PMI’s (Prisoners Maintaining Innocence) CAN BE CONSIDERED FOR PROGRESS TO OPEN PRISON AND RELEASE WI

There are well defined frameworks for assessing risk in a Prisoners OASYS (Offender Assessment SYStem) and if a prisoner’s current dynamic risk of violence is low in custody and in the community and/or the current dynamic risk of sexual violence is low in prison and moderate in the community, I have been informed that men who have completed the Thinking Skills Programme, or the Cognitive Skills Programme, will not be eligible for the “medium risk” based Horizon programme.

A prisoner should therefore be offered the opportunity to progress his understanding from the Thinking Skills Course before he can consolidate the learning, which means he could complete a further booster programme and consolidate any work whilst on licence in the community.

This means that failure to complete Horizon or Kaizen does not affect a prisoner’s ability to be released on Parole, if eligible.

It goes without saying that somebody could also be moved into open prison to consolidate the work during ROTL’s (Home Leaves and Outside working) and it would shift the focus from risk reduction to risk management instead.

If there is no evidence of a high level of entrenched sexual offending nor any evidence that a prisoner is a high risk of sexual violence, he is not eligible for the Kaizen programme either!

In fact, it could be argued that Kaizen could have a negative impact on low to medium risk offenders, but there is no reliable research to support this YET!!