NAPO News - Briefing for the Justice Unions’ Parliamentary Group
Posted on Monday, April 27, 2009
Release from prison, diversion and reducing costs
Napo produced a briefing for the Justice Unions’ Parliamentary Group on 17 March on ways of reducing costs for NOMS. Over the last decade the government has introduced two early release schemes to ease prison overcrowding: Home Detention Curfew (introduced in January 1999) and End of Custody Licence (introduced in June 2007). As a consequence prisoners who are given sentences of less than 12 months are serving at best a quarter to a third of their sentence. Those given sentences of less than two months may end up serving a matter of a few days.
Purpose
Napo believes both Home Detention Curfew and End of Custody Licence were introduced for one reason only, to reduce prison overcrowding. The HDC scheme does involve home circumstances checks and some form of assessment and electronic tagging, but can result in a discount of up to 135 days ECL was introduced in 2007 as a crisis measure and involved a further 18 day discount. Critically there was no risk assessment and no home circumstances report. As a consequence men convicted of domestic violence were being released back into a volatile situation at home. In reality the introduction of the two schemes means that those serving six months or less are actually inside for a matter of days, less than 20% of their sentence.
ECL scrapped
The government has now announced the scrapping of ECL from 12 March. This is a very welcome move as the scheme was flawed. However, within 12 months, this is likely to add around 2,500 to the prison population and there are real doubts about the capacity of the prison service to cope. It is also likely that the HDC scheme will expand to offset the consequences of ending ECL. Periods of incarceration are so short that no rehabilitation or participation in programmes is realistically possible. The vast majority of short-term prisoners re-offend very quickly. At least 66% are reconvicted. It might be more economically sensible if the resources were used for 12 month periods of supervision in the community with participation in programmes. Research has shown that these programmes can reduce re-offending, particularly for those with behavioural or drug problems, to 35%.
A way forward
During 2008, the last year for which figures were available, 55,333 people received a sentence less than or equal to six months. A further 9,652 were sentenced to between six months and 12 months. As presently funded the Probation Service would not be able to cope with an additional 55,000 cases. However, the cost of incarcerating somebody for a full year is at least £41,000, while the cost of supervising somebody in the community for a full year would be between £6,000 and £7,000 (although these figures do not include head office, regional and contracted out costs, so are in reality likely to be 50% higher). A planned shift over a period of two financial years would actually achieve considerable savings for the Ministry of Justice. Those sentenced to six months or less serve an average of six to eight weeks in prison. This is the equivalent of 6,000 on the daily prison population. If a third of that number were given community penalties it would reduce the daily prison population by 2,000, making substantial savings. Supervision in the community could involve incrementally, drug and alcohol treatment, literacy and numeracy education, and enhance the possibility of the individuals being able to find work and therefore further reducing costs.