Earlier in September, around 1,750 prisoners were freed from prisons across England and Wales as part of the government’s ‘SDS40’ early release scheme, in which people serving sentences for less serious crimes can leave prison after serving 40% of their sentences rather than the previous 50%.

The scheme is part of a solution to quickly ease the pressure on overcrowded prisons in England and Wales. The week before the early releases started, there were only 1,098 usable spaces across male and female prisons.

Something had to be done to alleviate pressure on prisons. Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood pledged to tackle the issue as one of her earliest pledges in parliament, due to prisons being “on the point of collapse”. Serving governors have warned of conditions in jails that are “not conducive to a living environment” and officers have talked extensively about understaffing issues for overcrowded populations and having to witness traumatic events, including suicide, with no plan in place to safeguard their mental health afterwards. 

The issues associated with the UK’s prison population are huge and complex. However, people working with domestic abuse survivors are worried about the implications of the scheme. “This is a worrying time for survivors,” Jessica Eagelton, head of policy and public affairs at domestic abuse charity Refuge, tells Stylist. “In Refuge’s experience of supporting women whose perpetrators have been released from prison, the implementation of these measures is likely to have a significant impact on the physical and emotional safety of survivors of domestic abuse. Survivors are extremely worried.”

When a perpetrator of domestic abuse is imprisoned, the victim, most commonly a woman (women make up almost three in four victims of domestic abuse-related crimes) has time to begin rebuilding her life, hopefully with the certainty that she knows when her perpetrator will be released. With the introduction of this scheme, women who had expected a certain amount of time without the fear of their perpetrator’s freedom could suddenly be met with a different timeline than expected.

The early release scheme has raised concerns with charities and VAWG experts about how it will impact women’s safety. “Victims quite rightly worry about what will happen,” Nicole Westmarland, professor of criminology and director of the Durham Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse, tells Stylist, saying that women might be anxious about forms of revenge, past threats that have been made before prison, current or direct or third-party threats.

“They will be feeling worried,” she says. “Especially if they haven’t received communication about whether the person who committed abuse against them is going to be released early.”

Although the government has said some perpetrators of domestic abuse will not be released early from prison, Refuge and others working in the domestic abuse and VAWG sectors are worried the list of exemptions for release isn’t comprehensive enough.

“We have been assured that prisoners convicted of sexual and some domestic offences will not be among those released, but sadly we are hearing from our member services across the country that many perpetrators are slipping through the net, having been convicted of other related offences, such as assault,” Isabelle Younane of charity Women’s Aid says to Stylist.

Sentences for serious violent offences of four or more years and sexual offences will automatically be excluded from early release, as will some domestic abuse-related offences like certain sexual, stalking and non-fatal strangulation offences. However, perpetrators charged with common assault, or those offenders with a history of domestic abuse serving a prison sentence for an unrelated offence, could be released early through the scheme. “As it stands, the early release exemption list will not include all domestic abuse offenders,” Eagelton says. “This means that some domestic abuse perpetrators will be released from prison early under SDS40.”

When an offender is sentenced to 12 months or more in prison for a serious and violent offence, the victim of their offence is able to take up the Victim Contact Scheme so they can know when an offender will be released. They’ll also receive an annual contact letter, be informed at key stages in the sentence and be told if there is a change to an offender’s release date.

But for survivors of domestic abuse whose perpetrator’s sentence doesn’t meet the above criteria, they will likely not be informed of their perpetrator’s early release.

According to Eagelton, a substantial number of domestic abuse victims will fall into this category and won’t know their perpetrator has been released under the government’s new scheme. “An estimated 10% of cases that result in a 12-month or less sentence are related to domestic abuse,” she says. “In a further 10% of cases, the offender has been flagged by probation for domestic abuse.”

So that all survivors of domestic abuse are made aware of a change in release date with the implementation of the early release scheme, Eagelton would like the Victim Contact Scheme to be extended to all survivors of domestic abuse. At a minimum, she’d hope prison and probation services would effectively communicate with survivors when their perpetrators are released early. 

