National Offender Management Service: Indeterminate Sentences

Lord Ramsbotham Excerpts

Monday 2nd July 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Ramsbotham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress the National Offender Management Service prisoner co-ordination group is making in preparing individual release plans for those serving Indeterminate Sentences for Public Protection.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally)]

My Lords, the role of the indeterminate sentence prisoners co-ordination group is not to prepare individual release plans. It is for the prisoner’s offender supervisor and offender manager to draw up a sentence plan to assess the prisoner’s risk factors and then to propose a risk management plan to the Parole Board once the prisoner has completed his tariff.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. The problem is that 6,500 prisoners are serving indeterminate sentences, with 3,500 over their tariff and 311 more than four years over it. The problem was put into sharp relief last week at an inquest in south Wales into the death of an indeterminate sentence prisoner who was a year over his tariff. Two weeks before he took his own life he was told at the prison to which he had just been moved that not only was the course that the Parole Board required him to complete before release not available in that prison, he was told that no such course would be available for two to three years. This problem needs to be tackled with urgency. Whether I have the name of the board right or not, I hope that the Minister will be able to assure the House that someone in NOMS is tackling individual problems with urgency.

[Lord McNally]

As I explained in my original reply, there is an individual case manager for each prisoner. However, I understand the noble Lord’s point. One of the original criticisms of this method of sentencing was that it created a Catch-22 whereby although you have to carry out a range of courses in order to make yourself available for parole and to convince the Parole Board that you are ready for release, those courses are not always available. Part of the reform programme that we have put in place, in parallel to the changes in the LASPO Act, is to try to make sure that prisoners are able to undertake reform training, and also to give the Parole Board greater flexibility in making its judgments on whether other aspects, rather than specific training programmes, can be taken into account in order to justify freedom. It is a difficult and delicate business. We are dealing with people who are in prison for serious offences and there must be a proper process to assess whether they should be allowed to go back into the community.