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The new Labour government will shorten the automatic release point for some prisoners from 50 to 40 per cent of their sentence as part of measures to avert a full-blown crisis in prisons in England and Wales.
Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, said on Friday the policy will come into effect from September and would be reviewed after 18 months.
She said the measures, which early modelling suggests would free up spaces “in the low thousands” were necessary to prevent paralysis in the criminal justice system. Without them prisons would run out of places, leaving the police unable to arrest “dangerous criminals”.
“Our prisons are on the point of collapse,” Mahmood said in her first major speech delivered at the Five Wells prison in Wellingborough. She blamed the capacity crisis on the Conservative government that was ousted in last week’s general election.
“When prisons are full, violence rises putting prison officers on the front line at risk. When no cells are available, suspects cannot be held in custody. This means vanloads of dangerous people circling the country with nowhere to go,” she said.
Outlining the measures Labour is taking to ease overcrowding, she said the government would temporarily reduce the proportion of some custodial sentences from 50 to 40 per cent. She insisted those released would be managed “safely”.
Offenders sentenced to four years or more for serious violence offences will be automatically excluded, along with prisoners convicted of sex offences and domestic violence-linked crimes.
This includes stalking offences, non-fatal strangulation or suffocation, and “controlling or coercive behaviours in an intimate or family relationship”.
Anyone released will be strictly monitored by the probation service including with electronic tagging and curfews, and recalled to prison if they breach their licence conditions, Mahmood said.
Recognising the additional strains that the early release of prisoners would place on the probation service, Mahmood said the government planned to recruit 1,000 extra trainee probation officers by March 2025.
The new measures bring to a close the End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) scheme, which the former Conservative government began last October when the prisons system came within a few hundred places of full capacity.
The Conservatives released 10,000 prisoners earlier than expected under the scheme, between October 17 and June 30 this year, according to figures published by the Ministry of Justice earlier on Friday.
The ECSL scheme enabled certain prisoners to be released a maximum of 18 days prior to their release date. This expanded to 35 days in March and 70 days from May onwards.
Labour’s more drastic intervention, which had been recommended by the Prison Governors’ Association and some charities, is designed to buy time for the government to build an effective buffer for reform.
Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust charity, welcomed the emergency measures, saying they should prevent “the criminal justice system literally grinding to a halt”.
“Reducing the automatic release point for prisoners serving determinate sentences is the most straightforward and comprehensive way to reduce demand to give our prisons vital breathing space,” she said.
Sinha added that the probation service would require sufficient resources to cope with supervising an increased number of people on licence in the community.
The chief prisons inspector Charlie Taylor, whose recent reports have routinely described conditions within the estate as inhumane, welcomed “swift action to manage the prison population”.
But he said it was inevitable that the measures taken would lead to the early release of some “risky offenders”.
“How these men are prepared for release and how prisons and probation are supported in managing them will be vital. We will be watching this very closely,” he said.
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