People released from prison under the government’s early release scheme will be “immediately recalled” if they breach restrictions on their movements, according to Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones.
She told GB News: “Regarding victims, we need to ensure that they are at the heart of all of these plans. That is why we have funded victim support services to a record tune of half a billion pounds over the next two years…and I want to reassure your viewers that release from prison does not mean freedom.
“There is a presumption that every single offender who is released from prison will be put under a GPS tag. And for the first time ever, we are introducing a world first known as a restriction zone.
“Because what victims and survivors told me is that they were fed up of having to change their behaviour, they were fed up of having to move house, they were fed up of having to always look over their shoulder, wondering if their perpetrator was around the corner. Not anymore.
“We are introducing these restriction zones to curtail the liberty of the offender, put them in a very, very small area, and we’re also doing things like banning them from being able to do the things that we all enjoy – going to the pub, going to a football game, taking away their driving licence if necessary – and if there are any breaches, they will be immediately recalled to prison.
“We’re also ensuring that victims and survivors have the ability to feed into these licensing conditions, so that they can actively put their concerns to the probation officers, to their victim liaison officers, and feed into what could be put on the licensing conditions.”
She confirmed that women’s prisons will be used to house male prisoners, when asked if female prisoners should be released first to ease the crisis: “That is exactly what we are doing as a government: looking at how we can free up capacity within the female prison estate to re-purpose it for the male prisoners.
“Because, as you rightly say, the vast majority of women who are in prison, many of whom are mothers and have young children, shouldn’t necessarily be there. They are victims in their own right, and they can be appropriately managed in the community through women’s centres.
“Just last week, I got to visit Anawim in Birmingham, a fantastic female centre focusing on rehabilitation and recovery for female offenders, for those low-level offenders who shouldn’t be in prison. But this isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all approach either.
“There are some women who absolutely should be in prison, and they will remain there. But where there is a case to answer that we can re-purpose the female estate, because we know the prison capacity problem is in our male estate, 98% at capacity in the male estate, then we will look to re-purpose to see what we can do to free up capacity and move the estates around.”