Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of requiring offenders who are released from prison on parole to carry out maintenance within their local communities as part of their parole conditions.

Offenders released from prison are subject to licence conditions and supervised by the Probation Service. The statutory purposes of the licence period as set out in the Criminal Justice Act 2003 are to protect the public, reduce reoffending and help the offender resettle into the community. For those purposes, a set of standard and discretionary conditions are available which between them can put restrictions on the offender and require them to participate in relevant activities. The licence conditions are intended to enable the Probation Service to manage the offender’s risks effectively, and where an offender breaches them in such a way as to indicate increased risk, they may be recalled to custody.

Unpaid work is available as a requirement of a community sentence (a community order or a suspended sentence order). Its key purposes are punishment and reparation. As a result, unpaid work does not form part of the current statutory framework for release on licence. While we have no plans to integrate unpaid work into custodial sentences, we recognise the benefits of offenders gaining skills for employment and we are committed to delivering a presumption in favour of offering offenders the chance to work in prison, on Release on Temporary Licence and on release where appropriate, including by building stronger links with employers. We are on track to roll out Prison Employment Leads, Employment Hubs and Employment Advisory Boards across all 91 resettlement prisons by April 2023.