Trapped in a cycle: The Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 and the rise in recall to custody

Abstract

Introduction This article is based on findings from my doctoral thesis, which aimed to explore how resettlement is enacted and experienced by practitioners and people serving short sentences in relation to the Offender Rehabilitation Act (ORA) 2014. Introduced as one of the central elements of Transforming Rehabilitation (TR), the ORA 2014 introduced new legislation that meant an estimated 50,000 people in England and Wales who had served a period in custody of less than 12 months (commonly referred to as a short sentence), would now receive 12 months post-release supervision in the community (Ministry of Justice (MoJ), 2014). This would consist of a period spent on licence, followed by a ‘top up’ period called post-sentence supervision (PSS). A significant aspect of the ORA 2014 was the addition of the supervisory licence period (and the adjacent enforcement rules for PSS) which could result in a return to custody for non-compliance or further offending.[1: Armstrong, S. and Weaver, B. (2013). Persistent Punishment: User views of short prison sentences, The Howard League Journal of Criminal Justice, 52(3), pp.285-305.]