About 650 more offenders are leaving jails in England and Wales on Tuesday, in the second phase of the early release scheme - the government's plan to tackle the prison population crisis. It includes offenders sentenced to up to two and a half years who are leaving jail after serving a third of their sentence behind bars, rather than half. The second wave of releases comes as the government takes its plan to radically overhaul criminal courts back to Parliament - but also as probation officers prepare to vote in a ballot that could lead to a strike over pay and workload.
Some 700 offenders left jail early on 1 October - all of whom were serving terms of less than 19 months. Tuesday's second stage begins the process of releasing batches of offenders on increasingly longer sentences - culminating next June with those serving more than 12 years. Around 5,000 prisoners are scheduled to be released, down from 6,000 after ministers intervened to make rapists and the most serious child sex offenders exempt.
Prisoners convicted of manslaughter are also excluded, meaning the killers of PC Andrew Harper, who died in the line of duty in 2019, will not be eligible. Those jailed for a range of offences, including members of child grooming gangs convicted of indecent assault are also ineligible. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said "the programme is clearly not working," stating she is "worried about dangerous people being let out on the street when they haven't served their sentence, haven't been rehabilitated".
Victims' groups have also raised concerns about the scheme. Alice Russell-Harris from the charity Refuge - which supports survivors of domestic abuse - told the BBC that domestic abuse perpetrators are among those being released. This "will put survivors at serious risk of harm," she said, adding that even though there may be conditions such as electronic tagging and restriction zones, "we know that license conditions are frequently breached." The early release scheme is "terrifying for survivors," said Veronica Oakeshott from the charity Women's Aid.
Reports of failures in the electronic tagging system have added to their concerns. The scheme is "dangerous and should not go ahead," Oakeshott told the BBC. Typically, those being released should expect to be electronically tagged and subject to other monitoring conditions for the second third of their sentence.
But the probation service union, Napo, said the releases put enormous strain on its members, who monitor offenders in the community. Probation officers are "absolutely overwhelmed with work," Napo's general secretary Ian Lawrence told the BBC, saying those being released require "intensive supervision" and "the sheer weight of numbers causes pressure". "None of our people go to work to see people injured, hurt, or for reoffending to happen," he said, but the numbers coming out means the probation service need more resources.
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