England frees 650 prisoners in third early-release wave

About 650 prisoners are due to walk free in England and Wales as the third wave of the government's expanded early-release scheme begins, covering inmates serving sentences of more than 882 days and fewer than roughly three years and two months. Some 5,000 prisoners are scheduled for staged release over the next year, down from an initial figure of 6,000 after ministers intervened to exempt rapists and the most serious child sex offenders.

The scheme exists because the prisons are full. The Ministry of Justice's own data put the prison population of England and Wales at 86,982 on Monday, up from 86,883 a week earlier. The law was changed earlier this year so that criminals on fixed-term sentences serve a third of their time behind bars rather than half, unless their offence is exempt — rapists, the most serious child sex offenders, manslaughter convicts, terrorists and life-sentence murderers do not qualify.

As each wave completes, the threshold moves upward, releasing prisoners with longer sentences. During the second phase last month, inmates at HMP Durham cheered and punched the air as they left; one man, asked what he thought of the scheme, replied that it was "belter".

Government officials say all criminals freed early are presumed to be fitted with GPS tags, supplied by contractor Serco, and the Ministry of Justice has promised the "toughest supervision in British history" for the most serious offenders once released. The opposition numbers suggest how little room is left. Liberal Democrat justice spokesperson Jess Brown-Fuller noted the government's own projections show barely a thousand spare places by 2027, resting on a building target that "experts warn won't deliver the places promised". One delayed project or one crumbling wing closed, she said, and the country is straight back to emptying cells.

Reform UK's home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf went further, blaming successive Tory and Labour ministers for failing to build prison places "whilst throwing the door open to millions of people to come to our country", and warning that 5,000 prisoners, many of them dangerous, would now walk the streets alongside the victims who testified against them.

What is described as capacity management amounts to sentences being rewritten after the fact. Courts imposed terms on the expectation that they would be served; the state that guaranteed the punishment then found its prisons too full to hold it. The first cost of deterrence was paid at sentencing. The second is being paid by whoever meets the men from HMP Durham on the street.