Revealed: Women eligible for early release from prison under emergency scheme, leaked document shows

Get the free Morning Headlines electronic mail for information from our reporters the world over

Sign as much as our free Morning Headlines electronic mail

The authorities is quietly permitting girls to be freed from prison early, The Independent can reveal, in an extension of the emergency scheme dramatically expanded this week amid a dire scarcity of cells.

Justice secretary Alex Chalk introduced in October that prisoners can be launched as much as 18 days early to ease the overcrowding disaster, however this was thought to use solely to males’s prisons. He prolonged this to between 35 and 60 days on Monday, as prisons got here dangerously near operating out of house.

An inner document obtained by this publication now suggests girls are additionally being launched early under the End of Custody Supervised Licence scheme. Ministers have refused to publish figures on how many individuals have been freed early since October.

However, it seems that girls are solely eligible for release as much as 18 days early – regardless of warnings that males convicted of crimes together with home abuse are amongst these being launched as much as 60 days early.

In response to a request for remark, the federal government stated it has by no means been gender-specific about which prisoners may be launched.

“It’s outrageous that the Tories have draped major changes to the justice system in total secrecy,” stated Labour’s shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood.

“Rishi Sunak has a duty to urgently tell the public today – which types of prisoners are being released and when? The public shouldn’t have to rely on media leaks to drag the truth out.

“After 14 years of the Conservatives running prisons and the criminal justice system into the ground, victims feel completely let down. A Labour government would get these new prisons built to ease the capacity crisis and deliver on our mission to make Britain’s streets safe.”

The leaked steering, issued by a governor to officers at an unnamed girls’s prison, states: “In recent weeks we have also seen increase in the population in the women’s estate.

“We do not have the same range of options as the male estate has – for example we would not hold women overnight in a police cell which has been done in some circumstances in the male estate when places are low and our open estate does not operate in the same way.

“Therefore we must introduce End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) which is an emergency lever that will see certain lower-risk women released on licence up to 18 days ahead of their Automatic Release Date.”

Ian Lawrence, head of the probation union Napo, instructed The Independent that he understands there are three girls’s prisons included within the scheme, and raised considerations over a scarcity of equality within the remedy of girls showing to be eligible for release solely 18 days early and males as much as 60.

“We’re not intrinsically opposed to it if it’s managed properly, and if it is, women should be given full and equal treatment,” stated Mr Lawrence.

With probation already in disaster and a few officers allegedly dealing with caseloads of as much as 200 per cent of their advisable workload, Mr Lawrence stated: “We’re not convinced that the haste with which this is being introduced is going to allow our members to be able to process these cases as safely as everyone would want.

He added: “Is there going to be the accommodation available? Is there going to be access to the relevant agencies to meet the needs of the person being released?”

The inner document means that, as with the boys’s early release scheme, prisoners serving sentences for sexual offences, terrorism or violence of over 4 years shall be amongst these routinely excluded, along with these topic to Parole Board selections.

The steering notes that whereas there may be “no scope to rule out eligible women”, the governor can escalate the choice to a central panel if early release is deemed to pose a fabric danger, together with to their bodily or psychological well being.

It states: “This may be unsettling for some of our women who feel safer in prison than they do at home. It will be vital that we provide all the support they need, take the time to talk them through the scheme if they are eligible and escalate any concerns you may have.”

There have been 3,651 girls held in prison as of 8 March – that means the inhabitants has soared by greater than 500 since January 2023, regardless of a authorities pledge to scale back the variety of girls behind bars.

Experts have lengthy referred to as for an finish to prisons being used as a so-called “place of safety” for girls merely as a result of there is no such thing as a appropriate provision locally – regardless of overwhelmed prison officers typically missing the coaching wanted to help individuals in psychological well being disaster, and infrequently months-long waits for switch to a safe well being unit.

Violence in girls’s prisons has now overtaken males’s prisons to hit an all-time excessive, with assaults tripling in a decade, whereas incidents of self-harm have skyrocketed 38 per cent to a brand new peak of 5,988 incidents per 1,000 prisoners – 10 instances increased than in males’s prisons.

The Prison Reform Trust has discovered that round six in 10 girls despatched to prison in 2022 have been sentenced to lower than six months, with 80 per cent in jail for non-violence offences. Ministry of Justice knowledge shows virtually half of all feminine prisoners say they dedicated their offence to help the drug use of another person.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson stated: “While we are carrying out the biggest prison expansion programme since the Victoria era and ramping up removals of foreign national offenders, the prison estate remains under pressure following the impact of the pandemic and barristers’ industrial action.

“So alongside our action to lock up the worst offenders for longer, we are extending the number of days some lower-level offenders are moved on to supervised licence and will make changes to ensure probation staff continue to have the capacity to deliver high-quality supervision for offenders in the community.”