By David Milliken
LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s new Labour government plans to expand the early release of prisoners from September to tackle a jail overcrowding crisis which justice minister Shabana Mahmood said threatened to create “a total breakdown of law and order”.
Prisons in England and Wales have space for only 700 more male inmates and are likely to be full within weeks, after which cells in police stations would need to be used, preventing officers from patrolling the streets.
“We could see looters running amok, smashing in windows, robbing shops and setting neighbourhoods alight,” Mahmood said in a speech at a prison in central England, blaming the crisis on her Conservative predecessors.
Under the plan, which is subject to parliamentary approval, most prisoners will become eligible for release after serving 40% of their sentences behind bars, down from 50% currently.
Prisoners who are let out can be returned to jail if they reoffend or break other terms of their release.
The early release plan would be reviewed in 18 months’ time, Mahmood said. Asked how many would be freed, she said the figure was in the “low thousands” in the short term.
Britain has western Europe’s highest rate of incarceration and prisoner numbers have risen sharply since the pandemic, due to longer sentences, court delays and a requirement for serious offenders to serve at least 65% of their sentences behind bars.
Labour, which came to power last week, has used the crisis as an example of the legacy of underfunded public services left by former prime minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government.
“We have always been clear that prisoner release should only be as an absolute last resort, and that government should exhaust all other options before committing to this course of action – and should ensure adequate safeguards are in place to protect the public,” a Conservative spokesman said.
Mahmood said 10,000 prisoners had been released since October 2023 under a previous emergency scheme which she would scrap to allow for a more systematic programme.
Violent offenders sentenced to at least four years, sex offenders and domestic abusers will not be eligible for the early-release programme, the justice ministry said.
The Law Society, which represents most lawyers in England and Wales, said the problem reflected long-term cuts to criminal justice funding and the government would need to put appropriate safeguards in place to monitor newly released prisoners.
The justice ministry said an extra 1,000 trainee probation officers would be recruited by March 2025.
However, existing government budget plans – which Labour has said it will largely stick to – foresee real-terms cuts of nearly 3% a year over the next four years to a range of public services including justice.
(Additional reporting by Muvija M and Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Kylie MacLellan, David Holmes and Hugh Lawson)
