Compensation For Early Release Lags

[jaffa]

What a crazy country this has become


Sky News

Prisoners released early from prison are to receive a cash payout of up to £172 to compensate them for loss of bed and board.

Some 25,500 prisoners are expected to be released up to 18 days early to ease the prisons overcrowding crisis.

They will receive cash payments from the Government equivalent to £10 a day. The cost will total £4.5m.

The payments are intended to cover living costs during the time the ex-convicts would have been in prison because legally, as prisoners, they cannot receive benefits.

Governors have been instructed to make sure they have enough cash available to pay out from next Friday when the first inmates are released.

They will receive cash because many do not have bank accounts and it is believed they could reoffend if they do not have money to tide them over.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said prisoners were coached in how to spend wisely by their resettlement programme.



She said: "All prisoners will be paid the normal discharge grant (£46) plus a subsistence payment in place of benefits payments until their formal release date."

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis slammed the policy. He said: "This Government's prisons policy is descending into a Monopoly-style farce.

"First it resembled `get out of jail free', now it is a case of `get out of jail and receive £200'."

Under the early release measures announced earlier this week, offenders including burglars, drug dealers and conmen serving terms of less than four years will be eligible for release up to 18 days early.

Ministers insist that convicts will still be on licence under the new guidance for jail governors, and serious sexual or violent convicts, or those serving fewer than four weeks, will not be included.

The prison population has rocketed from 61,467 in 1997 to more than 81,000 at present.

 

[Falkirk_Bairn]

Complete and utter joke, they should be paying the goverment for letting them out early.

Aye, were letting you out early, your getting rent free houses, Giro money since you probably can't be bothered working and what the hell, you can get £172 since your not getting your meals made for you like you would in jail.

Disgrace.

 

[IANB]

Complete and utter joke, they should be paying the goverment for letting them out early.

Aye, were letting you out early, your getting rent free houses, Giro money since you probably can't be bothered working and what the hell, you can get £172 since your not getting your meals made for you like you would in jail.

Disgrace.

.
Have a think about it m8. How else will they live. Do they go homeless and beg for food or do they reoffend to get money to feed themselves.