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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

I will give way in a moment; let me finish. People sentenced to 10 years or more have a much lower reoffending rate of about 30 per cent. The reason is that someone who receives a 12-month sentence will serve not six months, because they are usually let out on a tag before they even reach the halfway point, but often only three or four months. Before anything else can happen, they have to go to a prison where they can be assessed. Once they have been assessed, they might get moved to a training wing. By the time that happens, they have only a few months left on their sentence, which is nowhere near long enough to deal with the problems they have. Most of those people have drug or alcohol problems and are very poorly educated. The first thing to do is clean them up and get them off drugs. Then they have to be given basic, rudimentary reading and writing skills. Finally, they need vocational qualifications. Yes, some of them might be a bit more intelligent, but by and large we are dealing with people who need basic vocational qualifications that will allow them to get a job when they come out of prison. Some prisons do that quite well, but most do not.