Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Report (3rd Day) (Continued)

Amendment 82

82: Clause 125, insert the following new Clause— “Discretionary early discharge of prisoners In section 23 of the Criminal Justice Act 1961, after subsection (3) insert—“(3ZA) A Minister of the Crown may by regulations establish pilot schemes under which, where a prisoner is to be discharged on a Friday or the day before a bank holiday, they may at the discretion of the governor of the prison be discharged up to two working days earlier than the day on which the prisoner would otherwise be discharged, provided that—(a) it would be helpful for the prisoner’s reintegration into society, and(b) the prisoner has served a custodial sentence of more than 30 days. (3ZB) The power to make regulations under subsection (3ZA) expires after the period of two years beginning with the day on which this Act is passed, and any pilot scheme must have concluded within that period.””Member’s explanatory statement This amendment would enable trials of schemes for early discharge from prison which would reduce the bunching of releases on Fridays to take place during a two-year trial period.

There is a slight mistake on the Marshalled List. It should read “After Clause 125”.

My Lords, Amendment 82 is concerned about Friday prisoner releases, or perhaps I should say the bunching of releases of prisoners on Fridays. I place on record my thanks for the support that I have received from around the House, from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the noble Lords, Lord German and Lord Ramsbotham, and from NACRO, which has done a lot of work and research on this subject over many years.

There is always the danger at this stage of a Bill’s proceedings that you just rehearse familiar arguments and regurgitate facts that have been introduced before. I want to avoid that tonight and instead state briefly the central thesis that concerns me and my fellow supporters; state how we have changed and amended it to meet the points made by the Government at the earlier stage of the Bill; and then explain why we have retabled it in this new form today.

The basic thesis is that when you are sentenced, the court sets a calendar date for your release, not a day of the week. If that calendar date falls on a Saturday, a Sunday or—if it is a bank holiday—a Monday, the prisoner will be released on the previous Friday. A quick bit of mental arithmetic will show noble Lords that some three-sevenths of all prisoners are likely to be released on a Friday. Equally, it is clear to us all that Friday is the last day of the week and so, as the afternoon wears on, the local authority and voluntary services begin to wind down. Because a greater number of prisoners are being released, inevitably they are reaching the places where they can access those services later, so they are even more likely to be closing down. Added to that, the prisoner may well have been released from a prison that is some way from his home town, and in the event perhaps he has no home anyway.

Wrap all that together with the discharge grant, which has now been raised from £46 to £76, a sum on which he or she has to live for two or three days, after allowing for any travel expenses that may have been required. The result is that prisoners who may have no accommodation or support, facing the challenges of freedom after a period of incarceration, are having to do so on very limited financial resources. I suggest that it would be hard to construct a set of circumstances in which the temptation to reoffend could be greater.

First, we addressed the issue of rehabilitation so that now the amendment says

“it would be helpful for the prisoner’s reintegration into society”—

we focused on that. Secondly, we reduced the discretionary period from five days to two days. Thirdly, we limited the discretionary scheme to cases involving custodial sentences greater than 30 days, so that the reduction as a percentage of the sentence was greatly reduced.

With that, we put the amendment down in the Public Bill Office—but shortly after we tabled it, the Government published their Prisons Strategy White Paper. Paragraphs 139 and 140 address the issues and challenges of Friday releases, and do so in terms with which neither I nor, I suspect, my fellow supporters could disagree. I quote:

“We know that accessing timely support on release can be particularly challenging on a Friday, due to the limited time before services close for the weekend. We need to do more to support those with complex needs to access support on release such as older prison leavers who struggle to access social care and those that face practical challenges such as travelling significant distances to access services on time. We will therefore explore allowing prisoners who are at risk of reoffending to be discharged one or two days earlier at governor discretion”.

What is not to like? Nothing is not to like there. What is not to like is the fact that there is now a proposal for consultation. The next paragraph reads:

“Should we take a legislative approach, as described above, for those at risk of reoffending … If so, how should we structure this approach?”

If, as seems likely, primary legislation will be needed to give effect to any new scheme, and if it is to be preceded by a period of consultation, the chance to include anything in this Bill is gone—finished—and we will have to wait another two or three years before another appropriate legislative vehicle comes along. To put it no higher, this seems an unconscionably long time before addressing an issue that all parties agree is serious.

My noble friend Lord Wolfson was kind enough to see a group of us to discuss the ways in which we might tackle this. We explored the possibility of using an interim period to carry out some real-life practical research that could inform and improve the shape of any future Friday release scheme, when or if it is introduced.

We withdrew our amendment and tabled another one. This amendment allows the Minister by regulation to establish pilot schemes to test new approaches to Friday release that meet the outlines I described. These could form a useful part of the proposed consultation exercise. It was in this spirit that we ensured that the regulations had a two-year sunset clause.

I will pull all the threads together. It is generally agreed that the bunching of Friday releases has a number of undesirable features that are likely to increase the chances of reoffending. Secondly, it is agreed that any flexibility in release dates needs to be short and focused on cases in which the chances of rehabilitation are the greatest. We argue that to allow another two or three years to elapse before any action is taken to tackle this problem is, I am afraid, wrong.