‘Tagging prisoners not to be looked at in isolation’

Rob Prow said it would be wrong to address those issues in isolation as they form part of a much wider strategic and policy area.

‘Any initiative must and will go much wider than just Home Affairs and must include all the principal committees and all the justice stakeholders, including the Law Officers and the courts.

‘One of the things the justice framework review will do is look at providing new appropriate and well-researched options to the courts.

‘The committee is very pleased by the successes of community service orders which are very well established and utilised by the courts.

‘In addition an early conditional release scheme, which would include the mandatory use of home detention curfew monitored using GPS technology, commonly known as tagging, has accelerated the committee to endorse immediate investigation with a view to implementation, due to the recent increase in the prison population.’

He said the use of this sort of GPS technology will also be looked at in ‘other appropriate scenarios’.

‘As has been expressed on many occasions, under our constitutional arrangements the functions and the powers of the courts are rightly completely separate from those of the States. Sentencing is entirely a matter for the courts based upon the legislative powers available to them.’

The P&R plan was updated in June 2018 in which the States agreed the resolution that ‘Home Affairs will work with P&R to establish appropriate governance and support for the justice framework initiative by December 2018’.

‘This initiative is now being progressed,’ Deputy Prow said.

Home Affairs has been working closely with P&R since June through the forum of the oversight board which comprises of the presidents and vice-presidents of both committees.

‘I know that the president and the rest of the committee are pleased that this project is under way and are very keen to make progress as quickly as we can bearing in mind the other pressures upon us not least delivering on Brexit challenges especially regarding Customs arrangements and movement of people and our absolute commitment to dealing with the recommendations and areas of improvement provided by the HMIC report.’

Deputy Prow explained that it is not true to give an impression that the prison is full of short-term prisoners who could have been serving some form of non-custodial sentence.

‘The majority of prisoners are serving in excess of one year [and] the courts, when they sentence, are fully availed of all the facts of an individual case, including defence counsel and probation submissions.

‘It is also important to note that at any one time the prison population will typically include one-third which is made up of people on remand awaiting sentencing and those who are there because they have breached parole, bail or community service, of which there are currently 22 prisoners.’