The justice secretary has admitted the proportion of people released from prison who are being recalled is “very high”, as ministers prepare to free more inmates to relieve an overcrowding crisis.
Shabana Mahmood said figures would not yet be available for the number of prisoners who had been returned after the first wave of prison releases in September, but said it was likely they would be high in line with rates in recent years.
On Tuesday in the second tranche of releases in England and Wales, 1,100 criminals serving sentences of five years or more will be released from prison early to ease the crisis. Mahmood said she was determined that this would be the last emergency release.
The justice secretary said she did not think the return rate would be as high as 50%, the figure put to her by the BBC, but said: “The rates of recall [in recent years] are very high, and that is true. And the issue here is people are released on licence, they have strict licence conditions that they have to abide by. If they break those licence conditions, it is right that they are recalled to prison.
“So that shows that the system is working as it should. You know, you’re not just out and free. You’re serving the licence. You have to stick by those conditions. If you break them, you are recalled to prison.”
She said the statistics would not be available until later in the year but added: “What I can tell you is our early assessment is that the rates of recall and potential reoffending in the cohort that has been released as a result of the emergency release measures is broadly in line with what we would expect.”
Mahmood said there would be no further emergency releases to free up prison capacity, but she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the government could not simply build more prisons to solve the problem.
Mahmood has tasked the former Conservative justice minister David Gauke with overseeing a review to look at a comprehensive overhaul of sentences, which will also reassess the jail time handed to offenders found guilty of crimes against women and girls, including those connected to domestic abuse.
As part of the review, judges could be given powers to impose a punishment of house arrest on criminals, potentially expanding the use of home detention to up to 12 months.
Mahmood said prison was currently only creating “better criminals rather than better citizens … 80% of all offenders are reoffenders, and 90% of those who are sentenced to custody, who have to serve time in prison, are also reoffenders.”
The review will look “to expand the use of punishment outside of prison”, Mahmood said. “I’m very clear that that has to maintain the confidence of the public. People still have to know that you are being punished for breaking the laws of our land, even if you’re not serving time in custody. There are real consequences that you really feel the loss of your liberty still.”
Mahmood said the government was still committed to delivering more prison places to cope with demand. “We are going to build the 14,000 places that the last Conservative government failed to do. So you’ll see an increase in prison capacity. You’ll see an increase in the prison population as well. The truth is, though, we can’t build our way out of this crisis, and that’s why we’ve got the sentencing review.”
The prison population in England and Wales has risen by 93% in the past 30 years and now stands at just over 87,000. It is predicted to rise to as many as 114,800 by March 2028. Labour has criticised the previous Tory government for failing to get the rising prison population under control.
The review will look at punishing thousands more offenders within the community as part of a 10-year capacity strategy, the MoJ said. One possibility is to give judges the powers to hand down sentences that force offenders to stay at home while being monitored by electronic tags. At present, judges in England and Wales do not have the power to hand out explicit sentences that order criminals to be confined to an address.
In many US states, house arrest is seen as an alternative to prison and can be imposed so that an offender is confined to their home for days at a time. Using electronic bracelets, US offenders are often allowed to earn income, maintain family and other relationships, and attend probation appointments and addiction treatment.
