Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, for what reason each prisoner who was released under the revised terms of the early release scheme and had previously breached a restraining order was released.

Certain offences are excluded from the SDS40 change. Exclusions included the Breach of Restraining Order (BoRO) offence under Section 363 of the Sentencing Act 2020.This offence replaced an older offence in Section 5 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, which was repealed on the commencement of the Sentencing Act 2020 on 1 December 2020. At that point the new Sentencing Act offence should have been used.

However, our assurance work uncovered that since December 2020, offenders have been charged and sentenced under this repealed offence. This means the 1997 Act was being used incorrectly and this created an anomaly.

We took rapid action, and all 37 offenders have been returned to prison. Every victim affected and currently in the Victim Contact Scheme or Victim Notification scheme has been contacted.

All prisoners in custody with this offence recorded against them have been reviewed to ensure there are no further releases in error.