Public safety takes priority over human rights when it comes to terrorist prisoners

Ben Bradley says prisoners convicted of terrorism offences will be subject to much tougher scrutiny before it is decided whether they should be released or not.

It would trouble you to hear that, under early release rules introduced by Tony Blair in 2005, more than 90 per cent of criminals who were sentenced to immediate jail time were released after serving only half their sentences in 2018.

This figure makes a mockery of British sentencing guidelines and shows that the system is no longer transparent.

People are released without being properly assessed and it can’t carry on that way.

The Conservatives are already changing things and in 2019 we ended that halfway release point for sex offenders and violent criminals, but this week we will go further.

We promised to get a grip on law and order at the election, and we will.

This week we’ll introduce a new emergency law that seeks to prevent anyone convicted of terrorist offences being released without proper scrutiny.

Public safety will be back at the top of the agenda.

Already, we’re facing the legal threats from people like civil rights campaign groups saying that this infringes on the terrorist’s human rights.

We can’t and won’t allow them to reduce public safety to being a secondary concern.

We can’t allow what has happened to often recently, with people being released automatically from prison and then going on to commit terrorist attacks, to happen again.

In my view, if it’s been decided that a prisoner should only be released with constant surveillance by security services, then in reality that prisoner is not safe on our streets and should stay in prison.

If you’re given a custodial sentence and sent to prison, you should expect to serve that sentence and the community should expect that you will serve it.

That’s transparent, it’s a better deterrent, it’s better for our public safety and it’s also better for offenders.

Too many in our society go round and round the prison system on short sentences without the time or resources to rehabilitate .

We’ll invest in those services and in 10,000 new prison places to restore order and ensure that the system is doing what it should – keeping people safe.

Ben Bradley is MP for Mansfield and Warsop.