A new £82 million digital identity, biometrics and automation scheme will aim to reduce the chances of mistaken release for prisoners in England and Wales.
The Ministry of Justice has committed to a ‘digital overhaul of prison system to drive down release errors’ and rid itself of ‘archaic, paper-based processes’.
Central to the reforms will be the creation of a new Justice ID system – a single digital identity for every person who enters the prison system, tracking individuals seamlessly from arrest, through the courts, into custody and back into the community.
This will replace the ‘shockingly outdated system’ where offenders can go by multiple aliases leading to confusion, unnecessary human error and offenders being let out when they should stay behind bars.
For the first time, biometric technology – such as fingerprints and facial scans - will also be used on all prisoners to verify identities at key points in the system, including releases from custody. It will build on existing uses within policing, with the first phase of Justice ID rolled out this year.
An MOD spokesperson confirmed, however, that there will be no funding allocated for the scheme in Scotland under the Barnett formula.
The new measures are in direct response to an independent review published last week into releases in error by Dame Lynne Owens and commissioned by the Deputy Prime Minister. The report found that these mistakes are ‘simply one symptom of a broken system’ the Government inherited – driven to breaking point by staffing cuts, a failure to build places and chronic underinvestment in the digital infrastructure modern justice demands.
Recent figures showed that there were 179 ‘releases in error’ last year, a reduction from the previous year of 32 per cent.
That followed an announcement last Autumn to bolster prison checks and roll out AI tools to minimise human error and strengthen oversight. A new fast-track courts helpline for prisons to quickly check warrants has also dealt with more than 1,000 urgent queries before release decisions are made since December.
Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy said: “We are rolling out biometrics, a new Justice ID and up to £82 million to bear down on these errors and keep the public safe after years of chaos.
“£20 million of this will be used this year to digitise the archaic paper-based processes we inherited, as well as putting in more checks and more staff in place to stop these mistakes before they happen.”
The Scottish Prison Service recently confirmed tha there have 27 been “liberations in error” in the last four years, eight in 2022/23, seven in 2023/24, nine in 2024/25, and three up to October last year.
