Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill
9:30 am
David Burrowes (Shadow Minister, Justice; Enfield, Southgate, Conservative)
I want to pick up on the point about referral orders and the question whether magistrates need to have more discretion to take a view on the more serious offences and on whether to impose a non-custodial option, rather than going from a referral order to custody. Is not the concern also that there are those categories of offence, even though they may be a first offence, where a diversion—that is what we hope a referral order will be—is not appropriate? The advantage of a robust community disposal, which may ensure that a person does not reoffend, is also that they will have a criminal record of a conviction rather than the referral and diversion from the system which is warranted by less serious offences.