Young Offenders (Hansard, 28 July 2000)

§ Mr. Straw

In September 1998, following a review initiated by the then Director General of the Prison Service, a number of changes were made to the release on temporary licence scheme. The changes were designed to given prison governors greater flexibility to extend the range of constructive and challenging activities for which prisoners can be released, and to improve their chances of getting a job and somewhere to live when they are released. The majority of the changes were introduced only in the young offender estate.

Implementation of the changes in respect of young offenders suggests that this more constructive use of the scheme is valuable in helping prisoners reintegrate into the community. The scheme's success rate has remained high. After careful evaluation of performance in the young offender estate, I have decided to extend the majority of the changes introduced there to open prisons and women's prisons as of 1 September 2000. The changes will mean that prisoners in the open and women's estate will be eligible for release on facility licence for interviews to arrange employment or accommodation (if they are serving under one year). Overnight stays will be permitted for community reparational activities for prisoners who have successfully completed a period of day-release facility licence. Governors will also be able to grant overnight release on facility licence for hostel assessment purposes to inform parole consideration. Facility licence will also be available to help prisoners resolve urgent housing issues, for example possible loss of accommodation.

Two further changes will be made to resettlement licence arrangements. The purpose of release on resettlement licence is to enable prisoners to maintain family ties and links with the community and to make suitable arrangements for accommodation, work and training on release. Prisoners in the open and women's estate serving a determinate sentence of four years or over and who are refused parole at the first opportunity, at the half way point of their sentence, will be eligible to be considered for resettlement leave after three months rather than six months as at present, subject to passing a further rigorous risk assessment. In the open estate only, the maximum frequency of resettlement licence will be increased from every eight weeks to every four weeks.

No changes will be made to their stringent risk assessment process which all prisoners must pass before being granted temporary release. The Prison Service is 1169W committed to keeping the number of temporary release failures at the current low level, in order to ensure protection of the public. In April the Prison Service introduced a Key Performance Target which measures the success rate of the release on temporary licence scheme. The performance in the open, women's and young offender estate will be monitored carefully against that target. Consideration will be given to extending the changes to other adult prisoners only if the further evaluation suggests it is safe to do so.

A copy of the relevant Prison Service Instruction, giving full details of the changes, will be placed in the Library.