Prisoners may only be released into the community earlier than the half way point of their sentence under either the home detention curfew scheme (HDC) or the end of custody licence scheme (ECL).
The home detention curfew scheme enables suitable prisoners to be released subject to an electronically monitored curfew up to 135 days earlier than the half way point of their sentence. No prisoners are released on HDC unless they have served at least one quarter of their sentence subject to a minimum of 30 days in custody.
Under the end of custody licence scheme eligible prisoners may be released up to 18 days earlier than the half way point of their sentence subject to serving a minimum of seven days in custody after sentence. Some prisoners serving very short sentences of between 28 days and 72 days may therefore be released on licence under the ECL scheme on or before they have served one quarter of their sentence if they meet the eligibility criteria.
The following tables show the number of HDC and ECL releases by offence group. The HDC figures are published annually in Offender Management Caseload Statistics (most recently for 2007) and information on ECL releases is published monthly. All publications are available on the Ministry of Justice website at:
http://www-justice.gov.uk/publications/statistics.htm.
It is not possible to provide the specific information requested on numbers of prisoners released after serving no more than a quarter of their sentence in custody without manual checking of individual records at disproportionate cost.
2005 2006 2007 Population in sentence length band Released Release rate (%) Population in sentence length band Released Release rate (%) Population in sentence length band Released Release rate (%) Total 54,616 17,296 32 52,987 13,666 26 53,835 11,428 21 Violence 10,064 3,204 32 9,840 2,490 25 10,397 2,118 20 Sexual offences 1,236 2 0 1,203 0 0 1,180 0 0 Robbery 2.451 901 37 2,284 709 31 2,520 694 28 Burglary 6,334 1,298 20 6,168 1,069 17 6,347 945 15 Theft and handling 8,846 2,107 24 8,679 1,705 20 8,227 1,380 17 Fraud and forgery 2,833 1,287 45 3,243 1,169 36 3,196 917 29 Drug offences 4,338 2,509 58 4,296 2,347 55 4,381 2,106 48 Motoring offences 8,517 3,046 36 6,984 1,923 28 5,569 1,290 23 Other2 9,997 2,942 29 10,290 2,254 22 12,018 1,978 16 1 Offence recorded on prison IT system. Investigations suggest that around 5 per cent. of offence types recorded on this system do not relate to the offence they were released on HDC for but relate to offences committed after release from prison and before the licence expiry date for their sentence. 2 Includes the offence of bigamy.
Releases in December 2008 Year to date 2007 Male Female Total 1 January to 31 December 2008 29 June to 31 December 2007 2,498 297 2,795 31,318 16,197 By offence group Violence against the person1 507 62 569 6,116 3,000 Sexual offences 0 0 0 5 4 Robbery 56 4 60 792 349 Burglary 249 9 258 2.794 1,499 Theft and Handling 522 125 647 7.116 3,682 Fraud and Forgery 46 12 58 656 291 Drug offences 111 6 117 1,322 691 Motoring offences 284 7 291 3,473 2,032 Other offences 682 64 746 8,431 4,362 Offence not recorded 41 8 49 513 287 1 Excludes serious violent offences such as murder, manslaughter, wounding with intent to commit grievous bodily harm, possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, child cruelty and serious explosives offences. A full list of exclusions can be found in Prison Service Instruction 42/2007 (which consolidates and replaces PSI 27/2007). Note: Data Sources and Quality: These figures 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. See Data Sources and Quality section of report for more information. Source: Taken from Table 1 in OMCS ‘ECL releases and recalls December 2008. England and Wales’
Between 29 June 2007 and 31 December 2008, the latest date for which information is available, there were 47,515 prisoners released under the end of custody licence scheme. Those foreign national prisoners who either have no lawful basis upon which to remain in the UK or will be subject to deportation at the end of their sentence are not eligible for release under the end of custody licence (ECL) scheme.
The Government have made it clear that they will seek to remove or deport those foreign nationals who commit crimes in the UK and meet the relevant criteria. Of the 47,515 prisoners who were released under the end of custody licence scheme, less than 6 per cent. of these were foreign national prisoners. Internal management information also shows that less than 1 per cent. of those foreign national prisoners who were released under the scheme were later convicted of a further offence during their period of end of custody licence.
These figures 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.