7th January 2008

The Government did pilot an Intermittent Custody scheme, under the provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003. A sentance of intermittent custody provided for an offender to serve the custodial element of his sentance either at the weekends or during the week whilst being on licence in the community between the custodial days. That scheme has now been withdrawn primarily because we did not feel it was right to keep prison places empty for large parts of the week. Similar problems would arise with Mr Fouracre's proposal to detain offenders only at night.

As i wrote previously, we believe that serious, violent offenders are appropriatly dealt with in prison. On 5th December, in responce to Lord Carter's Review of Prisons, the Justice Secretary announced an additional £1.2bn, on top of the £1.5bn already committed, towards a substantial new building programme. this programme will bring an additional 10,500 prison places on stream by 2014.

The Government will also act on Lord Carter's recommendation to build up to three large 'Titan' prisons, housing around 2,500 prisoners each. This extra capacity will help us to secure the long-term availability of prison places and modernise the prison estate, closing some of the older, inefficient prisons and reconfiguring some of the smaller sites to accommodate female or juvenile offenders.

Offenders, when released into the community under licence, may be subject to curfew conditions, which can be monitored electronically, and also to residence conditions, which can require the offender to live in hostels or approved premises and observe night-time curfews. There are similar provisions available to the courts to impose curfews and electronic monitoring as part of a community sentence. We will always ensure that there are custodial places for those who need to be in prison and that courts have tough community sentances at their disposal to deal with less serious, non violent offenders.

The Rt Hon David Hanson MP
Minister of State

Letter from the Ministry of Justice

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