The 100-Year Life Health Education and Government
Around 1,700 prisoners in England and Wales will be released today as the government attempts to relieve pressure on a prison estate it says is “on the point of collapse”.
The new scheme allows some offenders to leave prison after serving 40 per cent of their sentence for certain offences, rather than the 50 per cent required under previous guidelines.
The aim is to reduce overcrowding, but one effect will be a surge in pressure on a probation service forced to cope with nearly three times the usual weekly number of released prisoners.
The probation service normally handles about 1,000 newly released people a week, Martin Jones, Chief Inspector of Probation, tells the Sensemaker podcast. But an extra 2,000 are expected to be released on 10 September alone.
The service has had eight weeks to prepare. “The risk is, has eight weeks been enough in all of those cases to properly understand the risk?” Jones says, adding that the need for suitable accommodation is especially acute.
The Ministry of Justice says about 5,500 people in total will leave prison early over the next two months.
It has pledged that serious violent offenders, terrorists and domestic abuse perpetrators won’t be released, but concerns have been raised about a potential loophole allowing domestic abuse offenders to go free if they were convicted under broader offences.
Diana Johnson, the policing minister, said the government has been trying to ensure that does not happen, but a senior government source told the Times “a high proportion” of those released will be domestic abusers.
Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, has promised to hire 1,000 new probation officers by next spring, but Jones worries that raw recruits won’t be equal to the task.
“They’re newly qualified officers coming into an organisation that’s already facing excessive caseload burdens,” he says. “Do they stay in the organisation long enough? Do they have the experience to deal with those complex cases?”
Official figures indicate that the probation service currently has a 25 per cent staff shortfall.