This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/01/chris-grayling-justice-policy-absconders-open-prisons-unlawful

The article has changed 5 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 0 Version 1
Chris Grayling's policy on absconders and open prisons is declared unlawful Chris Grayling's policy on absconders and open prisons is declared unlawful
(35 minutes later)
Chris Grayling’s policy of stopping prisoners from being transferred from closed prisons to more lenient open prisons if they have a history of absconding has been declared unlawful by the high court. A ban on prisoners who have a history of absconding being moved to open prisons has been ruled unlawful by the high court.
The justice secretary’s policy was introduced following high-profile media reports last year of prisoners with a history of violence absconding while on release on temporary licence (ROTL) from open prison. Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Mitting struck down the ban, which the justice secretary, Chris Grayling, introduced last May in the wake of widespread media reporting of a case in which an armed robber, Michael Wheatley, known as Skullcracker, went on the run while on day release from jail.
Among them was Michael Wheatley, a fugitive armed robber nicknamed the Skullcracker. Grayling announced that he was “tearing up the system as it exists at the moment” in the wake of a spate of cases of absconding prisoners similar to that of Wheatley. In one case, a convicted murderer, Arnold Pickering, went on the run for a third time.
Grayling introduced his absconder policy last May having announced that the government was “tearing up the system as it exists at the moment”. At the time Grayling vowed: “If people break the rules, if they abscond, if they stick two fingers up at the system, there should be consequences. Those prisoners should be placed back in closed conditions, and those prisoners will be … once they have been recaptured.”
But two senior judges in London have ruled that excluding transfers – save in exceptional circumstances – for prisoners “with a history of abscond, escape or serious ROTL failure” is inconsistent with his own directions to the parole board. He pledged to close the loophole that allowed prisoners who had absconded while on temporary release from an open prison to remain in open conditions once they had been recaptured.
The longstanding directions state that a phased release from closed to open prison is necessary for most inmates serving indeterminate sentences “in order to test the prisoner’s readiness for release into the community”. The justice secretary rushed in the ban despite protests from prison governors and the Prison Reform Trust, who said the temporary release failure rate was only 0.06%. They argued that the reduction in temporary release failures had been one of the prison system’s successes in recent years.
Lord Justice Bean, sitting with Mr Justice Mitting, gave the justice secretary permission to appeal against the court’s ruling. The high court case was brought on behalf of a prisoner, John Gilbert, who found himself being banned from open prisons after he failed to return to HMP Stanford Hill, Sussex, from temporary day release on a Sunday evening after missing his last train. He handed himself in at a police station the next morning.
The two judges declared the ban unlawful, saying that Grayling’s hastily introduced policy was at odds with his own official directions to the parole board. These require most inmates serving indeterminate sentences to go through a phased release from closed to open prisons “in order to test their readiness for release into the community”.
The judges said the inconsistency between Grayling’s new absconder policy and his long-standing directions to the parole board was “irrational”.
They also said they were “not impressed” with Grayling’s claim that since the ban and the parole board directions had both been issued by him, he had the power to ignore or contradict them at will. “So long as they remain in force … he cannot lawfully tell the board to ignore them or his officials to frustrate them,” the judges said in their ruling. The justice secretary was given permission to appeal against the ruling.
The Prisoners’ Advice Service, who represented the prisoner who brought the case, said: “The so-called ‘absconder policy’ was introduced as a knee-jerk reaction to negative press reports without adequate consideration for other existing policies or its impact on the prisoners whose progression to open conditions was abruptly prevented.”