Letting abusers out early: solving the prisons crisis
The prison doors are opening. Prisoners, many violent, are being waved out with little care for the consequences. The understandable backlash by the British public includes particular anger about the plan to release two people found guilty of the manslaughter of PC Andrew Harper in 2019. Public pressure has been so great – including a petition with over one million signatories – that Andy Burnham pledged to find a way to stop the release of Harper’s killers.
But making exceptions sets dangerous precedents. Everyone understands that over-crowded prisons are at breaking point, but many question why law-abiding citizens, let alone the specific victims of crimes, have to face the repercussions of our failing criminal-justice system. The chosen solution of early release – started under the Tories, taken up more extensively by Keir Starmer and now the focus of a political problem for Andy Burnham – seems cavalier about society’s safety. Few are fans of the policy: polling shows 69 per cent of people in the UK are against the scheme, with 68 per cent having lost faith in the government’s handling of the criminal-justice system. And no wonder, when successive governments since the mid-2010s have failed to deliver the promised prison-expansion plan to address the rising prison population. Most pointedly, why has political failure resulted in the default response of shifting the issue onto communities?
In theory, early-release prisoners aren’t released freely; they remain under probation supervision. But can curfews, electronic tags, unpaid work and supervision orders really do the job prison is designed to do? This policy also relies on the capabilities of the probation services to meet the demands of the early-release scheme but with no corresponding increase in resources. In August, 90.7 per cent of the probation union voted in favour of potential strike action over already-high workloads and opposition to government plans. A strike would put public safety further at risk and derail the scheme, let alone the fact that workload of probation staff could rise massively if they have to police the government’s new wheeze: limiting those released who are still deemed a threat within restriction zones a few miles wide. What’s more, doesn’t this turn local areas, and a free society, into de facto prisons?
More than a crisis-measure, a new law – The Sentencing Act 2026 – will move roughly 5,000 prisoners out of incarceration. Some ‘eligible offenders’ will be released after serving only one third of their sentence, down from between 40 to 50 per cent. How can the public have faith in a sentencing regime when swathes of prisoners will only serve a fraction of the ordered sentence?
Something has got to give, but is the answer reducing the time served of sentences? What about emergency measures – like a prison equivalent of NHS Nightingale – to protect the public, or renovating those empty prison cells that currently fail some health-and-safety concerns? Others ask why so many non-British nationals are being kept in British jails, or why IPP prisoners remain in prison long after their time is served, on an abolished, discredited sentence? And rather than a pragmatic response to a lack of prison space, are we seeing an ideological turn against incarceration as punishment that dare not speak its name?
