Respect is concerned to hear that the government has decided not to exclude domestic abuse perpetrators from the early prison release scheme. For domestic abuse perpetrators, a shorter sentence doesn’t just mean justice isn’t done, in many cases it means a real risk of harm to known victims – both adults and children.
Release from prison is always a time of great concern for victims, with a need for robust risk assessment and management by the Probation Service. Numerous reports and evidence show that probation's approach to perpetrators of domestic abuse is alarmingly insufficient, with a lack of specialist behaviour change programmes and failures to engage with multi-agency domestic abuse teams, which are vital for information sharing and joint action.
We need to see vast improvements to this approach, that address existing recommendations, before we’re satisfied that perpetrators are being dealt with adequately. Early release of domestic abuse perpetrators is likely to make a bad situation even worse.
Read the Domestic Abuse Commissioner's statement on the early release scheme
Photo credit: Cardiff Queen Street station and HM Prison Cardiff, www.geograph.org.uk, Richard Sutcliffe. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
