Draft Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Home Detention Curfew) Order 2023
(1 year, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Damian Hinds)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Home Detention Curfew) Order 2023.
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. The home detention curfew scheme has been in place for more than two decades and is an important tool in safely managing the transition of eligible offenders from custody back into the community. It does so by enabling certain lower-risk prisoners to be released from prison early, while remaining subject to significant restrictions on their liberty, including a curfew, which is monitored by an electronic tag.
The draft statutory instrument before us forms part of wider changes that we are making to that scheme. Our changes put public protection first, while ensuring closer scrutiny and supervision in the community for those less serious offenders who are ready to be released on home detention curfew. We will be making changes to the eligibility criteria and risk assessment set out in the HDC policy framework, which will mean fewer people are released on HDC overall, the public are better protected, and a clear message is sent to domestic abusers. Tackling violence against women and girls is a Government priority. It is abhorrent and preventable, and an issue that blights the lives of millions.
Certain offenders, such as sex offenders and those convicted of child cruelty offences, are already excluded or presumed unsuitable for home detention curfew. We will add to the “presumed unsuitable” list any offenders currently serving a sentence of imprisonment for 11 offences that are often linked to domestic abuse, such as stalking, harassment, breach of protective orders—restraining orders, for example—controlling and coercive behaviour, and non-fatal strangulation and suffocation. Adding those offences to the list will mean that those offenders will not be considered for release on HDC unless the governor is satisfied that there are truly exceptional circumstances justifying it and that their risk can be safely managed in the community.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend the Minister for putting women’s safety at the heart of this. Can he give me the assurance that I can tell women in Chelmsford that it is absolutely the case that those who have been found guilty of domestic abuse and other violent crimes against women will be kept in prison and not released in this way?
Damian Hinds
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend and I do want to give her that reassurance—that we are extending the list of people who will be presumed ineligible for this programme to include those 11 new offences. Actually, it is part of a broader scheme and some changes that we brought in last year, which I will come to in a moment. It goes beyond, necessarily, that which a person was imprisoned for; often, we need to consider wider intelligence as well.
Assessment of risks to those at the curfew address is key and will remain so, but it is also absolutely right that risks to the public more generally are taken into account. We will therefore be mandating that public protection as a whole is considered in the risk assessment for someone being considered for home detention curfew, and that all necessary information sharing takes place before a decision on HDC release is made. This builds on changes that I alluded to in response to my right hon. Friend’s question—changes that we introduced last year. Since April 2022, it has been mandatory for the community offender manager to request information from the police and children’s services about domestic abuse or child safeguarding risks associated with the offender or the proposed address, to help to inform the assessment of HDC suitability. Home detention curfew must not be authorised until that information has been obtained and assessed. But we are clear that we must go further, and that is why we are making these changes today.
At the same time, the purpose of the draft instrument is to extend the maximum period of the existing home detention curfew scheme by 45 days. That extends the benefits of the scheme for eligible, suitable offenders, helping to support their rehabilitation in the community with a view to reducing reoffending. That will mean that some people will spend longer on HDC, but no change is being made to the minimum period that someone must have served in custody before being released on HDC.
Although fewer people will be released, the number who are on HDC at any one time will grow because of the longer period to be spent under curfew. There are currently around 1,850 offenders on HDC. The combined effect of these planned changes will be to increase that number by around 300, which means that the prison population at any one time will be lower by around 300.
Our changes pull in both directions on prison population because, while we think it right to exclude those convicted of stalking, harassment and other offences, we also think it right to extend the HDC period for the limited cohort of offenders assessed as suitable for the scheme. When I refer to the “limited cohort”, it is worth bearing in mind that, of the total cohort who could, on the face of it, be eligible for such a scheme, some two thirds do not go on it.
The change will provide a longer transition from custody to community for a smaller cohort of eligible, risk-assessed offenders, allowing them to work towards rehabilitation in the community while remaining subject to strict conditions. The electronically monitored curfew is a significant restriction on their liberty. If the curfew or any other conditions of their licence, such as the requirement to report to probation, are breached, they can be recalled to prison.
