Draft Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Home Detention Curfew) Order 2023

Nickie Aiken Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 General Committees

[Damian Hinds]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend and I do want to give her that reassurance—that we are extending the list of people who will be presumed ineligible for this programme to include those 11 new offences. Actually, it is part of a broader scheme and some changes that we brought in last year, which I will come to in a moment. It goes beyond, necessarily, that which a person was imprisoned for; often, we need to consider wider intelligence as well.

Assessment of risks to those at the curfew address is key and will remain so, but it is also absolutely right that risks to the public more generally are taken into account. We will therefore be mandating that public protection as a whole is considered in the risk assessment for someone being considered for home detention curfew, and that all necessary information sharing takes place before a decision on HDC release is made. This builds on changes that I alluded to in response to my right hon. Friend’s question—changes that we introduced last year. Since April 2022, it has been mandatory for the community offender manager to request information from the police and children’s services about domestic abuse or child safeguarding risks associated with the offender or the proposed address, to help to inform the assessment of HDC suitability. Home detention curfew must not be authorised until that information has been obtained and assessed. But we are clear that we must go further, and that is why we are making these changes today.

At the same time, the purpose of the draft instrument is to extend the maximum period of the existing home detention curfew scheme by 45 days. That extends the benefits of the scheme for eligible, suitable offenders, helping to support their rehabilitation in the community with a view to reducing reoffending. That will mean that some people will spend longer on HDC, but no change is being made to the minimum period that someone must have served in custody before being released on HDC.

Although fewer people will be released, the number who are on HDC at any one time will grow because of the longer period to be spent under curfew. There are currently around 1,850 offenders on HDC. The combined effect of these planned changes will be to increase that number by around 300, which means that the prison population at any one time will be lower by around 300.

Our changes pull in both directions on prison population because, while we think it right to exclude those convicted of stalking, harassment and other offences, we also think it right to extend the HDC period for the limited cohort of offenders assessed as suitable for the scheme. When I refer to the “limited cohort”, it is worth bearing in mind that, of the total cohort who could, on the face of it, be eligible for such a scheme, some two thirds do not go on it.

The change will provide a longer transition from custody to community for a smaller cohort of eligible, risk-assessed offenders, allowing them to work towards rehabilitation in the community while remaining subject to strict conditions. The electronically monitored curfew is a significant restriction on their liberty. If the curfew or any other conditions of their licence, such as the requirement to report to probation, are breached, they can be recalled to prison.

Electronic monitoring is also an opportunity for offenders to break habits that have led them into offending previously, improve chances for employment and training, and help to maintain positive relationships. We have enhanced our use of electronic monitoring across the board, which is supported by ever-improving technology and the broader use of GPS tagging, which allows us to monitor offenders when they are away from the curfew address where necessary and not just whether they are at home during curfew hours.

[Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

Will the Minister give us a reassurance that the new GPS monitors—the tags—will make it safer to have prisoners at home under curfew, compared with the current situation, and that that will allow victims to feel reassured that, when perpetrators are released under the new system, they will be properly monitored?

[Damian Hinds]

There are different layers to that extra reassurance about safety. Risk assessment is one part of that and the exclusion of more offenders is another, but the technology itself is an important part of the picture. All tagging technology improves over time, and we also get “learning by doing” effects from its wider deployment.

As well as RF or radio frequency tagging, which is a binary thing that basically detects whether the individual is where they are supposed to be or not—“Are you in your curfew address or not?”—these days there is also the option, where that is deemed appropriate and suitable, of GPS tagging, which can track where an individual actually goes. There are multiple benefits to that—for example, in monitoring exclusion zones or, if somebody is supposed to be going to work on a daily basis, ensuring that that is in fact what they are doing. We also now have alcohol tagging, to detect whether people have complied with an alcohol order.

Home detention curfew is an effective approach for the management of lower-risk offenders, and it allows for their safe and controlled reintegration from prison into the community. I look forward to today’s debate, and I commend the instrument to the Committee.