The revolving door at the prison gate

Published date01 August 2006
DOI10.1177/1748895806065534
AuthorShadd Maruna,Nicola Padfield
Date01 August 2006
Subject MatterArticles
Criminology & Criminal Justice
© 2006 SAGE Publications
(London, Thousand Oaks & New Delhi)
and the British Society of Criminology.
www.sagepublications.com
ISSN 1748–8958; Vol: 6(3): 329–352
DOI: 10.1177/1748895806065534
The revolving door at the
prison gate:
Exploring the dramatic increase in
recalls to prison

N I C O L A PA D F I E L D A N D S H A D D M A R U N A
University of Cambridge, UK and Queen’s
University Belfast, UK

Abstract
In this article we draw attention to the recent and extraordinary
increase in the number of people in England and Wales recalled to
prison during the licence period of their sentence (by examining
the published Parole Board and prison statistics). This is followed by
a description of the existing law and the recent changes to it,
which we suggest will exacerbate the current trend. We seek then
to explain the increase by looking primarily at the US experience
(which reveals a system which is costly, discriminatory and
apparently ineffective at reducing crime) and at recent judicial
review cases (which reveal a system which is increasingly
acknowledged to be unfair), concluding that current sentencing law
and practice puts inappropriate emphasis on ‘front door’
sentencing practices rather than the equally important ‘back door’
practices of release, supervision and recall. Unsurprisingly, the
article ends with a call for much more research in this area.
Key Words
new penology • parole • recall • re-entry • resettlement
329

330
Criminology & Criminal Justice 6(3)
Introduction
The current trend in England and Wales is towards a sentencing framework
based on a detailed analysis of different levels of offence seriousness.1 Yet
this discussion largely ignores the reality of a flexible early release system
for prisoners. As a result, despite a carefully calculated initial sentence, an
offender will actually serve a very different amount of time in prison. This
is sometimes referred to as the difference between ‘front door’ and ‘back
door’ practices in corrections, and ‘back door’ release decisions can have as
much influence as ‘front door’ sentencing practices in terms of sentence
length and maintaining overall prison populations (Tonry, 2003).
This article focuses on an additional ‘door’ of concern to observers of
correctional trends: the so-called ‘revolving door’ involving released
prisoners who are recalled to prison during the ‘licence’ period of their
sentence. On licence, former prisoners need not commit a new criminal
offence in order to be returned to prison, but instead can find themselves
back inside when there is evidence that they have violated the terms of
their licence (for example, failed to turn up at specified meetings). This
process of prison ‘recalls’ has received very little scholarly or public
attention in England and Wales. Yet, in the last four years, the number of
such recalls in England and Wales has increased three or fourfold. More-
over, the body responsible for releasing all such recalled prisoners, the
Parole Board, rightly anticipates that this trend ‘can only increase’ with
the release provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003.2 This dramatic rise
seems to necessitate a discussion regarding the theoretical, legal and
practical issues related to recalls, which we hope to initiate with the
following discussion.
Some statistics on prison recalls
The population in custody in England and Wales stood at 77,421 on 25
November 2005.3 In 2002, the average prison population was 70,860,
which itself represented an increase of 16 per cent compared to 1997 and
55 per cent compared to 1992.4 While there has been much concern about
this increase, little comment has been made about the fact that a growing
number of this population are there not only because they have been
sentenced by a court, but because they have been recalled to custody after
a period on licence.
The public body that first highlighted this concern was the Parole Board;
from its perspective the concern is primarily one of workload. Table 1,
which is taken from tables in Annual Reports of the Parole Board, shows
the extraordinary increase in the overall workload for the Board in recent
years.
These figures show the total number of cases, which slightly overstates

