Prisoners returned to custody for breaching Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL) conditions (FOI)

​Request

A.

The total number of prisoners in the last ten years who on release have been convicted of further offences.

B.

The categories of offence represented by these reconvictions (eg violence, drugs, sex offences, etc.) and the total number of prisoners per category.

C.

The total number of prisoners in the last ten years who have been returned to custody for breaching their Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL) conditions.

D.

The categories of offence (principal) represented by those prisoners in breach of their ROTL conditions and the total number of prisoners for each category.

Clarification questions:

C.

As it stands for the prison to answer this question it will exceed the 12.5 hours. ROTL takes into account community visits, community work, home leave and home curfew licence.  Firstly did the requester wish to have information for all aspects of ROTL or are they only interested in those prisoners who have been released on home curfew licence and subsequently have breached their licence to be returned to prison? Consideration in also reducing the scope to say five years would help reduce the time to fulfil this request.

D.

When asking for the “the categories of offence”.  Please clarify if this means the original offence that the prisoner has been convicted of and sentenced to imprisonment for?

Clarification answers from requester:

C.

I am interested in information pertaining to all aspects of ROTL.

D.

By ‘categories of offence’ I mean the original offence of which the prisoner has been convicted, resulting in a custodial sentence.

Response

Unfortunately we are unable to comply with this request. The information requested, over the specified time frame of ten years, is not routinely collected by the States of Jersey Prison Service. It would therefore require a significant amount of work to obtain the relevant reconviction data. It has been estimated that the cost of doing this work would exceed the cost limit for Freedom of Information requests.

Under Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 a scheduled public authority may refuse to supply requested information if it estimates that the costs of doing so would exceed an amount prescribed by Regulations.

The cost limit is specified in Article 1(a) of the Freedom of Information (Costs) (Jersey) Regulations 2014 as £500 in respect of a request to a scheduled public authority. In this case the cost of obtaining the data would exceed that specified amount.

However, please find the link below to the 2009 reconviction study which is available on the probation website.  A follow up report is due to be published in the next few months. It is the most up to date validated source currently available.

Community Sentences and Outcomes in Jersey