Electronic monitoring is also an opportunity for offenders to break habits that have led them into offending previously, improve chances for employment and training, and help to maintain positive relationships. We have enhanced our use of electronic monitoring across the board, which is supported by ever-improving technology and the broader use of GPS tagging, which allows us to monitor offenders when they are away from the curfew address where necessary and not just whether they are at home during curfew hours.
Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
Will the Minister give us a reassurance that the new GPS monitors—the tags—will make it safer to have prisoners at home under curfew, compared with the current situation, and that that will allow victims to feel reassured that, when perpetrators are released under the new system, they will be properly monitored?
Damian Hinds
There are different layers to that extra reassurance about safety. Risk assessment is one part of that and the exclusion of more offenders is another, but the technology itself is an important part of the picture. All tagging technology improves over time, and we also get “learning by doing” effects from its wider deployment.
As well as RF or radio frequency tagging, which is a binary thing that basically detects whether the individual is where they are supposed to be or not—“Are you in your curfew address or not?”—these days there is also the option, where that is deemed appropriate and suitable, of GPS tagging, which can track where an individual actually goes. There are multiple benefits to that—for example, in monitoring exclusion zones or, if somebody is supposed to be going to work on a daily basis, ensuring that that is in fact what they are doing. We also now have alcohol tagging, to detect whether people have complied with an alcohol order.
Home detention curfew is an effective approach for the management of lower-risk offenders, and it allows for their safe and controlled reintegration from prison into the community. I look forward to today’s debate, and I commend the instrument to the Committee.
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
Home detention curfew is a robust tool that can aid in the supervised resettlement of offenders into society. Our concern is that the Government’s proposed extension is not being made in the interests of reintegration, but that it is instead an emergency measure and a rushed, knee-jerk reaction to prison overcrowding—yet another sticking plaster policy from a Government who lurch from one crisis to another.
The Government’s failure to get to grips with our prison system meant that in December they needed to enact the contingency Operation Safeguard, yet the scale of the problem is so deep that the contingency plan now requires a contingency of its own. That is why we are here today to debate this measure. If resettlement and rehabilitation were truly the Government’s focus, we would not see prisoners locked in their cells for up to 23 hours a day, prison violence at record highs and engagement with rehabilitation programmes at record lows, or prison officers leaving in droves. Those are the problems after 13 years of the Conservatives; and the scale of the problems runs deeper still. Our probation service is a shadow of its former self after 13 years of Government mismanagement, cuts and organisational change.
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
I recognise the essential importance of rehabilitation. Does the hon. Lady agree that the opportunity to allow prisoners to spend longer on HDC as they approach the end of their sentence will aid their rehabilitation by enabling them to take part in community support outside prison?
Ellie Reeves
If HDC is done properly, it can work well, but my concern is that this measure is being rushed through, without a properly thought-out process. I will talk a bit about the probation service and the challenges that it is already facing. This measure comes on top of that and will increase its workload further, which is why I have real concerns about how this will work in practice.
The probation service now faces severe staff shortages and unmanageable workloads, and morale is at rock bottom. All of that has led to a failure to monitor dangerous criminals, putting the public at risk. Meanwhile, we hear time and again of prisoners who have been released to sleep rough on the streets or drift back into drug abuse, making them more likely to commit further crimes. And what did we hear from the Government last week? They are forcing 5% of headquarters staff to move back to the frontline.
It is another sticking-plaster policy in response to 13 years of failure, and today’s proposals will likely add a further burden to an already overstretched probation service. They mean that officers will need to complete more HDC assessments, testing the suitability of the proposed release address and examining any previous behaviours by the prisoner on licence or bail. However, the chief inspector of probation recently detailed the current poor standard of risk assessments, with two thirds of those inspected being insufficient. If risk assessments are done quickly, there is a real danger that they will not be completed to the required standard and so the public may be at risk from those released.
