Offender Management Bill

My Lords, I, too, think that words are extremely important and I support the amendment. As most noble Lords who have been present throughout our proceedings will know, I was quite distressed by this mistake, as I would describe it, when it originally came up in the Criminal Justice and Court Services Bill in 2000. I protested then against the use of the word ““punish””. I imagine that the reason it was introduced was to give the impression that everything was toughening up. It seems to me that it was a fantasy to think that the public reads Acts of Parliament to see that the Government are toughening up by putting in ““punish”” when it was not there previously. I am not sure that it had any effect whatever in making people think that things had toughened up. It always seemed improper to ask public servants to punish someone; that can be a role only of a court. Of course, ““punish”” is not what is actually meant, because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, said, I imagine that the Minister has no intention whatever that probation officers should start punishing people. If they were to do so, presumably they would be subject to some disciplinary action. All they can do is implement, administer and enforce orders passed in some judicial way. The use of the term confuses the offender, who is not sure what sort of person a probation officer is, and it confuses the probation officer, who is not sure what sort of person he or she should be. It also works against effectiveness and against helping people to give up crime. We know what helps people to give up crime: it is a close relationship with a supervisor who is respected by the supervised offender; it is rebuilding local links and giving a person a stake in everyday life; and it is giving that person an identity other than ““criminal”” of which he can be proud, such as ““worker””, ““student”” or ““member of society””. Since we started our debates on the Bill, the noble Lord, Lord Judd, has constantly talked about rehabilitation. I am certainly with him in sayingthat, if we could delete all instances of the words ““management of offenders”” and replace them with ““rehabilitation””, the Bill would be much more evidence-based. Certainly, it would not include the word ““punishment”” as a function of probation officers. I very much support the amendment and I would not even object to the formulation of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, of ““implementation”” rather than ““enforcement””.