Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps her Department is taking to ensure the probation service has the capacity to cope with recent increases in prisoner releases.

Probation staff do an extraordinary job in extremely challenging circumstances.

The eight weeks since the Lord Chancellor’s announcement of prisoner release under SDS40 has given the Probation Service more time to prepare than a release on the previous Government’s End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) scheme afforded. We have also committed to recruiting 1000 new probation officers by March 2025.

Once released, offenders will be subject to the same set of strict licence conditions. These can include electronic monitoring, alcohol tags and exclusion zones. Should offenders breach these conditions they face being immediately recalled to prison.

Since July 2024, the Probation Service has implemented a set of measures designed to help alleviate workload pressures in response to the impact of prison capacity. This involves prioritising early engagement at the point where offenders are most likely to breach the requirements of their licence or community sentence. In turn that ensures that staff can maximise supervision of the most serious offenders.