Labour's latest scandal adds insult to injury - it's laughable

We were assured by various government ministers that the early release of prisoners back into society was not something to be overly concerned about, as they would be properly monitored and their whereabouts known – but it turns out the opposite is true, in a double blow to victims of crime and law-abiding taxpayers. It is bad enough that we have had to witness the scenes of the last few weeks of smiling inmates strolling out of prisons – cheering and punching the air – having served barely a third of their sentences and openly telling reporters that there was a very good chance that they would be offending again soon.

For those of us who believe that robust law, order and justice are the basis of a decent and functioning society, it was frankly insulting. But to add further insult to injury, it appears many of these former lags are not being tagged immediately – and that any form of monitoring them is at best patchy, and at worst, farcical and non-existent. A report by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) reveals that some criminals are waiting up to FIVE months before being fitted with a tag and that only 55% of radio frequency and GPS tags were fitted on time.

It would be laughable were it not so serious. In any other world, such a poor performance would see heads roll, but instead all we get is a response from a Ministry of Justice spokesperson saying: ‘we are delivering the biggest expansion of tagging in British history, backed by £100 million in funding’ which might make for a tasty soundbite, but does little to reassure people in the here and now. We also had the spectacle of Justice Secretary Alex Norris who, in a BBC interview, was unable to give a number for how many of the 700 early release prisoners – including stalkers and domestic abusers – would be tagged upon being let out of jail.

If the top man in the UK cannot answer this question, then you know there is no real grip of the situation. And if not tagging early-release offenders in good time and not knowing how many would be tagged when released were not damning enough, it turns out the probation service has run out of accommodation and has been issuing tents to former inmates – an utterly extraordinary and damning admission. Prisoners are supposed to be found accommodation before being released, but the whole early release scheme has thrown the system into chaos, with one probation officer explaining they usually have up to a year to find housing for an inmate being released, but with the sheer volume of those now getting out early, this has been reduced to just a few weeks.

It is estimated that nearly one in six convicts are left homeless upon release, with Narco – a charity that supports ex-offenders – highlighting that two-thirds who leave prison homeless reoffend within a year. The system is not only broken but is setting up convicts for further failure, as they are not getting the support they need once released if they want to try and get their lives back on the right side of the law. Clearly the system is stacked in favour of reoffending.

Labour continues to trot out the line that they inherited the current crisis from the previous Conservative Government, but this no longer washes with the public, who just see a government that has been in power for nearly two and a half years keep making excuses for their abject failures. The lack of immediate tagging, not knowing who has been tagged or where they are sleeping in their tent because there is no accommodation for them, shows a complete disregard for the safety of all of us.

You would hope that someone, somewhere in Government, would have had a lightbulb moment and thought to check that if they were going to let out hundreds of prisoners early, those doing the tagging or sourcing the accommodation had the resources in place to deal with the increased demand, but it appears not. As taxpayers, we hand over vast sums every month and expect such things to be taken care of, but it is clear we are naïve in this expectation.

I accept we have a prison place crisis and that there is no overnight quick-fix solution – though I do not believe alternative options to releasing prisoners early have been properly explored, including reconsidering the use of prison ships as we did in the late 1990s to ease overcrowding. Where we find ourselves today is a complete dereliction of duty by the government – we were told that anyone released early would be properly monitored, and this is simply not happening – as a nation, we have been gaslit.