Prisoners who have been assessed as “high risk” are being released from prison under the government’s early release scheme, a serving probation officer told Sky News.
This is despite the Prime Minister telling the House of Commons on Wednesday that “no one” would be included in the scheme “if they were considered to be a threat to public safety”.
Supervised End of Custody Leave (ECSL) was introduced in October to alleviate overcrowding in prisons in England and Wales. Allows certain prisoners to be released up to 70 days before the end of their sentence.
The government says sex offenders, terrorists, serious violent offenders and those serving sentences longer than four years are not eligible.
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‘High risk to the public’
“They may pose a high risk to the public as we assess them,” Ben – not his real name – told Sky News.
“Just because they’re not serving a long sentence doesn’t mean people aren’t considered a high risk in the public domain. And we wouldn’t have time to implement safeguards or do any checks.
“Recently, I am aware of at least two people who have come out who we have assessed as high risk.”
At Prime Minister’s Questions, the Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer pointed to the example of a prisoner who represented a danger to children and was at risk of domestic violence and persecution, whose release date was brought forward.
This example was raised as part of a inspection at HMP Lewes by the inspection of prisons, which raised “serious concerns” about the implementation of the measure.
Emergency measure to alleviate overcrowding
This comes at a time when another emergency measure to alleviate overcrowding, Operation Early Dawn, was confirmed that it was triggered by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on Wednesday.
This means that defendants in police custody will remain there – and will not be transferred to magistrates’ courts for bail hearings if there is no room in the cells for that prisoner if they are detained in custody.
“It’s administrative chaos,” said David McNeill of The Law Society.
“It’s all falling apart. It’s having a huge impact on the functioning of the courts,” he told Sky News.
“There are victims, witnesses, defendants, lawyers, magistrates and their staff all appearing for cases that are being canceled at short notice.”
Problems in prisons
Prisons across England and Wales are under pressure and severely overcrowded.
Figures published on Friday show that 87,691 people are currently behind bars in England and Wales.
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The number of people who can be held in “safe and decent accommodation” in prison, known as “certified normal accommodation” or “unfilled capacity”, is considered by the Ministry of Justice to be 79,507.
This means the current overall system is at 110% capacity or overcrowded.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “While we always ensure there is sufficient capacity to keep dangerous offenders behind bars, this scheme allows us to alleviate short-term pressures on prisons by transferring some lower-level offenders at the end of the period of imprisonment, for license.
“These offenders will continue to be supervised under strict conditions such as marking and curfews, and the prison service may block the early release of any individual who poses a high risk.”
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