Britain Releases 1,750 Inmates Early to Alleviate Prison Overcrowding Issues

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 per cent 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.”