Madam Speaker, when we hear the Conservatives talk about crime, it always seems that their solution is to lock up all the criminals and throw away the key, as my colleague said earlier. Unfortunately, that is not consistent with the facts.
There is a report from a few years ago posted on the government's own website that compiles the very interesting findings of 50 studies involving over 300,000 offenders. Government researchers state the following:
None of the analyses found imprisonment to reduce recidivism. The recidivism rate for offenders who were imprisoned as opposed to given a community sanction were similar. In addition, longer prison sentences were not associated with reduced recidivism. In fact, the opposite was found. Longer sentences were associated with a 3% increase in recidivism.
An analysis of the studies according to the risk of the offender also did not show a deterrent effect.
What does my colleague think about those figures?