News from the House of Corrections
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Prisoners’ Discharge Grants
Mr. Garnier: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many prisoners who had been in custody for less than 14 days received discharge grants upon release in each of the last 10 years for which figures are available; and how many days the offender had spent in custody in each case. [281956]
Mr. Straw: The amount of expenditure recorded as discharge grant in each year for the last five years is given as follows.
£000
2007-08 4,407
2006-07 3,509
2005-06 3,737
2004-05 4,154
2003-04 4,270
In 2007-08 End of Custody Licence was introduced and some expenditure on subsistence payments made to prisoners on discharge has been included in the recorded expenditure for discharge grants. It would incur disproportionate costs to separate this amount as we would need to survey all prison establishments.
The purpose of the Discharge Grant is to enable the prisoner to meet their immediate subsistence needs in the first week after release. Whether they are going straight into employment or applying for benefits, they will receive payment in arrears. Without a discharge grant, therefore, there would be an increased risk that prisoners would re-offend in order to meet their immediate financial needs.
Sentenced prisoners are eligible on release for a Discharge Grant of £46 unless certain exclusions apply. These exclusions include, for example: those serving a sentence of 14 days or less; those awaiting deportation or removal from the United Kingdom; those who are known to
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have in excess of £8,000 in savings (and would therefore be ineligible for income support under the relevant regulations).
Commentary:The amount of expenditure recorded for 2007-08 was £4,407,000. If £46 is divided by that amount it would imply that more than 96,000 people were discharged from prison in 2007-08 – more than the entire prison population. And given that a good percentage of prisoners don’t qualify for the discharge grant the figure might leave the reader wondering where is all the money going? (Source: Inside Time – National Newspaper for Prisoners, July 2009, only available in print edition. On line version here).
In answer to Who Guards the Guards? It would appear from Inside Time that prisoners do.
A mixture of law, politics, autobiography and humour. Once described as "The Devilish Advocate" (Guardian), I do have the ability to provoke a response. Sometimes it comes from someone who uses a thought process, and sometimes from jerks usually associated with the knee.
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