We need assurances from the Minister today about what will be done to ensure that the probation service has the capacity to take on the sudden spike in cases from implementing this plan. How will the Government ensure that assessments are not rushed but are properly carried out? Can the Minister confirm that all those released early will have the same checks as they otherwise would have had, including home visits, checks on the proposed release address, and domestic abuse call-outs?
In conclusion, real harm is being done by the chaos in our criminal justice system.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
The home detention scheme was introduced under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and came into force in January 1999. The period has been extended twice—first to 90 days in October 2002 and then to the current 135 days in April 2003. The hon. Lady’s party was in power on those three occasions: the introduction and the two subsequent extensions. Does she not think that the arguments that the current Government are making for this measure—logical arguments, for evidence-based decisions—are probably the same as those that were made when her party was last in power?
Ellie Reeves
I am grateful for those points, but I have outlined in my speech some of the huge capacity issues that we see in the probation service when it comes to properly assessing and managing risk. That is why the Opposition are seeking assurances that the Minister recognises these, and that increasing the amount of time that someone can spend on home detention curfew will not make the public less safe. That is what we are concerned about. There is a capacity issue and it needs to be addressed. We need those reassurances.
Rushed attempts to clear people out of prison are not a replacement for the proper management of rehabilitation. I hope that the Minister will respond to these concerns and outline how the Government will ensure that prisoners are properly risk assessed before release, and how the public will be kept safe.
Damian Hinds
I am grateful to the hon. Lady speaking for the Opposition, to all colleagues who have taken part in the debate and to everybody on the Committee for their scrutiny of the instrument. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West said, the order will extend the benefits of this well-established scheme by changing the maximum period of home detention curfew to 180 days.
To respond to the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge, I must say that I do not recognise some of what she set out. It is the case that we are expanding the Prison Service, and quite rightly so. We are keeping dangerous offenders behind bars for longer, having moved back the automatic release point for the worst offences from half to two thirds. We have seen longer custodial sentences for indictable offences, and it is absolutely right that we must ensure that we have the infrastructure and dedicated workforce in place to manage that.
We are creating 20,000 new prison places, 3,200 of which have already been delivered, while a further 5,200 are already contracted. Those places will come through a mix of different delivery options, including new prisons—one opened last year, and another new, whole prison is due to open in a couple of months’ time. We are also putting in place rapid deployment cells, making extensions, building new house blocks and rightly increasing the capacity of our prison system to ensure that we can house the people who need to be in it.
In toto, the changes in this instrument work in two different directions, as I said earlier. They increase the maximum length of time from four and a half to six months—of course, not everybody gets the maximum—which will take some pressure off prison places, whereas the exclusions we are making, which make more people ineligible for the programme, will increase the pressure on prison places. The net effect will be about 300 places, which one needs to put in the context of a prison population of some 84,000 people. I can give the hon. Member the reassurance that the necessary checks will be made diligently. We are also ensuring that the sequence is right, to ensure that things must have happened before the next stage in the process can go forward.
I echo the hon. Member’s words of appreciation for the dedicated people who do such incredibly important work in our Prison Service and in the probation service. We should see this increase of 300 additional people at any one time in the context of the probation service’s caseload, which is much bigger than many people realise—some 170,000 people are on probation supervision of one sort or another in the community. As with the Prison Service, we are committed to ensuring that the probation service is well resourced, and we are recruiting at pace to ensure that that can happen as well.
In conclusion, we are taking a balanced approach. We will ensure that those who commit serious crimes spend time in prison that reflects the gravity of their offences. We will ensure that we keep the policy under review, as we keep all policies under review, and I will commit to coming back to Parliament in 12 months’ time and reporting on the overall effectiveness of the programme. For other, lower-risk offenders, where they can benefit safely from the long-established and successful HDC scheme, it makes sense that we should allow a somewhat longer period of release, subject to curfew, supporting their transition into the community with a view to reducing reoffending. I commend the draft instrument to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.