As part of its emergency strategy to alleviate jail congestion in England and Wales, the government is releasing an additional 1,100 inmates ahead of schedule.
After completing 40% of their term in prison, offenders serving longer than five years will be freed on a license; this program does not include those convicted of terrorism, sex offenses, or significant violence.
Ministers have begun a comprehensive examination of sentencing, which is expected to result in the creation of new kinds of non-jail punishment. This is the second round of emergency releases since September.
In an effort to alleviate congestion, the review may grant judges the authority to sentence individuals to “prison outside prison” with house arrest.
Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, stated her want to make sure that emergency releases “never happen again”.
“Our best opportunity to set a new trajectory” is how she characterized the program.
Mahmood expressed her hope that the study will establish a system in which “there is a prison place for everyone who needs to be locked up, and where we expand the range of punishments outside of prison as well,” as she stated on BBC Radio 4’s Today program.
Days after the general election, ministers unveiled the second stage of their emergency plan, which includes Tuesday’s early releases. Officials had issued grim warnings that the jails were running out of room.
By allowing some criminals to be supervised in the community under a license after serving 40% of their sentence in prison instead of the usual 50%, the program frees up 5,500 spots throughout England and Wales.
Many of the inmates who are scheduled to leave jail on Tuesday have been working toward rehabilitation in open prisons.
The number of inmates has been increasing by about 4,500 each year, which is more quickly than previous administrations had constructed new cells.
In order to avoid a recurrence of the overcrowding situation, the justice minister stated that the Labour administration would construct the 14,000 places that the Conservatives had promised but had not delivered. She also wished to alter the sentencing process.
“We have an opportunity now to reshape and redesign what punishment outside of a prison looks like,” she stated.
“They still need to be punished, their freedom must be restricted, and people must understand and feel that breaking our laws has repercussions,” she continued.
David Gauke, a former Conservative justice minister who has long supported change, will head the study.
His research, which is anticipated to be released next spring, will examine how technology may enhance rehabilitation and how new community punishment models might replace brief jail terms.
Authorities are already considering extending the use of effective “sobriety tags,” which track whether an offender consumes alcohol.
They also want to examine the argument for “nudge” devices that resemble smart watches and are being tested in several US states.
Ex-offenders, who frequently lead chaotic lives, may cooperate better with their rehabilitation, according to trials.
According to Mahmood, there should always be a cell accessible for serious criminals, regardless of the final plans. This summer, the system came dangerously near to not meeting this obligation when there were less than 100 vacant seats.
There are 1,671 open spots in the present jail population of 87,465.
The Howard League for Penal Reform’s director of campaigns, Andrew Nielson, praised the sentencing review.
The emergency prisoner releases on Tuesday, he told the BBC, were “far from an ideal situation” and “a really blunt tool” since some of the convicts would not be prepared to reintegrate into society.
“The government only gains some time from this. They’ll be dealing with the same problems once more by this time next year, if not before,” he stated. “The sentence review is crucial for this reason.
After winning the election, one of Labour’s first actions was to put the previous government’s early release plan into effect.
In September, 1,700 criminals were released from jail as part of the first round of early releases under this approach, bringing the total number of inmates down to 86,333.
Nonetheless, the administration made several grave errors.
Some individuals were released who shouldn’t have been. Incorrectly released were thirty-seven prisoners whose sentences had not been accurately recorded. According to the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), they have all been taken back into jail.
The BBC found that some ex-offenders who were supposed to have an electronic tag installed to track their whereabouts had not received one.
A probation union warned that the idea amounted to “moving the problem from one place to another without properly assessing the risks” in a prior critique of the scheme’s effect on public safety.
Although the number of inmates has decreased from its peak of 89,000 thanks to the emergency release program, officials warn that if other measures don’t succeed, prisons may hit yet another crisis point starting in July.
One of those initiatives is to double the sentence authority of magistrates by granting them the authority to imprison criminals for a maximum of 12 months.
According to officials, the action would assist reduce the number of 17,000 criminals who are now on remand in cells awaiting the conclusion of their prosecutions, which prevents them from being transferred through the system in the direction of rehabilitation.
However, because some criminals might choose a trial over a 12-month jail term, the Criminal Bar Association was worried that it would “sharply increase” the number of inmates.
It stated that doing so would entail adding their cases to the royal courts’ already-existing backlog.
