Britain began discharging about 1 750 inmates from prisons Tuesday as part of efforts to free up space in a creaking penal system bursting at the seams.
Prisoners in England and Wales serving sentences of less than five years are being freed on license after serving 40% of their time in correctional facilities rather than 50 per cent – but the scheme excludes sex or domestic violence offenders and those serving four years or more for violent crimes.
Ahead of the first prisoners walking free, Downing Street said Monday that it had been forced to act due to the risk of “unchecked criminality” resulting from having no place to lock anyone up.
However, No.10 said it understood how difficult it would be for crime victims to learn offenders imprisoned for a commensurate term were being let off early.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s new Labour government announced the plan almost as soon as it came into office following a July 4 election because prisons had been at 99% capacity pretty much continuously since January.
Race riots sparked by the July 29 killings of three young girls in a mass stabbing in Southport placed the system under even more pressure as courts began handing prison sentences to many of the more than 1 000 people arrested by police.
That in turn triggered Operation Early Dawn under which defendants who have been arrested but who have yet to appear in court are detained in police station cells until a prison place becomes free — but critically means delays as they cannot get their day in court unless a prison space is available.
Ministry of Justice figures show that last week just 1 098 out of 89 619 spaces were available, the fullest prisons have been since 2011 when the government first started publishing those statistics.
However, prison regulators and the probation service, which is charged with supervising the released prisoners, have expressed serious concerns about the risks they pose to the public and themselves.
Chief prisons inspector Charlie Taylor told the BBC that while he accepted the government had “absolutely no other choice”, some of those being released Tuesday were judged to be at “high risk” of coming to harm the outside and that there was also a risk some would commit further crimes.
Among the risks he cited were “homelessness” and being sucked back “into the cycle of crime, drug use… or worse still getting involved in further offenses.”
Taylor has previously called the overcrowding crisis “a ticking time bomb” that early releases would fail to defuse.
Chief inspector of probation Martin Jones said the early releases were placing an already “significantly overstretched” service, due to understaffing, under a “huge amount of pressure.”
The service could not cope with keeping tabs on more prisoners to ensure they stick to the conditions of their license, including curfews and staying away from specified locations and people.
Jones said he was “certain” that as many as one-third – about 580 – of the prisoners being set free would re-offend and called for a huge investment in the prison system to address high staff turnover and low morale stemming from low wages and structural problems.
Meanwhile, the crime victims’ commissioner warned many survivors did not know the person who had victimised them was being set free – even though advance notification had been requested.
“From the beginning, I sought assurances that all impacted victims would be informed of any early release dates, affording them the opportunity to request protective measures,” said Helen Newlove. (UPI)
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