Clause 12 - Conditional cautions: types of condition
Police and Justice Bill
9:00 am
Hazel Blears (Minister of State (Policing, Security and Community Safety), Home Office; Salford, Labour)
I understand the point that the hon. Lady is trying to make. It is clearly our intention that conditional cautions should include conditions for rehabilitation, reparation and punishment, as set out in the clause. It is important that we send out the clear message that we want to change behaviour. The driving force behind all our policies on tackling antisocial behaviour is to ensure that, with enforcement and support, such problems do not occur in future.
Under the existing conditional caution scheme, conditions must be either reparative or rehabilitative, but they do not need to be both. Each decision has to be taken in relation to the offence, and the prosecutor has to decide what conditions are appropriate. Conditional cautions are entirely voluntary. It is up to offenders whether to accept them. The clause amends the scheme so that, in addition to rehabilitation and reparation, there is an element of punishment. It also recognises that, as in the existing scheme, it may be desirable to attach conditions that have more than one effect. For instance, if someone makes off from a filling station without making payment, we might want to impose a conditional caution that has a provision for compensation to the victim, which is a financial penalty; a fine, which is a punishment; and something that makes good the damage caused, which is reparative. The clause is designed to ensure that there is flexibility to put a range of conditions into the scheme.
There will be some cases in which only one condition is appropriate, which is why I want to reject the amendment. In the cases of a drug-misusing prostitute, we may want simply to rehabilitate. We may not want to punish, and it may be difficult to find reparative work that a drug-misusing prostitute may want to do. I am sure that the hon. Lady would accept that it is therefore important for the Bill to have sufficient flexibility to enable there to be only one condition in some cases.
Another example would be if somebody were guilty of a minor public order offence. The appropriate response could be a punitive condition requiring the offender to undertake unpaid work to clear up the mess in a town centre after a Saturday night. That is not reparative, because he might be clearing up damage that he has not personally caused. It would be perfectly proper for such conditions to be used in circumstances in which somebody has caused damage such as graffiti or vandalism. There must be flexibility to direct conditions towards only one of the objects set out in the clause rather than at least two, which would be far too restrictive and would not cover the range of offences at which the clause is targeted. I hope that the hon. Lady will consider that point and withdraw her amendment.