When someone is released from prison, they become the responsibility of the probation service. In the case of domestic abuse-related offences, the probation is entrusted with the safeguarding of survivors.

But probation services, like prisons, are “overstretched” and “struggling”, according to Younane. “We fear the release of such high volumes of prisoners at once will push [probation services] to breaking point,” she says. “For a long time, we’ve been warning that probation services across the country are already failing to safeguard survivors, with inadequate monitoring and poor risk assessing of perpetrators. As an average of one woman a week is killed by a current or former partner, proper monitoring, evaluating and safety planning can be a matter of life and death.”

The murders of Zara Aleena and Terri Harris highlighted the fatal consequences that can occur when probation services do not have the time, training or skills to assess offenders and manage the risk of harm posed to both women and their children. “When I first heard about this scheme, my first thought was about how probation was going to cope with the monitoring of such a large number of additional prisoners given the restraints already on them in terms of resources,” Westmarland says. She’s also worried that breaches by perpetrators of domestic abuse won’t be taken seriously enough or acted on quickly enough. 

For women to feel protected as the scheme continues over at least the next 18 months, those working in the domestic abuse sector would like to see an urgent revision made to ensure anyone with a known history of or conviction of a VAWG-related offence is excluded from early release. While the government has said that those serving a sentence for domestic abuse will not be able to leave prison early, anyone currently serving time for a different offence could qualify to be released early, despite having a previous record of domestic abuse. They’d also like common assault, battery and Section 2 harassment offences listed as exemptions from the scheme.

While stalking is listed already as an exemption in the new measures, a breach of a stalking protection order is excluded from the list of exempt offences. “In the year ending March 2023, there were 709,388 stalking and harassment offences recorded by the police,” Eagelton says. “Domestic abuse survivors are disproportionately impacted by stalking. Half of all stalkers are ex-intimate partners (50%), where the victim has separated or has attempted separation.” Given the seriousness of stalking among domestic abuse victims, Eagelton urges that a breach of a Stalking Protection Order should be listed as an exemption from the early release scheme.

The government has also been urged to extend the Victim Contact Scheme to all survivors of domestic abuse and ensure the probation service is thoroughly risk assessing and checking for domestic abuse prior to release. “We are all too aware of the grave repercussions that occur when the criminal justice system fails to recognise the real risk abusers pose to survivors’ safety,” Eagelton explains.

However, it is worth noting that this scheme is an improvement on the End of Custody Supervised Licence that was in place previously, in that it does exempt some domestic violence-related offences. Moreover, the government does have a responsibility to ease the strain on prisons in the UK due to huge overcrowding issues. Responding to a request for comment around this situation and what it means for domestic abuse victims, a Ministry of Justice spokesperson told Stylist: “This government inherited a justice system on the verge of collapse. The worst possible outcome for victims would have been to allow this to happen. Dangerous criminals would have walked the streets with impunity, knowing the police would not have been able to arrest them, because there would have been no prison cell waiting for them.

“A range of domestic abuse-related offences are excluded from the SDS40 programme, unlike its predecessor scheme, and those released will be subject to full probation supervision. In many cases, this includes tough restrictions such as tags, curfews and exclusion zones – and we will not hesitate to recall them to custody if they break the rules.”

While it’s clear the government is dealing with a prison system in crisis, it’s general consensus among many people working with survivors of domestic abuse that the early release scheme could be harmful to victims and more needs to be done to safeguard them. Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner,  tells Stylist that the scheme, while protecting survivors of domestic abuse to an extent “doesn’t go far enough”. “There is no justice in allowing perpetrators of domestic abuse to be released early,” she says. “This early release scheme is only a temporary fix. The prison crisis is far from over, and the government must deliver a permanent solution that keeps victims’ safety and justice at the front and centre.”

The UK domestic violence helpline is 0808 2000 247. Alternatively, contact Women’s Aid or Refuge for advice and support.

Images: Getty