Labour are allowing violent criminals to abuse their victims again
The Labour Government is once again putting at risk the lives of vulnerable women at the hands of domestic violence offenders and perpetrators of sexual violence.
The announcement by the Secretary of State for Justice that the recall time to be served by offenders who have been released into the community to serve the remainder of their custodial sentence under supervision, and have gone on to reoffend, is reduced to a fixed 28 day period.
This is regardless of the seriousness of the original crime, the subsequent crime, and what risk to the public this offender presents. This means that in some cases a serious offence of domestic violence has been committed and likely that a further domestic violence offence has taken place when the offender was out in the community on licence.
The legislation applies to defenders who have been given a custodial sentence of between one and four years by a Crown Court Judge. This, by definition, means that the offence was too serious to be dealt with by the Magistrates Court whose sentencing powers would be insufficient. We are talking about the most serious cases of attempted strangulation and attempted rape of women.
We know that in the most serious of cases men who are allowed to continue to commit domestic violence offences will eventually go on to kill their victims.
This ruling does not take this into account and does not make an exception of these serial offenders. Labour are putting women's lives at risk.
This policy of limiting recall to prison to 28 days has come about because the prisons are at capacity breaking point. Years of failure by successive governments to build new prisons and plan for the future has brought us to this point of crisis in our judiciary.
Male prisons may well be at 99 per cent of capacity but dealing with that should be quite a separate concern to the safety of victims of sexual offenders and domestic abuse. Prison capacity should never be a consideration when a judge is considering a sentence.
So many victims of domestic violence do not come to court to face their attacker – often a husband or partner – because of the fear of retribution. So when a victim is brave enough to put themselves through the gruelling ordeal of a trial and feel the relief when their attacker is sent to prison – how frightening to then hear that they are out on licence to attack again and again. The ramifications of this policy will be felt far and wide by vulnerable women.
As a former Magistrate of 20 years, much of that time spent dealing with the horrors of domestic violence, to me this ruling only serves to undermine the sentence arrived at by the judge. Careful consideration to the victims is given when sentencing the perpetrators of serious sexual attacks and domestic violence.
This ruling will discourage victims from coming forward for fear that their attackers will be released far sooner than they deserve, putting victims in fear of their lives.
This is not justice – this is political failure.
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