Release of Prisoners (Alteration of Relevant Proportion of Sentence) Order 2019

Motion to Approve

Moved by

That the draft Order laid before the House on 14 October 2019 be approved.

My Lords, I will also speak to the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 (Consequential Amendment) Regulations 2019.

These draft instruments form part of the Government’s wider plans to reform sentencing and law and order, through which we aim to strengthen public confidence in the criminal justice system. The purpose of these instruments is to ensure that serious violent and sexual offenders serve a greater proportion of their sentence in prison, and to put beyond doubt that these release provisions will apply in relation to offenders receiving consecutive sentences, ahead of further changes the Government will set out in a sentencing Bill.

Under the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, all offenders sentenced to standard determinate sentences must be automatically released halfway through their sentence. These orders move the automatic release point for the most serious offenders who receive a standard determinate sentence of seven years or more. Instead of being released at the halfway point of their sentence, they will be released after serving two-thirds of their sentence.

A key component of our criminal justice system should be transparency, but currently, a person convicted of rape and sentenced to nine years in prison will be released after only half that sentence. Victims and the general public do not understand why they should serve only half their sentence in custody. While improved communication about how a sentence is served will help, this measure aims directly to improve public confidence by making sure that serious offenders will serve longer in prison.

Some may suggest that the whole sentence should be served behind bars, but this would not serve victims’ interests. It is crucial that when someone is given a custodial sentence, they spend part of this sentence under supervision in the community. The licence period has long been an integral part of the sentence, and it should remain so. It provides assurance to victims through the imposition of conditions to protect them such as non-contact conditions and exclusion zones, through supervision by the probation service and through the power to recall that offender to prison if they breach their conditions. It is also an important period for rehabilitation, giving the offender the chance to address their offending behaviour and undertake activities that can help to prevent them reoffending. So, a licence period must remain.

However, it is not in the interests of public protection that when someone has committed a serious offence for which they rightly receive a long sentence, such as grievous bodily harm with intent or rape, they are entitled to be released half way. This instrument aims to address this by moving the release point for these serious offenders so that they will serve two-thirds of their sentence in prison and the remainder on licence. Retaining them in prison for longer will provide reassurance to victims, protect the public and restore public confidence in the administration of justice. It will also provide longer periods for these offenders to undertake rehabilitative activity in prison and prepare effectively for their release and resettlement in the community.

My Lords, for some time this country has had the dubious distinction of having among the highest number of prisoners relative to population in Europe, with the numbers having risen by almost 70% in 30 years, with the vast majority of those, some 60%, being imprisoned for non-violent crimes. Moreover, the length of sentences has increased substantially, with 2.5 times as many people being sentenced to 10 years or more in 2018 as in 2006. On average, those receiving mandatory life sentences spend 17 years in custody, an increase of four years since 2001, while the average minimum period imposed for murder rose from 12.5 years in 2003 to 21.3 years in 2016. And yet, typically, the Prime Minister chooses to play to the gallery by reviewing sentencing policy without any consultation beyond the inner workings of the Ministry of Justice, and emerges with proposals for a draconian increase in the length of sentences which is likely to increase substantially the problems faced by an overworked and understaffed Prison Service, and indeed by the majority of prisoners.

As the Prison Reform Trust has pointed out:

“No evidence is given about the re-conviction of people currently released from these sentences”

and there is a risk that

“the people affected will spend a shorter period under the supervision of the probation service after release.”

The trust points out that reconviction rates are indeed lower for those serving more than four-year sentences, but there appears to be no evidence that sentences of seven years or more lead to any further reduction in reoffending on release.

The trust also reveals that the Ministry of Justice’s own research discloses that, when they are given the full facts of individual cases,

“the public tends to take a more lenient approach than sentencing courts.”

Moreover, they are likely to be confused by the fact that, when two convictions lead to consecutive sentences of less than seven years but with a total of more than seven years, the new provisions will not apply. And, of course, it is in any event open to the trial judge to impose longer sentences where this is deemed necessary.

