Asked by: Lord Kempsell (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government, since the general election, what (1) number, and (2) proportion, of prisoners released early have been electronically tagged; and what assessment has been made by the Ministry of Justice and its arm's-length bodies as to whether Serco has had sufficient capacity to tag all the prisoners who it was originally deemed should be tagged.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Data on SDS40 releases forms a subset of data intended for future publication. The number of prison places projected to be saved by SDS40 releases are set out in the Impact Assessment (between 4,600 and 5,900 prison places for the male estate).
Serco had sufficient capacity in terms of both equipment levels and resources to tag all those being released from custody with an Electronic Monitoring requirement under this scheme. As with all releases from custody, prior notification was issued to Serco with licence notification paperwork to identify numbers and locations of those requiring tagging.
By 04 November, all required visits to attempt tag installation for SDS40 cases had been made.
Asked by: Lord Kempsell (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many prisoners, listed by prison and category of prisoner, have been released early as part of their measures to address prison overcrowding.
Answered by Lord Timpson - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
We are constantly monitoring the use of End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) and its impact.
ECSL was implemented in October 2023. Since its operation, the number of ECSL releases between 17 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 was 10,083. Further information on ECSL data is intended for future publication in due course.
Asked by: Lord Kempsell (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they intend to publish their response to the Independent report on the operation of closed material procedure under the Justice and Security Act 2013, which was laid before Parliament in November 2022; and when they intend to publish their annual report on the use of closed material procedure for the reporting year 2022–2023.
Answered by Lord Bellamy
It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the Member.