My Lords, I have met a few of the people who these sentences are designed to control, and quite often they are terrifying. Some of the things that they have done are awful. However, the present situation is indefensible. It is unfair because, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, has said, they do not know how long they will be detained, and because many of them have been detained since before the law was changed. It is really trying to deal with the basic problem of dangerousness, which is very hard to define. Doctors cannot define the mental illness that they suffer from, as has been mentioned already. This should be addressed far more clearly.
There are only two ways forward. First, many of these amendments are talking about research in the future, but we need more research into the medical definition of the type of illness which we define as “dangerousness”, of people seeming likely to commit an offence in the future. This is not mentioned anywhere in the amendments. I recommend that there is good investment to be made there.
Secondly, what is presently indeterminate must be made determinate. I do not suppose that anyone has yet argued that all the people who are detained under these restrictions should immediately be emptied from
the prisons on to the streets, but it is entirely possible to see a transfer of that risk either into the health element of prison control—Broadmoor or similar institutions—or a far better way of dealing with them within the community. To continue carrying the risk entirely within the prison estate in the numbers that are described is entirely wrong and I cannot see that it is defensible for this Government to continue doing so.
5.30 pm