Criminals will be hauled back to jail for just a few weeks if they breach the terms of their release under Labour’s latest ‘pitiful’ soft-justice measures.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is introducing a standard 28-day ‘recall’ period for released prisoners who are locked up again for breaking the rules – even those who commit new offences.
Currently, freed lags can be kept behind bars for the rest of their sentence if they are recalled.
The new policy will free up 1,400 spaces in prisons amid the overcrowding crisis. Officials said if no action was taken, they would run out of space by November.
But Ms Mahmood was accused of presiding over a ‘recipe for the breakdown of law and order’, while victims’ groups voiced alarm at the move.
Ms Mahmood repeated doom-laden warnings she first deployed last summer when she introduced a scheme allowing most inmates to be freed after serving just 40 per cent of their sentences, and which led to lags popping champagne corks outside prison gates.
She said yesterday: ‘The consequences of failing to act are unthinkable. If our prisons overflow, courts cancel trials, police halt their arrests, crime goes unpunished and we reach a total breakdown of law and order.’
There were 13,600 recalled prisoners behind bars in March. About a fifth are sent back to jail because they have committed fresh crimes. Ms Mahmood said the 28-day recall period will apply to criminals serving sentences of between one and four years.
Tory justice spokesman Robert Jenrick accused Labour of offering ‘an invitation for dangerous criminals to cause carnage’. He added: ‘By telling prisoners that they will never serve their full sentence, even if they reoffend, the Justice Secretary has removed an important deterrent.
‘Under Labour’s new rules, instead of being recalled to serve the rest of their sentence, they’ll be given a fixed-term recall of a pitiful 28 days.
‘They are then released, with no reassessment of risk or parole board oversight. That is not justice. It’s a recipe for the breakdown of law and order.’
Offenders who are recalled for committing a serious further offence – such as terrorism or a murder, sex crime, or serious assault – will be excluded from the scheme, along with any considered dangerous enough to require extra monitoring on release.
But the Ministry of Justice was last night unable to guarantee whether all perpetrators of domestic abuse would be excluded from the recall reforms.
Victims’ commissioner Baroness Newlove said: ‘Victims will understandably feel unnerved and bewildered by today’s announcement.
‘I find it difficult to understand why this specific group of offenders has been targeted for early release and I am concerned about the implications for victim safety.
‘If the probation service, the Secretary of State and the Parole Board have all judged these individuals to pose a risk of harm to the public, then reducing time served on recall can only place victims and the wider public at an unnecessary risk of harm.’
Domestic abuse commissioner Dame Nicole Jacobs joined the condemnation, warning the measures would put victims at risk and calling for them to be ‘scrapped’. She said: ‘I cannot stress the lack of consideration for victims’ safety and how many lives are being put in danger because of this proposed change.
‘You are not sent to prison for four years if you do not pose significant risk to your victim or the wider public. Perpetrators of domestic abuse know everything about their victim – where they live, where they work, where their children go to school.
‘They are also extremely willing to breach orders intended to protect victims. Re-releasing them back into the community after 28 days is simply unacceptable.’
At a hastily arranged Downing Street briefing, justice permanent secretary Amy Rees said men’s jails were running at 99 per cent capacity in England and Wales.
The MoJ expected jails to ‘hit zero capacity – to entirely run out of prison places for adult men – in November of this year’, she added.
The mandarin said the current number of recalled inmates in prison was a ‘significant contributing factor’ to the size of the jail population, which has risen from about 40,000 in the early 1990s to just over 88,000 this week.
Outlining the latest measures, Ms Mahmood said: ‘Crucially, it buys us the time we need to introduce the sentencing reforms that – alongside our record prison-building plans – will end the crisis in our prisons for good.’
She confirmed that the Treasury’s Spending Review – due next month – will allocate £4.74 billion towards building three new jails.
‘A review commissioned by Ms Mahmood and expected to be published next week is likely to recommend freeing most offenders after serving as little as a third of their sentences.
‘Offenders should be handed maximum and minimum sentences by the courts, it is expected to propose.’