Potentially dangerous prisoners are spending years on remand before disappearing into the community after their release without being properly monitored, the prisons watchdog has warned.
Charlie Taylor, HM’s chief inspector of prisons, said a restructuring of probation services last year failed to address the growing number of offenders held on remand who are not offered support before being freed.
In an interview with the Guardian, Taylor also predicted that the Prison Service would face growing “headwinds” in 2023 including problems retaining staff, and more prisoners “doubling up” in single cells.
Taylor said: “I am worried about the amount of time some prisoners are spending on remand and the effect that has on them. I was in a jail recently where a guy told me he had come into jail in February 2021 and had been given a provisional trial date of March 2024.
“We are coming across quite large numbers of prisoners who have got very long waits on remand. What that often means is that when they do finally get to court they are then released on time served, straight from court.
“Some potentially risky people are then being released into the community without being linked in with other services. It is alarming to see that happening more often than it has in the past. Let’s say someone convicted of a sexual offence has not gone through the usual resettlement process. It means that they could be homeless and people won’t know where they are,” he said.
The number of people being held on remand in England and Wales is at its highest level for more than 50 years, according to figures published by the Ministry of Justice in September.
Many prisoners lead “chaotic lives”, Taylor said, but are not being offered help with tenancy agreements, direct debits and bills before being released if they are held on remand after changes to the rules brought in last year.
The failure to address and monitor remand prisoners has been exacerbated since the unification of the National Probation Service (NPS) and Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) in June 2021, he said.
“One of the problems with the unification of the probation services with CRCs was that it didn’t really take into account the effect on remand prisoners,” he said.
Figures released by the MoJ showed the total prison population rose by 3% to 81,309 from September 2021 to September 2022, yet the number of those in remand experienced a 12% increase during this period to 14,507 people.
A freedom of information request from the global group Fair Trials discovered that on 30 June this year, there were 533 people held on remand for more than two years.
Taylor also called for changes so prison governors are allowed to pick their own staff amid a growing staff retention crisis that has hit prisons along the M1 corridor in England particularly hard.
“Governors have no say over who a prison recruits. As a former headteacher, I find that astonishing, and not surprisingly some of their new recruits are in completely the wrong job.
“I came across one governor who told me that a mother had filled in an application form for her daughter because she was fed up with her loafing around the house all day. And needless to say that person was not there for very long,” he said.
The MoJ said: “Remand prisoners have access to education and work activity to reduce reoffending and if convicted of sexual or serious violent offences may still face restrictions like the sex offender register.”
“We are investing almost half a billion pounds to reduce the backlogs caused by the pandemic and remanded defendants are waiting 15 weeks for trial on average.”
