Released offenders guilty of technical breaches of licences should not automatically be sent back to jail, the Lord Chief Justice says.
Lord Phillips says the current recall system had become a “trapdoor to prison” and was a major reason for the record numbers of those locked up in England and Wales.
Concern about the impact of automatic recalls is rife within both the criminal justice system and the government, Phillips said in his speech to the Probation Boards Association’s centenary conference, and it will therefore hopefully be dropped by the new Justice Ministry, which starts work this week when the Home Office is split.
Recent research shows, said Phillips, that up to 48% of prisoners in some jails were there for technical breaches of their licence. Approximately 800 offenders a month are being sent back to prison for breaching their licences, which has helped push the prison population past the record 80,000 mark.
“I have concerns about a system that requires the automatic return to custody where conditions of a community sentence or licence are breached,” Phillips said. “Such a requirement detracts from
