My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for the way in which he moved that amendment. During Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, told us about his experiences as a sitting magistrate and the frustration that magistrates often feel when they see offenders with long histories of offending coming before the court time and again. The noble Lord told us how magistrates genuinely feel that they use custody as a last resort. In all the discussions that I have had with anybody who has had an experience of the magistracy, that emphasis has been made. The Government share the frustration of the magistracy. They seem to be almost forced into successive custodial terms because of the cycle of repeat offending. That is exactly why we have brought forward the Bill. It is why Clause 1 extends release on licence and why Clause 2 tops up that licence with additional supervision.
The Government believe that the only way we can break the high level of reoffending among this group of offenders is to end the current position whereby they walk out of prison after half of their sentence with no support and no incentives to seek support to change. That is why Clause 1 applies licensing conditions to all custodial sentences of more than one day. I will explain why in Clause 1 licences apply to a sentence of more than one day, before I turn to the Amendment 1 of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. First, there is a practical consideration. The headline sentence imposed by the court is, as the House knows, halved. It is not possible, nor practical, to half a half day of custody. It is also the case, as the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, will be aware, that there are some minor cases in which the court decides that an offender could serve their sentence by spending a day sitting in the court. So, for practical purposes and to retain the power of the court to sentence to a day in court, we applied the licence and the new top-ups of this supervision to sentences of more than one day.
Amendment 1 would raise that minimum period to sentences of 29 days or more. In other words, a sentence of 28 days or less would result in unconditional release with no licence conditions, no top-up supervision, no power to recall the offender and no way to rehabilitate the offender other than the hope that they volunteer for support. A significant number of offenders who the noble Lord and his fellow magistrates sentence to custody receive a sentence of 28 days or less. The latest statistics from 2012 suggest that around 13,300 adult offenders received such a sentence. The reason why many of those offenders receive sentences of 28 days or less is because their history of offending makes the offence more serious, therefore justifying a custodial sentence. It is exactly because these offenders have failed to break their cycle of offending that they received the short custodial sentence in the first place, and it is because they have been released from short sentences with no support that they continue to offend and receive yet more short prison sentences. This is exactly the group that we should be targeting for supervision. It is a group of offenders for whom we
should do everything possible to help them face up to the issues that have caused them to offend. Some of them will reoffend when under supervision and some will not comply with the licensed conditions, but that has to be better than the current position, where they are simply imprisoned and released, only to reoffend and be imprisoned again.
I understand why the noble Lord tabled this amendment but, given that it will not provide the courts with more discretion and will leave a significant number of offenders without support, I hope that he would consider withdrawing it. As the Secretary of State explained at our meeting last night, the intention is to have flexibility and common sense in terms of the treatment that is applied during that period of supervision. By the way, that was not a secret meeting—all noble Lords were invited and I was very grateful to those who did come along to hear him. At the very beginning of this debate, I would also make the point that we must not think of the period of supervision as punishment; it is a period of help and support, which we hope will help people to avoid reoffending.
I now turn to Amendments 3 and 5, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. These relate to the top-up supervision covered by Clause 2, which will introduce a new Section 256AA, applying supervision to all offenders with a sentence of,
“more than 1 day but less than 2 years”.
That means that the period of licence will be topped up with additional supervision so that the two, taken together, amount to 12 months. Amendment 3 essentially follows from Amendment 1. If Amendment 1 was adopted, those serving 28 days or fewer would have no licence, and Amendment 3 would mean they would have no top-up supervision either. I have already said why the Government disagree with Amendment 1, and it follows that we would not support Amendment 3 for the same reason. It is a small point, and I do not want to labour it, but I assume that the noble Lord, in Amendment 3, meant to refer to more than 28 rather than 27 days, since his Amendment 1 related to sentences of less than 29 days—that is, 28 days or fewer. In other words, a sentence of 28 days would fall between the two.
Amendment 3A, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, seeks to amend the categories of offenders who receive top-up supervision under Clause 2. Amendment 3A would exempt offenders sentenced in the youth court when they were under 18 from receiving top-up supervision, even if they were 18 when released from custody. I note that the amendment does not seek to extend this exemption to those sentenced when under 18 in the Crown Court. I understand the concerns, which my noble friend Lady Linklater has also raised, and we will return in later amendments to the question of supervision for those released from custody who have reached 18. However, I would say now that the Government believe that our commitment to provide 12-month supervision should apply to all those aged 18 and over, when they reach the point when they would be released from custody. We, of course, recognise that young offenders who have just turned 18 can have different needs from older, adult offenders, and we will
expect providers also to recognise this difference and to tailor their supervision to the particular needs of this group.
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Finally, I turn to Amendment 5, the last amendment in this group. The effect of this amendment, as the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, explained, is to give the court the discretion to order that top-up supervision might not apply. I understand the noble Lord’s thinking here and why he has tabled the amendment. It is true that there will be offenders who will not need significant programmes to address their offending behaviour because they are unlikely to reoffend. The reoffending rates suggest, however, that a significant number of people are likely to reoffend and it is often difficult to anticipate who those offenders are. With the greatest respect to noble Lords, the sentencing court is not always the best position from which to determine what, if any, supervision an offender is likely to need. Offenders who need intensive supervision or specific programmes do not need to receive these services. I return to the point I made earlier that this is not a tunnel-vision approach and a clanking of a machine. We are making sure that 12 months of supervision is available but we are assuming a good degree of common sense about the intensity of that supervision, even as the 12 months progresses.
We believe that by bringing all offenders within the compass of the Bill but by giving providers a good deal of flexibility in application we will avoid some of the problems that these amendments imply. The provision in this Bill determines only the overall period in which supervision will be available. It does not specify what that supervision should involve or how intensive it should be. That will be for the providers to decide, working within the framework set by this Bill. That is where we give providers the room to innovate, to see what works and, crucially, to pay for what does work. Applying top-up supervision to all offenders and then setting the appropriate level of supervision is a much more practical approach than deciding at the time of the sentence not to supervise an offender only to realise too late that they do pose a risk of offending and would benefit from supervision. I hope in the light of these explanations that the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.