L

Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 13 November 2025

Debate

Prisoner Releases in Error

Contribution

My Lords, we have had a great deal of expertise demonstrated in the questions we have heard today, from the MoJ and from people dealing with offenders. I want to pass on my own experience as a sentencing magistrate. When I started 20 years ago as a sentencing magistrate, when I sent someone to jail I said that they would be released at the halfway stage. That was something I was unable to say as the complexity of the various sentences that were available grew. Instead, towards the end of my period as a magistrate, I said that they would be released when the governor said they could be released after the calculations had been made. Does my noble friend agree that it is a reasonable aspiration, with all this technology and trying to review the system, that at the point of sentencing, the sentencing judge or magistrate should be able to say what the release date is?

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