Padfield & Maruna—The revolving door at the prison gate
331
Table 1. Parole Board workload (2000–5)
2000/1
2001/2
2002/3
2003/4
2004/5
Recalls
2457
4885
7246
9031
9320
Oral hearings
272
466
495
1018
1341
Mandatory lifer prisoners
531
513
915
1060
625
Determinate sentence prisoners
5576
5514
6012
6038
7297
Total caseload
8836
11,378
14,668
17,147
18,583
Source: Parole Board (2003: 4, 2005: 7)
the position in terms of individual offenders since the same prisoner may
challenge his recall more than once: see Table 2.
Table 3 provides a summary of DCR5 recall cases.
The Prison Statistics 2002 and the Offender Management Caseload
Statistics 2004 confirm the number of DCR recalls, but not the overall
figures. We are told that in 2004–5, 710 parolees were recalled, represent-
ing 17 per cent of those on licence; in 2002–3, 420 paroles (13 per cent of
those on licence) were recalled, of which under 6 per cent were recalled for
committing a further offence. This does not include the numbers recalled
who were released under Home Detention Curfew.6 More details are
offered on these prisoners (perhaps because the Prison Service/National
Offender Management Service (NOMS) make the decision to release?).
Some 19,310 offenders were released early from prison on home detention
curfew (HDC) in 2004, and a total of 3000 (16 per cent) were recalled to
prison. (In 2002, 20,525 offenders were released on HDC, and only 7 per
Table 2. Summary of total recall cases 2004/5
ACRa (short-term)
DCRa (long-term)
prisoners
prisonersb
Total
Recall requests
6378
1884
8262
Reps after recall
749
309
1058
Total cases
7127
2193
9320
Source: Sentence Enforcement Unit (from Parole Board (2005: 53)
a Under the pre-Criminal Justice Act 2003 regime, which applied to those sentenced before 4
April 2005, those sentenced to less than 12 months’ imprisonment were subject to Automatic
Unconditional Release at the halfway point in their sentence. Prisoners were then at risk of
being returned to serve the rest of their sentence if they were convicted of further imprisonable
offences before their sentence had fully expired, but are not subject to compulsory supervision.
On the other hand, those sentenced to between 12 months and under 4 years were released at
the halfway point on Automatic Conditional Release (ACR). They were supervised on licence
until the three-quarter point in their sentence. Those sentenced to four years or more could be
granted Discretionary Conditional Release (DCR) by the Parole Board from the halfway point
of their sentence. If early release is not granted, these prisoners are released automatically at
the two-thirds point in the sentence. They remain under supervision until the three-quarter
point in their sentence
b Includes both prisoners recalled from parole licence and those recalled from non-parole
licence after automatic release at the two-thirds point of their sentence

332
Criminology & Criminal Justice 6(3)
Table 3. Summary of DCR recall cases
Total no. of
% of those
Recalls as % of
prisoners recalled
recalled for
Overall number
average number
Year
for further offence
further offence
recalled
of parole
1997/8
79
3.4
190
8.2
1998/9
94
4.0
233
11.1
1999/0
93
3.8
250
10.1
2000/1
106
3.8
267
9.6
2001/2
90
3.0
329
10.9
2002/3
188
5.8
420
13.1
2003/4
252
7
601
16.6
2004/5
265
6.5
712
17.4
Source: Parole Board (2003, 2004, 2005)
cent were recalled to prison.) The most common reason for recall, which
accounted for 57 per cent of all recalls (54 per cent in 2002), was breaching
HDC conditions. This includes being absent from the curfew address
during curfew hours, threatening monitoring staff, damaging the monitor-
ing equipment or failing to be present for the installation of a new
telephone line or equipment. Others were recalled on the grounds that it is
not possible to monitor them: ‘change of circumstances’ (for example,
where a subject has involuntarily lost their curfew address or has with-
drawn consent to be monitored), which account for 26 per cent of all
recalls in 2002; ‘installation failure (where it is not possible to install the
monitoring equipment or make the monitoring equipment fully opera-
tional); or ‘monitoring failure’ (where it becomes impossible to continue
monitoring, for technical or other reasons). These last two accounted
together for less than 1 per cent of recalls. In 2002, there was one HDC
recall on the grounds that the subject posed a risk of serious harm to the
public. The key point for our purposes is that only 16 per cent of recalls in
both 2002 and 2004 were on the grounds of being charged with a new
offence.7
The small number of life sentence prisoners, who make up an increasing
proportion of the prison population, who are recalled is also growing,8 as
Table 4 shows.
Thus, both Prison Service and Parole Board data show very significant
numbers (and an increasing number) of prisoners recalled to prison,
whether these are short-term or longer-term prisoners.
Table 4. Life licensees recalled to prison
1999/0
2000/1
2001/2
2002/3
2003/4
2004/5
48
35
26
30
52
90
Source: Parole Board (2005: 59)

Padfield & Maruna—The revolving door at the prison gate
333
The law on prison recalls
The current law: 1991–2005
Parole was first introduced in England and Wales in the Criminal Justice
Act 1967. It had two main objectives at that time: reducing the prison...

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