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CANSFORD LABS
on Oct 7, 2024
In his latest exclusive Cansford blog written for family law and legal professionals, John Bolch examines the state of the courts - which of course never seems to out of the news - and domestic violence in families and cases.
The ultimate sanction for a domestic abuser is, of course, a term of imprisonment. And I’ve often thought that it must come as a blessed relief to a victim of abuse to know that their abuser is behind bars.
But obviously the victim will be aware that the abuser will only remain behind those bars for so long. Will the abuse begin again as soon as the abuser is released?
The victim can try to put themselves beyond the reach of the abuser, for example by moving to another part of the country, but that is not an option available to most, who will simply have to hope that the abuser has mended their ways whilst they were incarcerated.
It is easy to imagine, however, that for many abusers a term of imprisonment will just serve to make them even more determined to continue the abuse when they are released.
The government’s early prison release scheme, designed of course to ease prison overcrowding, must therefore have been met with considerable anxiety by victims of abuse.
Raneem’s Law
It is not as if the government is not aware of the plight of domestic abuse victims. On the contrary, in recent times the government, of whatever political hue, has repeatedly made clear its determination to protect victims of domestic abuse.
Only on the 19th of September the new Home Secretary announced that: “Victims of domestic abuse will be better protected from vile perpetrators under new plans to strengthen the police’s fight against violence towards women and girls”.
The announcement was to inform us that, as the first step in the government’s pledge to halve violence against women and girls in the next decade, domestic abuse specialists will be embedded in 999 control rooms, to ensure that victims get a fast response when needed and are referred to support services as quickly as possible.
This, as the announcement told us, was part of “Raneem’s Law”, in memory of Raneem Oudeh and her mother Khaola Saleem, who were murdered by Raneem’s ex-husband in 2018. In that case there were 13 reports made to the police about concerns for Raneem’s safety, with no arrests made. On the night she was killed, she rang 999 four times.
'...Government and police tools to target perpetrators'
The announcement went on to tell us that: “The package of measures announced today reinforce the government’s commitment to use every government and police tool to target perpetrators and address the root causes of violence.”
And, as part of the announcement, Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls Jess Phillips said: “For too long, we know victims haven’t had the protection they deserve. We have set out an ambitious mission – to halve violence against women and girls in a decade – and offering the strongest and most effective response to incidents of domestic abuse is absolutely fundamental to this.”
All very impressive, but unfortunately joined-up thinking is not a feature of government.
Early release scheme
On the 12th of July the new Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood announced the government’s plans to deal with the prison overcrowding crisis.
The plans are known as ‘SDS40’, the ‘SDS’ standing for ‘Standard Determinate Sentence’ and the ’40’ referring to releasing prisoners at the 40% point in their sentences, rather than the 50% point.
For the uninitiated (which, until I researched for this post, included me), a determinate sentence is a sentence with a fixed end date, including a period of time in prison and a period of time in the community ‘on licence’. And with a standard determinate sentence the period of time in prison ends when the sentence reaches its 50% point.
Accordingly, the new policy provided that prisoners serving a standard determinate sentence would be released when their sentence reached the 40% point.
Certain types of sentence would be excluded
But, as the Lord Chancellor explained in her announcement, certain types of sentence would be excluded. Specifically, we were told that the early release of offenders in prison for domestic abuse connected crimes would be excluded, and that this would include controlling or coercive behaviours and breach of restraining orders, non-molestation orders, and domestic abuse protection orders.
The scheme came into effect on the 10th of September. On that day the Domestic Abuse Commissioner expressed her concerns about the scheme, fearing that, despite the exclusions, it put victims of abuse at risk.
And sure enough her warning proved true. On the 25th of September she issued a news statement expressing deep concerns that 37 prisoners who were serving sentences for breaching restraining orders were released in error under the SDS40 scheme. “This kind of error”, she said, “is why I have called on Government to exclude all perpetrators of domestic abuse from the SDS40 scheme, regardless of their conviction.”
The latter point refers to the fact that many prisoners will be known perpetrators of domestic abuse, even when this was not the offence for which they were imprisoned.
'Grave Concerns'
The Commissioner also expressed grave concerns that victims are not being notified of their abuser’s early release, obviously meaning that they will still be expecting them to be released at a later date, and are not therefore prepared.
Now, I may be being hard on the government with my comment about joined-up thinking. They inherited a prison system woefully short of places due to years of under-investment. And yes, they did try to protect abuse victims when they introduced SDS40.
But, as we have seen, mistakes will be made, and some abusers are falling through the net. It may only be a matter of time before a prisoner released early under the scheme returns to wreak vengeance upon their victim.
Is the early release scheme a tragedy waiting to happen?
