§ Mr. P. Browneasked the Minister of Defence if he will reconsider the practice whereby deserters discharged from Her Majesty's Services serve their sentences in civil prisons, bearing in mind that only one in seven of them have committed civil crimes, and that they are placed in contact with undesirable influences and carry the stigma attached to prison sentences rather than a spell in detention.
§ Mr. WatkinsonImprisonment or detention are amongst the punishments which the law provides for desertion. In practice, a Service man convicted of desertion is seldom sentenced to imprisonment unless he is also guilty of other offences or has a bad previous record, and in that case he is usually discharged from the Service as well. In some cases, the balance of advantage lies in sending Service prisoners who have been discharged to civil prisons.