I thank the Minister for that introduction, and we support the SI. As the Minister said, the current maximum period that an eligible offender may spend in the community on home detention curfew is 135 days, and this is being increased to 180 days through the order. He gave an example and talked about the improvement in the technology for those who are on HDC. Are all prisoners on home detention curfew on some form of electronic monitoring, or are some deemed to have no monitoring necessary?
The Minister also spoke about the greater use of GPS monitoring, rather than just home curfew monitoring, and alcohol monitoring. Would he care to speculate on what other forms of technological improvement we might see in the next few years? I have been involved, on and off, in giving tags to people on bail, and so on, and I have seen the technology used and abused over the years. It is interesting how the technology has developed and how the courts and prison system is learning to work with it appropriately. I should appreciate it if the Minister would speculate a little on how that might change in future.
The MoJ states that the purpose of running the home detention curfew is to ensure that offenders have a smooth transition back into the community from custody. We agree with that, and we support the scheme as a whole. However, we say that there is limited evidence to support the claim about reoffending statistics. The draft Explanatory Memorandum points to research published in 2011 that shows that offenders released on home detention curfew
“were no more likely to engage in criminal behaviour”.
That is a rather lukewarm endorsement of the policy—even though we do support it. The Ministry has said that it will publish internal evaluations on the expansion of the scheme in 2024. Given the lack of clear supportive
evidence for the effectiveness of the scheme, despite the length of time it has been running, will the Government ensure that robust evaluations are made as soon as possible?
5.45 pm
The Minister spoke about the changes to the suitability criteria planned for the HDC policy framework. He read out a list of offences which would be presumed as unsuitable for home detention curfew, which, broadly speaking, were in the domestic violence framework, if I can put it like that. I will ask about stalking specifically, because I do not think that the Minister mentioned it. Should stalking be included in the “presumed unsuitable” category?
As the Minister said in his conclusion, the net effect of the scheme means that there will be fewer prisoners eligible for home detention curfew, but those who are eligible will be out for longer—and we support that broad principle. I look forward to the Minister’s answers to the questions I have raised.