Offender Rehabilitation Bill [HL]
Debate between Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Woolf(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Woolf
My Lords, I would like to express my general support for what the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater, has proposed and said and also for that which has been said by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. I venture to suggest that anyone who has experience of dealing with young offenders in the courts would come to exactly the same conclusions as they have expressed. They have very good reasons to advance their comments. The position of those aged 15-plus to 18 is a particularly difficult area which has been neglected largely by the approach of the criminal justice system until now. I particularly urge that what the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has said about that group is taken into account.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I, too, support the amendments so comprehensively spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Linklater. One reflection on what she has been saying about consistency and continuity has come to me about the involvement of the probation service with the supervision of young adults which it admittedly has not been very good with in recent years.
One thing that worries me about the thought of the professional probation service in future being responsible only for high-risk offenders is that young probation officers are not going to have the chance to cut their teeth on the low and medium-risk offenders on which they build up the expertise which they can then go on to apply to the higher risk offenders. One of the cases that is frequently quoted against the probation service is the case of a man called Sonnex who murdered while he was on probation supervision. He was under the supervision of a very young and inexperienced probation officer who should not have been put in charge of so serious an offender. I hope that the Minister will reflect on this and on the importance of career development for the National Probation Service, particularly for those who have to deal with this very important group of young adults.