, reflecting a decision by the community that the person concerned is not suitable to participate in the decision making processes of a community.
“Our priority must be the human rights of victims that were violated by murderers, terrorists, rapists, and paedophiles.
“The European Court of Human Rights did not rule that all prisoners should be given voting rights and a UK Government compromise on this has already been accepted.
“Any consideration beyond this should focus on the case for allowing prisoners to vote as part of their rehabilitation in preparation for re-entering broader society.
“Instead of the top-down model proposed by this motion, continuous attention should be given to what works and what we need to do differently in order to design the system backwards.”
