Thank you to everyone who has contacted me about the prisoner early release scheme.
I know the concerns some people have raised are shared by the Prime Minister, which is why as soon as he entered government Andy Burnham paused the scheme so it could be reviewed. He also immediately announced that no rapists, child sexual abusers, and groomers would be included in the scheme – a decision that has my strong support. Prisoners already excluded from the scheme include other sexual, violent, domestic abuse, terrorism and national security offenders.
However, the Prime Minister made clear that even with those changes, the early release of the killers of PC Harper was not acceptable and that he would do everything possible to prevent that happening – even after civil servants told him it couldn’t be done. I therefore welcome the fact he has now removed those convicted of the crime of unlawful killing from the scheme (which covers PC Harper’s killers), so that they will also be blocked from early release.
On the scheme more broadly, nobody wanted to see any prisoners released early. However, I must be blunt that Labour inherited a shocking mess in our prisons that required extremely difficult choices, with fewer than 100 prison places available when we entered government. In the Conservatives’ last eighteen months in government the male prison estate was running at 99% capacity, as a result of the fact they added just 500 new prison places over their entire fourteen years in government. It is frankly a disgrace that the previous Conservative government saw this problem coming but took no action at all to fix it, and instead just called an election and washed their hands of the problem they created.
The grim truth is that without releasing some offenders early, prisons would have reached their maximum capacity within just a few weeks of Labour entering government, meaning they would have been unable to receive new inmates. If that had been allowed to happen, there would have been no space to house some of the most dangerous criminals like murderers and rapists after they had been convicted, leaving them free to walk the streets. That is not a situation any responsible government could ever have allowed, meaning releasing some lower-level offenders early was the only remaining option.
I do not want to see this scheme running any longer than it has to, so we must ensure we have the prison places we need to put and keep criminals behind bars. That’s why the government are already pushing ahead with plans to create 14,000 new prison places by 2031, including by building four new prisons. In fact, Labour have already added 3,200 new places since being elected in 2024, more than six times the number the Conservatives added in a seventh of the time. That’s vitally important for ensuring that no government is ever in the position again where our prisons are so chronically mismanaged that there simply isn’t space to house criminals when they receive prison time.
So please rest assured that the government are working hard to end the crisis in our prisons and build the prison places we need.