Following sustained pressure from survivors, national commissioners, and the women’s sector, the Prime Minister has now ordered that those convicted of rape, serious child sexual offences, and grooming be excluded from the Government's Prisoners’ Early Release Scheme. We’re encouraged by the gravity attributed to rape and serious child sexual offences reflected in this decision, and welcome the £10 million investment in the frontline specialist services supporting those whom early release will affect.
The ongoing crisis in prison overcrowding requires significant and immediate action there is no question about this. However, for the Scheme to be effective, we think there needs to be substantial additional support for specialist sexual violence services, close liaison between those services and probation, and robust assessment and management of offenders being released into the community. Without this, we maintain serious concerns that many victims and survivors will still pay the price for the current systemic challenges and historic failings affecting the UK prison estate.
Currently, too little is known about the specific factors which make some convicted sexual violence offenders more likely to reoffend than others, in what ways and timescales, and how they can effectively be managed and monitored in the community. Relying on narrow offence categories for determining who can be safely released early is therefore particularly problematic. Many sexual offences against children don’t meet the criteria for being defined as “serious” for example, and yet we all recognise that any and all sexual abuse perpetrated against children, recent or non-recent, is serious.
Equally, we think many dangerous sexual violence perpetrators will be eligible for release because the more serious charges against them were dropped and they will therefore only be known to the criminal justice system for lesser offences. Linked to this, the Scheme draws a distinction between domestic abuse and sexual offences which does not reflect the reality of many survivors’ experiences. A large proportion of rapes are perpetrated in the context of domestic abuse and coercive control, but are not prosecuted as such. Instead, they are prosecuted as domestic abuse offences. For many survivors of either crime type, that conviction is what finally enables them and their children and families to feel safe and recover from their trauma. Early release risks putting survivors back in the shadow of their abusers, and enabling perpetrators to continue or resume their violence, including rape and sexual abuse.
Balancing prison overcrowding and survivor safety is an enormously complicated task, but one we know the Government must nevertheless contend with. We therefore support calls for up to date, validated risk assessment frameworks to be implemented alongside ringfenced funding for Rape Crisis Centres and Independent Sexual Violence Advocacy, and appropriate resourcing and equipment for probation services tasked with the intense supervision and electronic monitoring necessary to ensure women and children are safe, so that perpetrators do not use early release as an opportunity to further their violence, intimidation and abuse.
No perpetrator should be released until there is confidence that survivors, victims and the wider public will be safe.