Plans by the Westminster government to allow inmates to leave jail early to ease overcrowding in prisons is causing concern among leaders in the domestic abuse field. Starting September, the government intends to let some prisoners in England and Wales be released after serving 40% of their sentence, rather than the current 50%. Inmates serving time for domestic abuse-related crimes and more than four years for serious violent offences will be excluded from the scheme.
Even so, Domestic Abuse Commissioner Nicole Jacobs said: “I remain concerned about the message early release sends and the impact it could have on victims. The safety of victims must be paramount. I welcome efforts made to mitigate the risks, and attempts to exclude those domestic abuse perpetrators convicted of more serious offences.”
Drawing on Inspectorate of Probation findings, she added a third of those managed by probation are known domestic abusers though that was not their index offence.
So the temporary early-release scheme “must be exactly that – temporary. The government must develop long-term solutions to this crisis that ensure that prison is used effectively for those individuals who pose the greatest risk,” she said.
Farah Nazeer, chief executive of Women’s Aid, commented: “Whilst it is good to see the inclusion of domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women and girls explicitly excluded from early release, we are concerned that the scheme focuses on the offence rather than the offender, and that abusers could still be let out earlier than they should be.”
