Victims and Prisoners Act 2024

67 Imprisonment or detention for public protection: annual report

(1) The Secretary of State must, as soon as is reasonably practicable after the end of each reporting period—

(a) prepare and publish a report about the steps taken by the Secretary of State in the reporting period to support the rehabilitation of preventive sentence prisoners and their progress towards release from prison or licence termination, and

(b) lay the report before Parliament.

(2) For these purposes, in relation to a preventive sentence prisoner—

(a) “release from prison” means the prisoner’s release on licence under section 28(5) or 32(5) of the 1997 Act or unconditional release under either of those sections as modified by section 31A(4G) of that Act;

(b) “licence termination” means an order, under section 31A(2) or (4H) of the 1997 Act, that the licence on which the prisoner was released from prison is to cease to have effect.

(3) The report must in particular contain details of the steps taken in relation to the following—

(a) preventive sentence prisoners who are female;

(b) preventive sentence prisoners who at any time in the reporting period were serving a sentence mentioned in paragraph (b) of the definition of preventive sentence (detention for public protection for serious offences committed by those under 18).

(4) The report must also contain details of the persons the Secretary of State has consulted in the reporting period in relation to the matters mentioned in subsection (1)(a).

(5) In this section—

• “the 1997 Act” means the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997;

• “life sentence” has the meaning given by section 34(2) of the 1997 Act;

• “preventive sentence” means—

  (a)

  a sentence of imprisonment or detention in a young offender institution for public protection under section 225 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (including one passed as a result of section 219 of the Armed Forces Act 2006), or

  (b)

  a sentence of detention for public protection under section 226 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 (including one passed as a result of section 221 of the Armed Forces Act 2006);

• “preventive sentence prisoner”, in relation to a reporting period, means a prisoner who—

  (a)

  was serving one or more preventive sentences at any time in the period, and

  (b)

  was not serving any other life sentence at any time in the period;

• “reporting period” means—

  (a)

  the period beginning with the day on which this section comes into force and ending with 31 March following that day, and

  (b)

  each successive period of 12 months.