Prison lawyers have urged the new lord chancellor to reverse a decision on home detention curfews following prime minister Andy Burnham’s decision to pause an early prisoner release scheme.
Burnham told justice secretary Alex Norris last week to pause the early prisoner release scheme designed to address prison overcrowding ‘until we have conducted an urgent review and done everything we can to minimise risk to the public’.
The Association of Prison Lawyers has now called on Norris to urgently turn his attention to the home detention curfew scheme.
Under the home detention curfew scheme, eligible prisoners who pass a risk assessment are released under an electronically monitored curfew to facilitate their transition from custody to community. In a letter to Norris seen by the Gazette, association chief Laura Janes says that in anticipation of the early prisoner release scheme, His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service told prisoners that from 25 June 2026, they would no longer routinely process applications for release on home detention curfew.
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'As a consequence, many of our members have had calls from distressed prisoners who were anticipating electronically monitored release over the coming months and weeks but who have been told this will no longer happen due to the anticipated changes,’ the letter says.
The association said the decision to stop the routine use of home detention curfews without a published policy violates public law principles. ‘In practical terms, unless the decision to stop processing HDC claims is reversed, the pressure on prison places will be even greater than the baseline position that resulted in the need for the new scheme in the first place,' the letter adds.
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