Around 5,000 prisoners are being released early from prisons across England and Wales as part of a bid to fix the “prison capacity crisis”, with some already freed at the start of the month. The scheme allows some prisoners to be released after serving just a third of their sentence, while more serious offenders will serve half.
Originally scheduled to begin on September 2, the rollout was temporarily suspended by Andy Burnham just three days after he replaced Keir Starmer as Prime Minister. He paused and reviewed the scheme following intense public and political backlash over the prospect of violent offenders being set free early.
Who is excluded from the scheme?
Prisoners serving sentences for unlawful killing, manslaughter, causing death by dangerous driving, historic grooming, and serious sexual offences will now be blocked from the scheme. The first tranche of 700 prisoners have already been released.
As of the end of August, there were 86,843 prisoners behind bars across England and Wales, taking up almost 98% of usable capacity and leaving fewer than 2,100 places for new arrivals. Nearly one in four prisoners (23%) are in overcrowded conditions, sharing cells designed to hold fewer people.
Why is the scheme happening now?
Projections show the prison population could exceed 100,000 by May 2030, while capacity is expected to increase only slightly. The Ministry of Justice said: “Failure to act would put victims and the public at untold risk – with courts unable to hold trials, police unable to make arrests and crime going unpunished.”
A report by the Independent Sentencing Review last year found that successive UK governments have taken a “tough on crime” approach, focusing on punishment rather than rehabilitation. While crime has declined since the mid-1990s, more offenders are being sent to prison and given longer sentences. England and Wales now imprison more people per head than most of western Europe, behind only Poland.
Rising recalls and remand numbers
In the year to March 2026, more than 51,400 prisoners had their license recalled, up 28% from the year before. In 2000, the recall population was closer to 9,000 inmates. The increase follows a prior early release scheme introduced in September 2024 as an emergency measure, which saw eligible prisoners serve 40% of their sentence.
The number of defendants remanded in custody is 68% higher than in 2019, partly due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the court backlog. Prisoners on remand now make up nearly 20% of the total prison population.
Ministry of Justice estimates show that while the last Conservative government built thousands of new prison places between 2010 and 2024, almost as many were closed, resulting in fewer than 500 net places added. The current Labour government has pledged to build 14,000 prison places by 2031.
What does the Sentencing Act 2026 include?
The early release scheme is one component of the Sentencing Act 2026. Other reforms include fewer short prison stays, longer suspended sentences, earlier automatic release, stricter probation rules, and fixed recall limits. Sentences of 12 months or less are linked to high reoffending rates.
A spokesperson for the Prison Reform Trust said: “The government was right to introduce the early release scheme. With prisons close to capacity, changes to release arrangements were expected to provide the single biggest reduction in pressure on the system, and there are no easy alternatives capable of delivering the same impact in the short term.”
The MoJ’s own analysis has found that community sentences are more effective at reducing reoffending compared to short prison stays, but their number has almost halved since 2012. A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We inherited a justice system on the brink of collapse, but we’ve taken immediate action to fix it.”
