Thousands of offenders will be released early from prison by next summer under a contentious scheme that began on October 1, with around 700 eligible inmates leaving custody ahead of schedule, including several who have since been rearrested. A further 650 prisoners were released on October 13.
The initiative affects prisons in England and Wales, including Strangeways, Forest Bank, Hindley, Buckley Hall and Styal, and will see some inmates serving just one-third of their sentence. There will be eight more release dates, with the final tranche freed on June 8 next year.
Prison capacity crisis
The move comes as prisons across the country have been severely overcrowded for a considerable number of years. At the end of August, there were 86,843 prisoners held across England and Wales, occupying almost 98 per cent of usable capacity, with fewer than 2,100 spaces available for new inmates.
Nearly one in four prisoners (23 per cent) are living in overcrowded conditions, sharing cells designed for fewer occupants. Overcrowding can lead to fewer opportunities for rehabilitation through training, education and work, extended periods locked in cells, and an increase in assaults and self-harm incidents.
The government says it must proceed with the early release scheme now to prevent running out of available cells completely. It is predicted that the prison population could exceed 100,000 by May 2030, while capacity is expected to rise only slightly by comparison. Should prisons reach maximum capacity, the entire criminal justice system faces collapse, as police and courts would be unable to arrest and lock up dangerous criminals.
What caused the crisis?
A report by the Independent Sentencing Review last year found that since the turn of the century, successive UK governments have adopted a 'tough on crime' approach, emphasising punishment over rehabilitation. While crime has declined since the mid-1990s, more offenders are being given custodial sentences and serving longer terms. England and Wales now imprison more people per head of population than almost anywhere else in western Europe, ranking second only to Poland.
There has also been a dramatic surge in the number of offenders recalled to prison following release on licence. In the year to March 2026, more than 51,400 prisoners had their licence recalled, up 28 per cent from the year before. By comparison, in 2000 the recall population stood at closer to 9,000 inmates. This increase follows a previous early release scheme launched in September 2024 as an emergency measure, under which eligible inmates served 40 per cent of their sentence rather than 50 per cent.
Meanwhile, the number of defendants remanded in custody stands 68 per cent higher than in 2019, partly due to the impact of the Covid pandemic on the court backlog. Prisoners on remand now account for nearly 20 per cent of the total prison population.
Ministry of Justice (MoJ) estimates reveal that, while the last Conservative government constructed thousands of new prison places between 2010 and 2024, almost as many were closed down, meaning fewer than 500 net places were created during that period. The current Labour government has pledged to construct 14,000 prison places by 2031.
Will the scheme work?
As evidenced by the spike in licence recalls following the 2024 scheme, this type of emergency intervention tends to serve as a temporary measure. Nevertheless, it should give prisons some breathing room while the government builds additional capacity and seeks longer-term solutions.
The early release scheme is just one component of the Sentencing Act 2026. Other reforms include shorter prison stays, extended suspended sentences, earlier automatic release, tougher probation requirements and fixed recall limits. The measures restricting the use of short custodial sentences are particularly welcome, given that sentences of 12 months or fewer are linked to high reoffending rates.
Jane Gregory, founder of The Survivor Project in Salford, expressed concern about the rate of reoffending. In the latest MoJ figures, 68.2 per cent of adults released from custody after sentences of less than 12 months reoffended within a year, while the total rate of reoffending for adults within 12 months was 37.3 per cent.
"We're letting them out and then we've got another victim," Jane told the Manchester Evening News. "It gives me no hope for anyone that has been a victim of domestic abuse. The system isn't working. They are not rehabilitating offenders, something isn't working. To release them early, how is that helping anybody?"
The Survivor Project supports people affected by domestic and family abuse. Jane said she has spoken to women who raised concerns after receiving letters informing them their abusers would be released early from prison. She noted that victims of abuse already face barriers to reporting incidents and that sentences can often be shorter than victims expect.
"[The abuser] can move back to their area unless there's a restraining order, and it's not easy to get a restraining order from a judge," Jane said. "They might be back round the corner. That person [the victim] has got to see the same person every single day... I feel like the whole system is set up against the victim and not for the victim."
Concerns over probation service
There are also significant concerns about the impact on the probation service. Napo, the union for probation staff, says the service is already 'significantly under-staffed', and the additional work from the early release scheme is piling pressure on staff as they try to manage releases safely.
Napo general secretary Ian Lawrence said: "There simply aren't the staff across the service to do the job that is being asked of them. It isn't just about early releases, the probation service manages over 200,000 people on probation. If the government is serious about supporting victims better then it must take the probation crisis seriously. You cannot solve the prisons crisis unless probation is fully functioning and provides a real alternative to custody. Instead, more work is dumped on probation without providing our members with a decent salary."
For some campaigners, the early release scheme does not go far enough. The Prison Reform Trust says the government 'was right to introduce' the scheme but warns that the policy won't fix the issue by itself. A spokesperson for the Prison Reform Trust added: "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. However, the prison capacity crisis was decades in the making, and no single reform will solve it."
The MoJ's own research has demonstrated that community sentences are more effective at reducing reoffending rates than short custodial sentences, but their use has almost halved since 2012. An MoJ spokesperson said: "We inherited a justice system on the brink of collapse, but we've taken immediate action to fix it. We're building 14,000 more prison places, imposing the toughest-ever controls on offenders, investing record sums in probation and victim support, and reforming the length of time people spend on recall to reduce the prison population. We will also deport thousands of foreign criminals and bring the injustice of IPP sentences to an end."
