Conservative Party efforts to look ‘tough on crime’ ahead of this year’s general election took another battering this week after it emerged that some prisoners will be released more than two months early to help reduce prison overcrowding.
Domestic abusers, burglars, and fraudsters who have been sentenced to less than four years in prison are among those who are eligible for the scheme—extended now for the second time—which could see them be freed up to 70 days early.
There was no formal announcement on the extension, which Tory officials would clearly much rather have kept under wraps. Instead, The Times published a story after getting its hands on an email sent to probation and prison staff which said that early-release measures introduced two months ago had failed to ease overcrowding in Britain’s crumbling prisons.
The newspaper also pointed to Prison Service forecasts which suggest that after 14 years of Conservative Party mismanagement, prison space will run out in male prisons from June unless measures are taken.
The Ministry of Justice has been rather coy when asked to disclose how many prisoners it has released early under the scheme since October. Critics might presume from this that the answer doesn’t look good for the government.
The department has, however, attempted to alleviate concerns by highlighting that those released early “will continue to be supervised under strict conditions such as tagging and curfews.”
Except that Nicole Jacobs, Britain’s Domestic Abuse Commissioner, warned last year that early-release plans “could be dangerous” for domestic abuse victims. Jacobs added:
Victims should not pay the price for prison overcrowding. Since the announcement of the early release scheme, there has been no transparent evaluation of the scheme’s impact on domestic abuse victims, nor the probation service’s ability to properly manage perpetrators.
Labour—who Britons can soon expect to do an equally poor job of managing the criminal justice system—said fairly half-heartedly that “the government cannot keep extending the early release of prisoners without facing public scrutiny.”
