HC Deb 29 October 2002 vol 391 cc762-3W
Mr. Love

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to change the home detention curfew period; and if he will make a statement. [78366]

Hilary Benn

On 5 February,Official Report, column 866W, the Government announced plans to lengthen the maximum curfew period from 60 to 90 days. Today we are presenting to Parliament an Order to enact that proposal. The Order will come into force on 16 December 2002, subject to the approval of both Houses. Eligible prisoners serving between eight months and under four years who pass a risk assessment will be released on Home Detention Curfew (HDC) to spend the latter part of their sentence at home for a period of up to 90 days depending on sentence length. There will be no change in the maximum curfew length for prisoners serving between three months and under eight months. They will continue to serve between 15 and up to 60 days on curfew. In all cases offenders not statutory excluded will be subject to a risk assessment and released on HDC only where it is safe to do so.

Under the HDC scheme prisoners serve the remainder of their custody period at home under electronic curfew usually from 7pm and 7am. At any one time we expect this measure will remove up to 600 prisoners from prison accommodation in addition to the 2,400 who are already on the scheme. The impact of these arrangements will be kept under close review.

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001(p)1
Illegal entry action1 4,540 5,585 5,225 6,115 6,760
of whom:
Principal asylum application2 2,605 3,095 2,615 2,820 3,775
of whom
non-asylum cases 1,935 2,485 2,610 3,290 2,985
1 Figures for 2001 have been estimated.
2 Persons who had sought asylum at some stage. Figures exclude 200 dependants of asylum seekers removed as a result of enforcement action in the period April to December 2001; data on the dependants of asylum seekers removed have only been collected since April 2001.