1 Releasing prisoners on Home Detention
Curfew
1. Home Detention Curfew (HDC) can be a cost effective
method of reducing the numbers of offenders in custody. Prisoners
can be released under HDC if their sentences exceed three months,
and their prison governor is satisfied that they do not pose a
risk to the public. Providing that prisoners are suitable for
release, they should be released as soon as they reach their eligibility
dates. The system has to be robust enough to minimise the risks
to the public of releasing offenders who may re-offend whilst
on HDC. To achieve this, offenders who are serving sentences for
certain crimes are presumed ineligible or may be excluded from
HDC, depending on the severity of the crime. The prison carries
out eligibility assessments before prisoners are released on a
HDC and Probation Officers check the suitability of the curfew
address provided by the prisoner before release. Offenders are
returned to prison if they do not adhere to their curfew conditions;
these are typically 12 hour overnight curfews (Figure 1) .[4]
Figure 1: Home Detention Curfews allow prisoners to serve part of their sentence at home
1. The mode
time taken in cases reviewed by the National Audit Office
Source: National Audit Office
2. When prisoners are released on HDC they are confined
to an address for a pre-determined period in every 24 hours. To
be released on HDC prisoners must have provided a suitable address
in which they will be confined. Probation Officers visit the proposed
address to check its suitability and check that the house holder
has agreed to the offender being curfewed at that address. Prisons
often put in requests for Probation Officers to carry out home
assessments when they start their own eligibility checks. In some
cases this has resulted in Probation Officers carrying out home
assessments for prisoners who were not eligible for HDC. This
has taken up valuable probation resources, costing an additional
£200,000 a year, and may have given false hope to prisoners
and their families. In these circumstances, an interim assessment
of available records should have indicated that the prisoner was
ineligible for Home Detention Curfew. Delaying the request for
a home assessment until after the prison had carried out an interim
assessment would have saved money and avoided needlessly raising
the expectations of prisoners and their families.[5]
3. Prisons review prisoners' criminal records to
check whether they are eligible for release under HDC. Criminal
records are held on the Police National Computer (PNC); however,
only 44 of the 113 prisons that release prisoners on HDC have
access to the PNC. The 69 prisons (60%) without access have to
request the details from their nearest prison with access to the
PNC, which then posts details to the requesting prison. This has
introduced additional delays into the assessment procedure. The
Home Office is liaising with the Police Service over improving
access to the PNC.[6]
4. When prisoners were transferred between prisons,
their security files are transferred with them. Other records,
however, are not routinely transferred with prisoners, including
their Home Detention Curfew eligibility assessments. As a result,
some assessments are wholly or partially repeated, increasing
resource usage and delaying release of prisoners under HDC. In
the long term, the Home Office hopes to eliminate this problem
by making all prisoners' full records available electronically
to all prisons by rolling out the National Offender Management
Information System. It is confident that the system would work
correctly.[7]
5. Prison governors have the ultimate responsibility
of deciding whether prisoners should be released on Home Detention
Curfew. They have to weigh up the advantages of reducing numbers
in custody, the financial savings offered by HDC over prison and
the potential rehabilitation advantages of earlier release balanced
against the likelihood of offenders breaching their curfew conditions
and the primary concern of public protection. Governors are not,
however, provided with feedback on whether the prisoners they
have released had successfully completed their curfew, even though
this could help to inform future decisions. Lowest risk offenders
are most likely to be released early on HDC; however, some offenders
who had committed indictable offences could be released early
if a more thorough assessment indicated that they posed minimal
risk. Despite these precautions, some 1000 offenders committed
serious offences whilst completing their sentence on HDC (Figure
2). Very few juveniles are released on HDC and as a result
they account for only 15 of the violent offences committed whilst
on HDC. The Home Office does not monitor offences committed
by offenders on Curfew Orders.[8]
Figure 2: 1021 offenders released from prison early committed violent offences whilst on Home Detention Curfew
Note: Information for curfew orders is not available
nor is comparative data on adults and juveniles
Source: Home Office data
4 Qq 24, 27; C&AG's Report, part 1 Back
5
Q 17 Back
6
Qq 100-109 Back
7
Qq 19-20 Back
8
Qq 15, 27, 92-93; C&AG's Report, para 4.3 Back
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