Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the Early Release Scheme.

After inheriting a prison system in crisis, SDS40 was a necessary measure we were forced to take to avoid the collapse of the Criminal Justice System. Our initial operational insights suggested there was not a significant change to the use and application of recall since the implementation of the SDS change, however we will continue to monitor this. In designing the measure, we took every possible step to mitigate risk including an 8-week implementation period, clear offence exclusions, and a huge amount of collaboration with partners across the Criminal Justice System.

Following the first tranche of SDS40 releases that took place on 10 September, the Ministry of Justice and His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service consulted our frontline and cross government partners on how things went. This consultation informed our preparation for the Tranche 2 releases on 22 October.

As the Lord Chancellor has previously announced, the change will be reviewed after 18 months.