I think that that is true. I completely agree with that analysis. An inevitable consequence of taking away automatic early release is that those who are sentenced to serious custodial sentences will be released back into the community cold, without any compulsory supervision. However, as you say, removing automatic early release could also incentivise prisoners to engage more with whatever programmes—adequate or inadequate—are in existence, because they will make more applications to the Parole Board.
As I said, the spotlight will therefore increasingly be on the programmes’ adequacy. If more people are demanding them—rightly, because society has said that that is the deal—and if the Parole Board has to make more decisions than in the past on the adequacy of the programmes, the spotlight will be on those arrangements. The committee has heard evidence from a number of witnesses that the spotlight might not be very favourable, because the programmes will be seen to be inadequate.
There will be a big dilemma for the Parole Board in cases when it knows that there is no automatic early release and that a person could at the end of their sentence be released cold into the community without any compulsory supervision. Does the board take a calculated risk and put the person out on licence because there will be some kind of compulsory supervision and less likelihood, on balance, of their reoffending? That might go wrong and the person might offend, in which case the board would be held accountable. Alternatively, does the board play safe and say, “No, we’re not letting you out—complete your sentence,” when it knows that that is basically transferring a potential risk to the public, whose right to life and security could be jeopardised by someone being released at the end of their sentence without any compulsory supervision?
A lot of the spotlight will be cast on what has up to now been largely an invisible area, which is what there is in prisons that prepares prisoners for release and reintegration into the community. Resources must therefore be considered hand in hand with ending automatic early release.
Having looked at the bill’s human rights impact statement, I think that it is simply not adequate. All that it addresses is whether the measures in the bill will immediately violate prisoners’ human rights, and the answer that is given is no. However, we must look at the foreseeable consequences of ending automatic release—the jeopardy that the public might be put in and the consequences for prisoners’ rights if they are not given the rehabilitation programmes that they will be looking for more than in the past. The committee has to look at those unintended consequences and I welcome the fact that it is doing so.