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Penal System

The hon. Gentleman uses the term ““sex offender””, but it covers a wide spectrum of offences. I believe that there are those who need active support through a mental health programme and that it is wrong that they are not given it. However, there is a wider spectrum of those who are simply violent criminals who express their violence in sexual offences. I am not sure whether they fall into the same category—I think that the hon. Gentleman probably agrees. Additional secure mental health provision is necessary. Secondly, we need secure drug treatment centres. Again, there is a huge lack. Ten thousand prisoners are in prison for drugs offences. We know that three quarters of all male prisoners took illegal drugs in the 12 months before their imprisonment. Yet our secure drug treatment centres have only 2,500 places. Again, I had hoped that, instead of building more bog-standard prisons, we would deal with the problem, which clogs up the system. People cannot be sent for the drug treatments that the courts prescribe through legislation that the Lord Chancellor introduced when he was Home Secretary. Those orders cannot be complied with because insufficient drug treatment places are available. Meanwhile, notwithstanding the small reduction in illegal drugs that are detected in prisons, drugs remain a major problem in many of our prisons. Many offenders go to prison without a drugs problem but leave with one. Drugs are a major motor of reoffending as they are of crime generally. They are the major motor of acquisitive crime.