Contribution
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to the order. We must, of course, recognise the extent of the pressures facing our prison services. Prison spaces have reached capacity and recalled prisoners are a significant driver of prison place demand. Recall is a measure available to His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service to bring an offender managed in the community, following release from prison, back into custody. That is a point to which I will return. Under current legislation, recall is used when offenders breach their licence conditions, no matter how minor the breach of licence conditions may be, even in the case of a non-violent offender. It will also apply where their risk is elevated.
As indicated, at the end of March this year, 13,583 prisoners had been recalled into custody, together with a further 17 mentioned by the Minister. That is an increase of 10% since the year before and more than double the recall population in 2018. These figures are a matter for concern, and we recognise the Government’s intention to address the challenges through interventions of various kinds, but we have several concerns with the approach taken in this order.
First, we must recognise that if a prisoner is sent to prison for four years, re-releasing him back into the community after 28 days poses significant risks to victims and the wider public. The reforms introduced by the Government create considerable risk to the public and are required to be reconsidered.
Secondly, there are 10,500 foreign criminals in our jails and 17,000 people in prison awaiting trial—on remand—which, together account for almost one-third of the prison population. It is essential for the Government to reconsider the judiciary’s offer of extra court sitting days as a means of reducing prisoner numbers and to address the whole issue of remand and how it is approached.
Thirdly, we know that there is not one solution to fix the current prison population pressures, but we must be acute to the threat of re-releasing high-risk violent offenders to the public when they have a track record of poor compliance. Probation services are already struggling with unprecedented demands, and it is essential that the Government reconsider the implications of these reforms on both the victims of crime and the issue of wider public safety.
Fourthly, I quote Dame Nicole Jacobs, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, who said that she could not stress enough,
“the lack of consideration for victims’ safety and how many lives are being put in danger because of this proposed change”.
We must be responsive to the warnings made by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner. These reforms cannot safely exempt perpetrators of domestic abuse from the proposal, because they do not know how many domestic abusers are serving time in prison or currently being monitored by probation.
In conclusion, we recognise that the Government have difficult decisions to make, but they must do so with a rational approach, not one that proposes changes that further endanger lives. We urge the Government to reconsider their plans for recalling prisoners and choose the safety of the public over pressure on prison spaces. I look forward to hearing from the Minister on this. I do not expect him to respond to the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, that somehow the death penalty could be a solution; clearly, that was not his intended meaning. But I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lemos: the number of recalls as well as the period of recall is critical here. As I indicated in a previous debate in the Chamber, it respectfully appears to me that one ought to address whether minor licence breaches should, in the case of non-violent offenders, result in recall at all. There are alternative means of dealing with this.