Labour Empties The Jails… Again: Early Release Resumes Today With Thousands of Prisoners to be Turned Out
The British government is again responding to prison overcrowding by releasing criminals early, with hundreds out as soon as one third through their sentence today, with thousands more to follow in the coming weeks.
Prison gates across England and Wales had a party atmosphere on Thursday morning, with some convicts calling out thanks to the Prime Minister for having slashed their sentences, as the first tranche of early release prisoners were turned out onto the street. The government claims the early releases are necessary because of decades of underinvestment in prisons in Britain, producing practically no new prison places during a time of massive population growth, and rising crime.
Other alternatives exist to letting criminals including violent and sex offenders walk free long before they would otherwise, but they typically involve the government spending money rather than simply externalising the social costs of a collapsing justice system on the wider public. Indeed, Pollster YouGov for The Times published findings on Thursday morning that stated the most popular solutions to the prison overcrowding crisis are building new prisons and deporting foreign criminals.
The most hated options, on the other hand, are precisely what the government is doing now, with a statistically negligible proportion of Britons thinking slowing down the court process and early prison release are good ideas.
In theory, all prisoners being released should have somewhere to live when they are turned out of jail, or at the least have a hostel or other temporary arrangement set up for them by the probation service, but as stated by The Guardian the system is not working as it should and a considerable proportion of those being released now will end up homeless on the street. Given the difficulty of living within the law without a bed or address, the paper warns many of those being released today will inevitably end back up in prison.
Some of those walking free today clearly linked their freedom with Britain’s Labour government. The Daily Telegraph reports on one serial shoplifter with, reportedly, 100 previous convictions, who thanked the Prime Minister as he left prison this morning and vowed he would now vote for Labour in return. Another told the paper “God bless the Prime Minister” at the prison gates, and a further convict said: “Justice system, what justice system? Thank you Andy Burnham”.
Today’s released are the first tranche of a new series, with 700 out the door today and another 4,500 to follow in the next 10 months. The Guardian states 2,000 to be released in the next month alone will include domestic abusers and violent offenders. Sex offenders are also due to be among those going free, but after previous controversy, killers, rapists, and child sex grooming gang members will not be eligible this time.
Prisoners who have served as little as one third of the sentence handed to them by a court can walk free.
Emptying the prisons is becoming something of a pattern with Britain’s Labour governments, with former Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer having started the mass releases back in 2024. The speed with which the government was emptying cells led to an unprecedented intervention by top police officers and spymasters warning Starmer that he was putting the public at risk, in 2025.
Britain’s Conservative Party has heaped criticism on Labour for its early release programme, suggesting the government buy up defunct conference centres or student accomodation to create temporary, ermegency prisons to overcome overcapacity without having to release criminals into the community before they’ve served their time. Yet with most areas of Conservative criticism, the party ruled the country for 14 years from 2010 to 2024, presided over the prisons crisis then, and never enacted any of these ideas themselves, leaving the boasts ringing hollow.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has a more robust policy approach, having previously promised that should it form the next government it would create 22,000 prison places in five years. This would be achieved by deporting 10,000 foreign criminals, and created a 12,000-cell estate of temporary, emergency prisons.
Based on the short-notice roll-out of ‘Nightingale Hospitals’ created by the British government during the Coronavirus era with thousands of critical care beds in conference halls, sporting facilities, and industrial units, the ‘Nightingale Prisons’ could be built on Ministry of Defence land, Farage said.
On top of this, Farage said his government would consider leasing prison places abroad, such as in Nayib Bukele’s El Salvador, to house foreign-citizen criminals to serve their sentences prior to deportation.
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