Only 33 prisoners have been released under emergency measures announced by the government to combat the spread of Covid-19 in jails in England and Wales, MPs have heard.
The justice secretary, Robert Buckland, told the Commons that the total number of those released included pregnant prisoners and women in mother and baby units (MBUs), which ministers had previously said was 17 as of Monday 20 April.
The Ministry of Justice had said on 14 April that the Prison Service would free up to 4,000 prisoners who were within two months of their release date and had passed a risk assessment.
The latest figures jar with remarks made on 15 April by the justice minister Lucy Frazer to MPs on the justice select committee that a “few hundred” prisoners were set for release the day after she was giving evidence.
However, a few days after Frazer gave evidence the release scheme was temporarily suspended when six inmates were mistakenly freed and then recalled.
Buckland struck an optimistic tone as he told MPs there were “positive signs” the approach in prisons was working, although he cautioned: “We are not out of the woods yet.”
In response to a question by the shadow justice secretary, David Lammy, Buckland told the House of Commons: “With regard to the question of early release, progress has been careful and slow but weve reached a position now where, also taking into account the release of pregnant women, a total of 33 prisoners have been released.
“It is a scheme Ive not embarked upon lightly. It is a result of very careful risk assessment so that we want to minimise any risk to the public. Its coupled with the reduction weve seen in prison places and capacity of about 3,000, which is already making a big difference in creating the space that we need in order to increase compartmentalisation and to reduce the spread of the virus.”
As of 5pm on Saturday, five members of prison staff and 15 prisoners had contracted Covid-19 and died. There have been 321 confirmed cases of coronavirus among prisoners and 293 among staff. There are 81,500 prisoners in England and Wales and about 33,000 staff working in public sector prisons.
Buckland said: “We have restrictive regimes in prisons and have minimised inter-prison transfers to reduce the spread of the virus. Were implementing units to protect the sick, to shield the vulnerable and to cohort new arrivals to reduce risk.
“There are positive signs that our carefully implemented approach is limiting the impact of this initial phase of the pandemic, that cases and deaths are much lower than originally predicted, but we will continue to do everything possible that this remains the case.”
Buckland said prisons had sufficient supplies of most personal protective equipment, but the service was low on coveralls.
Lammy pressed Buckland for an exit strategy to enable order to be restored to prisons, which have been placed under a restrictive regime.
The shadow justice secretary said: “He will recognise, too, that with the restricted regime he talked about earlier, we cannot keep prisoners in their cells for 23 hours a day. It puts prison staff at risk, never mind potentially breaching very serious human rights.
“Whats his exit strategy in terms of tracing, upping testing and moving back to a degree of order in our prisons? Or we could be seeing rising tensions across the country.”
READ MORE FROM SOURCE: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/27/only-33-prisoners-in-england-and-wales-released-under-anti-coronavirus-measures
