§ Mr. SteinbergTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many prisoners are known to have committed further offences when on home leave. [185]
Miss WiddecomeResponsibility for this matter has been delegated to the temporary Director General of the Prison Service, who has been asked to arrange for a reply to be given.
Letter from Alan Walker to Mr. Gerry Steinberg, dated 30 November, 1995:
The Home Secretary has asked me, in the absence of the Director General from the office, to reply to your recent Question about the number of prisoners known to have committed further offences when on home leave.Home leave as such and other temporary release schemes were replaced by a new system of release on temporary licence on 25 April this year.Information about the number of prisoners who commit further offences while temporarily released is not recorded centrally, because of the practical difficulty in obtaining consistent and reliable information from police forces, both in this country and abroad, in time to be recorded on a prisoner's record. Due to the length of time that some cases can take to resolve within the judicial process, it is possible that some prisoners will have been discharged from prison by the time that information on further convictions becomes available.