Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Home Detention Curfew) Order 2023

Lord Bellamy Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Bellamy]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Home Detention Curfew) Order 2023.

Relevant document: 30th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Bellamy) (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move. As your Lordships will know, the home detention curfew—or HDC—scheme allows certain prisoners to be released from prison early and kept on an electronically-tagged curfew in their home. The scheme was first established some 20 years ago. The statutory instrument before us extends the permitted maximum HDC by 45 days—around six weeks—from 135 days to 180 days. I will say a little more about the effect of that in a moment.

In parallel with the statutory change, which extends the HDC period, the Government are at the same time introducing non-statutory policy changes to exclude certain kinds of offenders from the scope of HDC. As your Lordships know, in statutory terms, certain offenders are totally excluded from HDC—for example, when they are sentenced to more than four years or are registered sex offenders, terrorists, or others. Other kinds of offenders are presumed unsuitable under the relevant HMPPS policy framework, including, for example, foreign national offenders liable to deportation, those convicted of possession of an offensive weapon, possession of firearms, and so on.

Following the discussions that took place in connection with the passing of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, to which the noble Baronesses, Lady Brinton and Lady Newlove, and the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, made important contributions, further offences are now being added to the “presumed unsuitable list” to coincide with the coming into force of the statutory instrument on 6 June. These are offences relating, for example, to stalking; harassment; the breach of a non-molestation or similar order; controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship contrary to the Domestic Abuse Act 2021; and non-fatal strangulation and suffocation. In other words, offenders guilty of those offences will be presumed not suitable for HDC, unless the prison governor concerned is persuaded of exceptional circumstances.

In addition, since April 2022, it has been mandatory for information to be gathered from police and children’s services about domestic abuse or safeguarding risks. It is only after that information has been gathered and a full risk assessment made that an offender may be released on HDC. While the HDC period is being extended, these parallel measures protect the public—in particular, from potential abusers.

The net effect of these measures, in parallel, is that fewer offenders are likely to be eligible for HDC, whereas those who are eligible may be on HDC for up to six weeks longer. In practice, the net increase of prisoners out on HDC is expected to be about 300 up from the current figure, which is about 1,850. I should add that, in practice, because of the requirement to serve a minimum of a quarter of any prison sentence, this statutory change affects those serving between 18 months and four years, with those serving between two and four years eligible for the maximum period of 180 days.

In addition to these developments, technology in this area continues to improve. GPS now allows the monitoring of offenders away from home, which also enables certain types of offender, such as those known as acquisitive offenders, to be targeted. If one is wandering away to do some shoplifting, the GPS can follow one, as it were. It also now permits alcohol monitoring, so alcohol monitoring tags have been rolled out across England and Wales. This technology development is supporting the policy.

HDC has been used successfully for 20 years to better manage the transition of eligible offenders from prison back into the community, and the changes I have outlined continue along that path. The other place has just approved the statutory instrument this afternoon, and I commend the instrument to the Committee.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that introduction, and we support the SI. As the Minister said, the current maximum period that an eligible offender may spend in the community on home detention curfew is 135 days, and this is being increased to 180 days through the order. He gave an example and talked about the improvement in the technology for those who are on HDC. Are all prisoners on home detention curfew on some form of electronic monitoring, or are some deemed to have no monitoring necessary?

The Minister also spoke about the greater use of GPS monitoring, rather than just home curfew monitoring, and alcohol monitoring. Would he care to speculate on what other forms of technological improvement we might see in the next few years? I have been involved, on and off, in giving tags to people on bail, and so on, and I have seen the technology used and abused over the years. It is interesting how the technology has developed and how the courts and prison system is learning to work with it appropriately. I should appreciate it if the Minister would speculate a little on how that might change in future.

The MoJ states that the purpose of running the home detention curfew is to ensure that offenders have a smooth transition back into the community from custody. We agree with that, and we support the scheme as a whole. However, we say that there is limited evidence to support the claim about reoffending statistics. The draft Explanatory Memorandum points to research published in 2011 that shows that offenders released on home detention curfew

“were no more likely to engage in criminal behaviour”.

That is a rather lukewarm endorsement of the policy—even though we do support it. The Ministry has said that it will publish internal evaluations on the expansion of the scheme in 2024. Given the lack of clear supportive evidence for the effectiveness of the scheme, despite the length of time it has been running, will the Government ensure that robust evaluations are made as soon as possible?

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As the Minister said in his conclusion, the net effect of the scheme means that there will be fewer prisoners eligible for home detention curfew, but those who are eligible will be out for longer—and we support that broad principle. I look forward to the Minister’s answers to the questions I have raised.

[Lord Bellamy (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, for his remarks and questions, and I shall deal with them as far as I can.

I understand that all prisoners on HDC are on some form of electronic monitoring, and some have a kind of location monitoring in addition to help them, so that one knows more precisely where they are exactly and what they are up to, if I may put it like that.

I am reluctant to speculate today on exactly how far this scheme will develop, and I am sure that the Government will be very interested in drawing on the experience of the noble Lord himself and others on how it works out. He referred to the “use and abuse” of the systems. Of course, every time one invents new technology, someone tries to find some way around it or some way of defeating it, so we will need to work that through. However, the general direction of travel is that the technology is improving all the time and we will learn by experience how to use it in an appropriate way to achieve the mutual objectives of helping prisoners back into the community.

On the “no more likely” point of the general efficacy of home detention curfews, the Government’s position is that they work and that they help people to make the transition from prison to the community. It is certainly the Government’s position that the improvements in technology that I have mentioned—the location and alcohol monitoring—will reinforce it, so that is how it will evolve. We have committed to make an internal evaluation in 2024, and we probably have to wait a little bit of time until we see how it goes, so that we can properly evaluate the new extension we are talking about. We will certainly make that evaluation, which will be further information on which policy decisions can be taken.

On the noble Lord’s question about suitability criteria, if I did not mention stalking, I should have done so—it is at the top of the list. The scheme offers a very important protection for the public and for people particularly concerned with stalking and the stalking risk, as it were.

I have endeavoured to answer the questions of the noble Lord as best I can, and I therefore commend the instrument to the Grand Committee.

Motion agreed.