HC Deb 25 November 1988 vol 142 cc38-9W
Sir Peter Hordern

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he expects to publish the Report of the Carlisle committee on parole.

Mr. Hurd

The report of the Committee on the Parole System in England and Wales under the chairmanship of Lord Carlisle of Bucklow is published today. I am most grateful to Lord Carlisle and his colleagues for completing this wide-ranging review in just over a year, and for producing so clear and thought-provoking a report.

The Committee proposes that:

  1. (a) for prisoners serving sentences of four years or less, parole should be replaced by conditional release after half the sentence has been served, unless release is delayed on account of misbehaviour;
  2. (b) for prisoners serving sentences of more than four years, there should continue to be a selective system of parole, but they would become eligible only after serving half their sentences, instead of one-third as under the present law;
  3. (c) everyone sentenced to twelve months or more and all young offenders should be subject to a period of supervision by the probation service after release;
  4. (d) all prisoners should, if convicted of a further offence committed before the full term of their sentence has expired, be liable (in addition to any new sentence imposed) to return to prison for so much of their original sentence as has not already been served in custody;
  5. (e) partly suspended sentences should be abolished.

These and other recommendations would require legislation.

The report deals with issues of great importance. Some of the Committee's recommendations raise difficult questions in the context of the Government's policies for ensuring that the public is adequately protected and that offenders who commit serious crimes are adequately punished. I shall be considering how best these questions might be resolved, and I shall welcome the widest expression of parliamentary, public and professional opinion on the issues raised by the report. It would be helpful if comments on it could reach the Home Office by 10 March 1989.

For the present the existing statutory scheme and the existing criteria will remain in force.

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