As the trust rightly points out, there are other and better approaches to combating potential reoffending, not least by tackling the problems of the understaffed probation service. It rightly points out that the Chief Inspector of Probation has raised the issue of unacceptably large case loads for officers responsible for the supervision of long-serving former prisoners. Typically, no detail has been supplied of the additional costs of providing the offender management of those in custody that the new regime will require. Can the Minister supply any information about the relevant staff numbers and the costs involved?

My Lords, my contribution will be very brief. I support the principle enshrined in these regulations, but I share and strongly echo two concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham—and I do so as one who was until relatively recently on the monitoring board of a local prison.

My first point relates to the availability of relevant courses for prisoners to take in order to demonstrate that they can be safely released. When I was on the monitoring board, I was very concerned by the fact that a number of IPP prisoners were not able to find courses that could demonstrate that they were safe to release. I hope, therefore, that the Minister is able to say that resources will be dedicated to the provision of relevant courses.

The second and related point has already been made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham: the longer a person stays in prison, the more difficult it is for them to be reabsorbed into the community and, more particularly, the more difficult it is for them to get a job. When I was on the monitoring board, I was very concerned by the lack of meaningful out-of-cell activity, particularly in the field of education and the acquisition of work skills. Therefore, I very much hope that my noble friend is able to tell the House that the Government will increase the provision available to prisons to provide for meaningful out-of-cell activity, particularly in the field of education and the acquisition of relevant work skills, which will enable prisoners, when released, to be absorbed back into employment.

My Lords, this order is a populist response to perceived public concern and uninformed press comment. Lacking any genuine evidence base, it is, I regret, one among several policies for putting more people in prison, for longer, without any proven justification. The only possible argument in its favour is the simplistic one that individual offenders will be in prison for longer and so personally unable to commit further crimes during their extra time inside.

The impact assessment contains this core justification for the Government’s proposal. Referring to the serious offenders affected, it states:

“They have been given a lengthy sentence to reflect the seriousness of their offence, and, because these are the most serious types of offences with the gravest of consequences, they should therefore serve a greater proportion of their sentence in custody.”

That is a complete non-sequitur, because it attempts to justify counting the seriousness of the offence twice over: once when the judge passes sentence for the serious offence, and again when increasing by a third the proportion of the sentence to be spent in custody. Put simply, you get more time for committing the serious offence—and then even more time for precisely the same reason.

Members of this House and across Parliament, and clear majorities among academics in the field and legal professionals, have long argued, as did the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that we imprison too many people in this country and for too long, and that we must reduce the prison population to improve rehabilitation. For serious offenders we have argued for a reformed and functioning probation system; more through-the-gate supervision prior to and following release; more, and more effective, supervision of prisoners after their release; more use of early release, through release on temporary licence and home detention curfew schemes; and reducing sentence inflation in the courts. All these steps would help former offenders turn their lives around.

My Lords, as has already been said, this order implements a commitment made by the Prime Minister in the summer of 2019. That commitment was made as part of a review, conducted not after a public consultation—which might have been expected on an issue with such major implications—but merely as an internal Ministry of Justice exercise.

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, in its report of 30 October 2019, drew the House’s attention to the fact that the order represents

“one piece of a large and complicated jigsaw.”

Among the other pieces are: the announced sentencing Bill, to be preceded by a White Paper on sentencing more generally; the programme to build 10,000 additional prison places, announced in 2016 and repeated by the Prime Minister in 2019; the announced recruitment of 20,000 more police officers; and the royal commission on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of criminal justice system processes, announced in the 2019 Queen’s Speech. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee suggested that this House may wish to ask the Minister—which I now do—for more information about how all these pieces fit together.

Last week, the Ministry of Justice released the horrifying statistic that 58% of UK prisons—68 in total —were overcrowded, nine of them by more than 50%. This is not a situation that is likely to be rectified quickly yet, by this order, the Government are knowingly adding another 2,000 prisoners. The Chief Inspector of Prisons is continually drawing attention to the lack of purposeful activity in prison and the number of prisoners who spend all day locked up in their cell doing nothing. One factor leading to this situation is the lack of staff, not least because the Government wilfully dispensed with 80,000 years of operational experience. It is all very well to talk of recruiting additional numbers, but in addition to being inadequately trained, inevitably new recruits are inexperienced and, being frequently subject to horrifying assaults, too many are leaving early.

