UK to release thousands of prisoners due to overcrowding

London: Thousands of prisoners are to be released early from September in order to prevent the “collapse” of the prison system, the UK’s new justice minister announced.

Shabana Mahmood said failure to do so risked the “total breakdown of law and order”, with just 700 places left for men, and jails operating at 99 per cent capacity since 2023.

England and Wales have the highest per capita prison population in Western Europe.

The chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, said this week that urgent action was required, as prisons were at “breaking point”.

The release initiative would not apply to violent offenders serving more than four years, sex offenders those in prison for domestic abuse offences as well as those on life sentences.

Mahmood, appointed last week after Labour’s general election win, warned in dramatic language that if prisons ran out of cell space, there could be “van-loads of dangerous people circling the country with nowhere to go”.

“With officers unable to act, criminals could do whatever they want, without consequence. We could see looters running amok, smashing in windows, robbing shops and setting neighbourhoods alight,” she said in a speech at a prison.

“In short, if we fail to act now, we face the collapse of the criminal justice system”.

Mahmood accused the previous Conservative government of a “dereliction of duty” regarding the system.

Her comments echoed Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who earlier told reporters while attending a NATO summit in the United States that the ousted Tories were guilty of “gross irresponsibility”.

“The scale of the problem was worse than we thought,” he said.

Mahmood’s Conservative predecessor in the post, Alex Chalk, had reportedly pressed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to impose similar measures before the election but was overruled.

Under Labour’s plans, prisoners who are eligible for automatic release after serving half their sentence will be freed earlier than normal.

The plans involve a temporary reduction of how long prisoners must serve behind bars, from 50 per cent to 40 per cent of their sentence.

The releases will start in September to give the Prison and Probation Service time to plan.

Mahmood also announced the recruitment of 1,000 additional trainee probation officers by next March.

The total number of prisoners hit over 87,505 on Friday – of whom 83,755 were men – leaving just 1,451 spaces available, official figures showed.