Starting tomorrow the government has announced emergency measures to deal with prison overcrowding in England and Wales.
These include early release for some prisoners when they have served 40 per cent of their sentence. 1,700 inmate are expected to be released which has sparked safety concerns.
More than a third of prisoners freed under an emergency early release scheme over the summer were serving sentences for violent crimes, figures show.
Of the 477 people released to free up space in overcrowded jails, 188 had been convicted of non-sexual crimes of violence, according to data from the Scottish Prisons Service (SPS). That amounts to 39.4 per cent of the total released. The SPS said it was being “open and transparent” about the early release scheme.
The data also shows 52 releases were vetoed by prison governors because they were believed to pose an “immediate risk of harm”.The prisoners were freed in four tranches in June and July under emergency powers granted to ministers by parliament, to protect the welfare of inmates and staff.
“Tomorrow the Government are expected to release around 1,700 prisoners across the country as part of the Early Release Scheme. We recognise that overcrowding is a serious issue that the Government needs to take urgent action to address, however, Women’s Aid is concerned that the policy is coming at the price of safety for women and children.
We have been assured that prisoners convicted of sexual and some domestic abuse offences will not be among those released, but sadly we are hearing from our member services across the country that many perpetrators are slipping through the net, having been convicted of other related offences, such as assault. The early release of perpetrators will have a detrimental impact on both the physical safety and mental wellbeing of survivors, who have been able to live in safety and begun to rebuild their lives free from fear while their abuser was in prison.
The Early Release Scheme relies heavily on an already overstretched and struggling probation service, and we fear that the release of such high volumes of prisoners at once will push them to breaking point. For a long time, we’ve been warning that probation services across the country are already failing to safeguard survivors, with inadequate monitoring and poor risk assessing of perpetrators. Inconsistencies in probation services across the country also means that there is a mixed picture when it comes to how specialist domestic abuse services are involved with safety planning -with many being left out of the process entirely. As an average of one woman a week is killed by a current or former partner, proper monitoring, evaluating and safety planning can be a matter of life and death.
As well as providing expert knowledge, specialist domestic abuse services also provide much needed support to survivors. Fears over the early release of potentially dangerous perpetrators, and a failing probation system, mean that these services will face additional strain as survivors reach out for help. Decades of chronic underfunding has left many of these services close to their limits and there is an urgent need for the government to provide the resources needed to ensure that survivors continue to be supported during this challenging time and beyond.
Women’s Aid welcomes the Government’s manifesto commitment to halve violence against women and girls in the next 10 years, but policies like this, which will directly impact women and girls, are a cause for concern. For this scheme to avoid dire consequences for women and children, we need to see proper resourcing of probation services so that they have the capacity to carry out thorough risk assessments and adequately monitor those released, alongside co-operation with expert organisations and funding for the specialist domestic abuse services that support survivors.
The upcoming Spending Review provides the opportunity for the government to renew their commitments towards women and girls, and we hope to see the appropriate measures taken in this to mitigate the risk that the Early Release Scheme poses to survivors.”
Only prisoners with 180 days or less to serve from a sentence of under four years were considered for early release. No-one convicted of sexual or domestic abuse offences has been released early.
The Scottish government has said the move was in response to rising prison populations – up 13 per cent since last year. Justice Secretary Angela Constance said that similar action was being taken by the UK government in England and Wales.
The SPS figures show 101 of those released had been convicted of “crimes of dishonesty”, while 99 had been convicted of “crimes against society”. Others released under the scheme were serving sentences for anti-social offences, road traffic offences, damage and reckless behaviour and miscellaneous offences.
The largest number of releases by local authority was 72 in Glasgow City, followed by 40 in North Lanarkshire, 39 in Fife and 28 in East Ayrshire.
She said: “The recent emergency release of short sentence prisoners was backed by the Scottish Parliament to deal with a significant rise in the prison population.”
She added public safety was “paramount” and a number of safeguards were built into the process including the ability for prison governors to veto the release of prisoners if they posed an “immediate risk to a specific individual or group”.
Responding to the news that the government’s SDS40 early release scheme will put domestic abuse survivors at risk, Jessica Eagelton, Head of Policy and Public Affairs at Refuge, said:
“While Refuge recognises the need to ease pressure on prison estates, we are concerned the SDS40 early release scheme may come at the expense of domestic abuse survivors’ safety.
We welcome the Government’s plans to ensure some perpetrators of domestic abuse are not released early from prison, however the list of exemptions is not comprehensive enough.
As it stands, the early release exemption list will not include all domestic abuse offenders, for example, those charged with common assault. It will also not include those offenders with a history of domestic abuse who are serving a prison sentence for an unrelated offence, meaning some domestic abuse perpetrators will be released from prison early under SDS40.
Even though offenders released will be monitored by the Probation Service, previous concerns have been raised about the probation service’s ability to adequately monitor domestic abuse perpetrators. Sadly, the recent murders of Zara Aleena and Terri Harris, Connie Gent, Lacey Bennett and John Bennett have highlighted the fatal consequences of missed opportunities by probation officers to correctly assess and manage the risk of harm posed to both women and their children.
With the first tranche of releases set for September 10, we know this is a worrying time for survivors and some will need to make new plans to guarantee their safety. Survivors may not even know when their perpetrators are being released, as the insufficient Victim Contact Scheme only covers serious sexual or violent offences, where the offender receives a custodial sentence of 12 months or more. However, an estimated 10% of cases that result in a 12 month or less sentence are related to domestic abuse. In a further 10% of cases, the offender has been flagged by probation for domestic abuse.
We are all too aware of the grave repercussions that occur when the criminal justice system fails to recognise the real risk abusers pose to survivors’ safety. We’ve long called for all perpetrators of domestic abuse and VAWG to be exempt from early release schemes, and we are now urging the Government to extend the Victim Contact Scheme to all survivors of domestic abuse. It is also essential that training and resources for probation practitioners, alongside resources for VAWG services who may be facing additional demand as a result of early release, is provided immediately.”
“The early release scheme is a pragmatic response to the chronic lack of jail spaces,” said Law Society of England and Wales president Nick Emmerson.
“While not an ideal step to take, in view of the parlous state of our prisons, it enables more time and space for longer-term solutions to the many problems bedevilling our criminal justice system.
“It will be important to ensure that appropriate safeguards are in place so that any risks to the public are minimised.
“Rebuilding the criminal justice system after decades of neglect will take years of hard work, investment and sensible reform.
“With this stabilising step, the vital rebuilding work can begin and efforts made to stem the exodus of essential professionals. The recent swift arrests and prosecutions following the riots showed the justice system to be an essential part of our society and those who work in it should be properly valued.”
