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Penal System

Let me return the Secretary of State to what this debate is about—the Government’s policy, which is a national disgrace. A moment ago, he quickly elided the concept of ECL and the 18-day early release system. Most ECL prisoners serve relatively short terms, not life sentences, and it is in the last 18 days of a short sentence that most of the resettlement work is done, so that the probation service, social services, the housing people and the jobcentre people can come into prisons and interview those about to be released to ensure that they can then move out into the wider world and pick up where they left off. Is there not an argument, which the former Home Secretary should get his head around, that by releasing these people early, without allowing them the opportunity to be resettled, he is merely building up a reoffending problem that is foreseeable and has been predicted?