Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many Category D long-sentenced prisoners who have more than two years left to serve to earliest release date are currently in open conditions.

As at 30 June 2014, there were 24 determinate sentence prisoners held in open conditions with more than two years left to serve before their earliest release date and 18 indeterminate sentence prisoners in open conditions with more than two years left to serve before their tariff expiry[1].

Those prisoners with at least two more years left before their earliest release will either be serving a determinate sentence of four years or more, or an indeterminate sentence with a minimum tariff of two years or more. The earliest date on which an indeterminate sentence prisoner (ISP) may be released from custody is on completion of “tariff” – that is, the minimum period to be served in custody, as determined by the Court, for the purposes of retribution and deterrence.

Progression to open conditions is never automatic and only follows a satisfactory assessment of the prisoner’s reduction in risk to a level that is manageable in conditions of lower security. The assessment will take account of issues including successful completion of any offending behaviour programmes identified as essential to the risk reduction process and any security intelligence or other information that provides evidence of the prisoner’s trustworthiness for open conditions. For determinate sentence prisoners, this assessment is carried out by an operational manager in the holding prison. For ISPs, it generally involves a recommendation by the independent Parole Board.

Once allocated to open prison, prisoners continue to be monitored and are returned to closed prison immediately if there are any concerns about their suitability for such conditions.

When a prisoner moves to the less rigid structure of open conditions an assessment of how the prisoner will adapt to increasing responsibility. For many prisoners, in particular those such as life sentence prisoners, who have spent a considerable amount of time in custody; these can be important components for successful reintegration in the community and therefore a mechanism to help protect the public by reducing the likelihood of reoffending.

[1] Please note that these figures do not include prisoners held in open conditions in non-predominant function open prisons, nor those held in open sites that are part of multi-site establishments performing different functions, nor those held in small (under 50 place) open units at predominant function closed prisons. Women and young adults are included in the figures.