Hundreds of Prisoners Freed Early as England and Wales Scheme Begins

Hundreds of prisoners began leaving jails in England and Wales on Thursday under an expanded early release scheme that the government says is needed to stop prisons running out of space.

The first 700 of about 4,500 eligible inmates were due to be released on the first day, the BBC reported. Thursday's release is the first of 10 waves, with the last scheduled for June 2027. The total was cut from around 6,000 after Prime Minister Andy Burnham intervened to review the terms.

Prisons in England and Wales held 87,499 people as of Monday, putting them at 98.2% of capacity, according to Ministry of Justice data cited by the BBC.

How the scheme works

The changes come from the Sentencing Act 2026. Many fixed-term prisoners who would have been released halfway through their sentence will now leave after serving a third. More serious offenders on fixed terms, who previously served two-thirds in custody, will be released at the halfway point, the BBC reported. The total length of sentences does not change.

The first group are prisoners serving up to 19 months. From November, those serving up to three years and two months become eligible, and by next June, serious offenders on fixed terms of more than 12 years will qualify, according to the BBC.

Some 18,000 prisoners are excluded, including those convicted of murder, manslaughter, sexual or grooming-related offences, or a driving offence that caused a death. Released prisoners can be returned to jail immediately if they break their licence conditions, and ministers have promised the biggest expansion of electronic tagging yet, along with bans on offenders attending pubs, clubs and public events, LBC reported.

The government's case

Justice Secretary Alex Norris said the measures were "the toughest-ever range of tools to control prison leavers and better protect the public."

"We understand the anxiety victims face ahead of offenders' release dates, but the greatest danger to victims would be prisons running out of cells for dangerous criminals which was the crisis this government inherited," he said, according to LBC.

Treasury minister James Murray told BBC Breakfast: "I know the level of concern and maybe anger will be intense, and it's worth me making clear that this is not a situation where there is any good solution - there's just a series of very difficult choices we've got to take."

The government plans to spend £7bn on prison building to add 14,000 places, the BBC reported. Its own projections show the prison population will still rise to around 100,000 by the end of the decade.

Warnings from victims and probation staff

Shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy said: "Today's releases are an insult to victims, a danger to the public, and will only encourage more lawbreaking from criminals who know they have a ticket out of prison," according to LBC.

London Victims' Commissioner Andrea Simon told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that the exemptions "have not included some offenders whose imminent release is a genuinely terrifying prospect for their victims." She said electronic tags "will tell you where someone is but it can't stop them from doing something they shouldn't be doing".

The Chief Inspector of Probation, Martin Jones, said this week that electronic monitoring had "not kept pace" and could create "a false sense of assurance" unless failings were addressed, the BBC reported.

Ben Cockburn, national chair of the probation officers' union Napo, said: "We have massive staff shortages, unsustainable and dangerously high workloads and electronic monitoring is failing to deliver."

The Guardian reported that some probation staff were struggling to find hostel places for those being released. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson told the newspaper the government "inherited prisons on the brink of collapse and a homelessness crisis", and was working with councils and charities to halve homelessness among people leaving prison by 2029.

Not the first scheme

Both main parties have used early release before. Rishi Sunak's Conservative government began releasing eligible prisoners up to 18 days early in October 2023, later extending this to 70 days, while Keir Starmer's government freed some prisoners after 40% of their sentence from September 2024, the BBC reported.

Catherine Atkinson, the Labour MP who chairs the Commons Justice Committee, said the scheme was "regretfully a matter of necessity" after "more than a decade of policy failure", and that the safety of victims and the public was "paramount", according to the BBC.

A second group of prisoners is due to be released from 13 October, the Guardian reported.