UK plans to release more prisoners early to tackle overcrowding

Britain’s new Labour government plans to expand the early release of prisoners from September to tackle an overcrowding crisis which justice minister Shabana Mahmood said threatened to lead to “a total breakdown of law and order.”

Prisons in England and Wales have space for only a few hundred more male inmates and are likely to be full within weeks, after which cells in police stations will need to be used, preventing officers from patrolling the streets.

“With officers unable to act, criminals could do whatever they want, without consequence. We could see looters running amok, smashing in windows, robbing shops and setting neighborhoods alight,” Mahmood said in a speech at a prison in central England.

Under the plan, which is subject to parliamentary approval, most prisoners will become eligible for release after serving 40 percent of their sentences behind bars, down from 50 percent currently.

Prisoners who are let out can be returned to jail if they reoffend or break other terms of their release.

Britain has western Europe’s highest rate of incarceration, and prisoner numbers have risen sharply since the pandemic, partly due to longer sentences and a requirement for serious offenders to serve at least 65 percent of their sentence behind bars.

Labour, which came to power last week, has used the crisis in prisons as an example of the legacy of underfunded public services left to it by the Conservative government of former prime minister Rishi Sunak.

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 early release program.

Sentences for serious violent offences of four years or more and sex offences will be automatically excluded from the change, as will the early release of offenders in prison for domestic abuse and related crimes, the justice ministry said.