Labour considers releasing offenders early to stave off UK prisons crisis

The new Labour government is considering releasing non-violent offenders from jail earlier than is currently allowed in a bid to prevent the prison system in England and Wales from becoming overwhelmed.

Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood was briefed at the weekend on what one official called the “awful situation” facing Britain’s prisons. Governors have warned that the service will soon be at “operational breaking point”.

Labour has promised to build new prisons but it faces immediate capacity issues and the risk that cell spaces will run out in the coming days.

Mahmood is therefore looking at both letting some prisoners out early and at more community sentencing, according to a Home Office official.

One option under consideration is shortening the automatic release point for non-violent offenders from 50 per cent of time served to 40-50 per cent of their sentence.

The prison system, which is already stretched by the doubling up of prisoners in cells, has a capacity of 88,815 in England and Wales.  

Mahmood has been told that the male prison estate only has about 700 free spaces and that soon a situation could arise where courts grind to a halt, or police stop arresting people because jails are full, according to the official.

The justice ministry, under the former Conservative government, has released some prisoners 70 days early on an ad hoc basis since October, when the prisons last came close to bursting point.

Tom Wheatley, the head of the Prison Governors’ Association, said last week the measure had exhausted its usefulness. As many as half of those set free under the scheme had been returned to jail either because they had reoffended or had broken the terms of their release, he added.

Successive UK governments have lengthened sentences for the most serious offenders, contributing to a steady rise in the number of people in prison from about 41,000 people in the early 1990s to more than 87,000 last month. Overcrowding has been compounded by a huge backlog of cases in the courts and the number of people being held on remand.

According to the Institute for Government, the prison population has increased by 13 per cent in the past three years and is predicted to hit 99,300 by the end of next year.

As well as suggesting earlier release points for some offenders, the IFG recommended introducing a queueing system for custodial sentences, so that lower-risk offenders do not go to prison straightaway but begin sentences under house arrest until a prison space becomes available.