My Lords, my contribution can be brief. Having heard the speeches of noble Lords who spoke before me, and anticipating who will speak after me, I am not sure that I have a huge amount to add.

I begin by declaring my interest as a trustee of the Prison Reform Trust. I thank it for providing me with the same briefing that assisted the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, in his remarks. There is much to be gained from what it has told us, much of which the noble Lord faithfully recited. I also put in a preliminary plea to the Government—with some diffidence, seeing the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, in his place—to bring in swiftly the sentencing consolidation measures of the Joint Committee which the noble and learned Lord chaired at the end of the last Session.

I say that not only because what we achieved in that committee is worth getting on with but because, as a former Crown Court recorder—that is, a part-time judge—I know that sentencing is probably the most complicated thing that a Crown Court judge has to cope with. It is all very well if you are a High Court judge dealing predominantly with life sentences, but if you are a more junior member of the judiciary you deal with far more complicated sentencing arrangements. Therefore, the sooner we get what I call the “Judge Bill” into law, the better.

I largely agree—in fact, I think I wholly agree—with all that has been said so far, but there are a number of things that I want to point out, based on what I see in the papers introduced into this debate by the Government through the impact assessment for this statutory instrument. The first point I want to query is to be found towards the end of the document when it sets out only two policy options. Option Zero is do nothing—that is, make no changes to the release point for serious offenders. Option 1 is:

“Legislate to move the automatic release point for serious offenders from halfway to two-thirds of the custodial period.”

That is a well-known Civil Service trick. You present the Minister with two options. Sometimes, if you are generous, you present him with three, two of which are useless. In this case, one is completely unacceptable, so—guess what?—the Minister chooses the option that is required of him.

That is fair enough. I have no constitutional objection to Governments altering, through Parliament, the way in which the law on sentencing is achieved. That is the point of Parliament—it can change the law on this, that and the other, and if the Government have a majority for what they intend to do, that is fair enough. That begs the question: is it wise to do what a Government propose to do? All the policy objectives set out in this document are, of themselves, either uncontroversial or unobjectionable for some other reason. For example, it says that requiring offenders in this category—that is, the more serious offenders—sentenced to seven years or more to be released after serving two-thirds of their sentence more closely aligns the release provisions with those of similarly serious offenders who receive an extended determinate sentence. Well, yes it does—but so what?

More important is what we do with the prisoners while they are in prison. If a prisoner is given a 15-year sentence and serves 10 years, as opposed to six and a half or seven, and you do nothing with him while he is in a prison, either for the halfway or the two-thirds period of the sentence, and you release him illiterate, still a drug addict and still suffering from mental health problems, and he is wholly unfit for employment and incapable of looking after himself or his dependants, we have achieved nothing. Although the public might initially have been persuaded that tougher and longer sentences will make them feel safer—although I query whether they actually think that—once the unrepaired prisoner is released, he may well be as much of a danger to the public as he was when he committed his first offence.

Nothing that I say is original to me. I first studied prisons policy at the feet of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, when I became the shadow Prisons Minister under David Cameron’s leadership of the Opposition. I confess that I became somewhat evangelical about the subject of prison reform. As I said in my speech to this House on 8 January during the Queen’s Speech debate, I visited well over half of the adult prisons, young offender institutions and secure training units in England and Wales during that period. I repeat that I saw pockets of excellent work by really dedicated and excellent public servants, be they prison officers, prison governors, teachers, medical staff or experts in other forms of drug and alcohol addiction.

However, there was a lack of consistency. There was such a massive difference between the regimes in prison A and prison B, and a huge amount of churn of prisoners. You could be sent to Maidstone and then, within weeks, to Lewes; then to Exeter; then to somewhere in the north of England, and so on. So, the prison system had no ability to train, rehabilitate or mend these largely damaged and—yes—dangerous and criminal people; it had no ability to make them better. If we put junk in and take junk out, what have we achieved apart from spending an awful lot of public money to no effect, having misled the public that what we were doing with prisoners was in their best interests?