Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many people convicted of terrorism-related charges have been released before the end date of their sentence in each year since 2010.

In England and Wales since 2010, no terrorist offender has been released from management by HM Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) before the end of their sentence. As per Criminal Justice Act 2003, prisoners will serve half of their sentence in custody before being subject to strict probation supervision in the second half – which has happened in most cases. During this time terrorist offenders are subject to strict licence conditions, which can result in recall to custody if they are breached.

Regarding those terrorist offenders who have moved from prison custody to management in the community, the table below provides the data available to the department, from 2013 – 2019. This data was not collected before 2013:

Table 1: Number of TACT convicted prisoners released on conditional licence, from January 1st 2013 to December 31st 2019.*

The Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Act, which came into force on 26 February, now means that the early release of terrorist offenders serving relevant sentences, will now be subject to Parole Board decisions. The Act changes the release arrangements for terrorist offenders serving determinate sentences, moving the earliest point of release, subject to a Parole Board decision from half-way to two thirds of the custodial term.

*Data sources and quality

The above figures relate to TACT Convicted prisoners only, for this reason the numbers do not match the statistics published under the Home Office Statistical Bulletin. The figures in these tables have been drawn from administrative IT systems which, as with any large scale recording system, are subject to possible errors with data entry and processing.