Life sentence prisoners
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0264550513512435 |
| Author | Sharon Brereton |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Research & reports |
Research & reports
Research & reports
Life sentence prisoners
The purpose of this inspection focused on prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
(referred to as lifers in this review); in particular the later transition from the confines
of closed prison to less restrictive open conditions. This crucial phrase is mainly
concentrated on due to its huge importance to the prisoner and also the significant
release on life licence. The timeliness of this inspection was felt important given that
this work is to be retained by the new National Probation Service (NPS) with the
Government’s Transforming Rehabilitation strategy.
The inspection incorporated visits to six prisons, six probation trusts and seven
approved premises. This enabled the team to examine the quality of practice
through its meetings with prison, probation managers and staff, examine case
records and conduct semi-structured interviews with life sentence prisoners, both in
custody and the community. Particular interest was given to the support available to
this category of prisoner to prepare them for release, to reduce their risk of harm to
others and the likelihood of re-offending; alongside maintaining links with their local
areas and family, and thus resettle back into the community.
Overall it was found that lifers were ill-prepared for the transfer to open prisons
with many suffering a ‘culture shock’ on arrival. Once in open conditions, release
on temporary licence (ROTL) was felt to be heavily relied upon whereas little consid-
eration had been given to life skill training and courses deemed necessary given the
duration of incarceration. The findings revealed that ROTLs lacked planning, which
involved notification to the local Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements
(MAPPA) or robust risk assessment.
The findings, more specifically, revealed that the quality of assessments and plans
to manage the sentence and the risk of harmrequired considerable improvement with
progress being stifled during the custodial part of the sentence. Prison assessments
were seen to lack a thorough analysis of the motivation and triggers to the offence
with sentence plans not reflecting the work completed. Completion of assessments
was also hinderedby confusion over whether prisonor probation held responsibility.
Whilst it was acknowledged that assessments after release were of a much higher
standard, it was feltthat a lack of thought was involved with sentence plans with little
creativity in linking work completed in prison to work in the community.
An important criticism was the underuse of families despite them being regarded
as playing a significant role and being a good source of information. It was found
Probation Journal
60(4) 439–444
ªThe Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0264550513512435
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The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
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