Thousands of prisoners to be released in September

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, with Governor Sarah Bott, during a visit to HMP Bedford

Thousands of prisoners will be released early at the start of September, the justice secretary has announced.

Shabana Mahmood warned of the "total collapse" of the prison system and a "total breakdown of law and order" without urgent action to ease prison overcrowding.

She accused Rishi Sunak and the previous Conservative government of a "disgraceful dereliction of duty" for not dealing with the crisis when they were in power.

Under her plan, some prisoners will be released after they have served 40% of their sentence in England and Wales, rather than the current 50%.

Ms Mahmood said she expected the first batch of prisoners released in September to be "in the low thousands", with further releases over the next 18 months and updates made to Parliament every three months.

Over the next 18 months, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) told BBC Verify it estimated up to 4,000 extra male prisoners and fewer than 1,000 female prisoners will be released under the new measures.

Sentences for serious violent offences of four years or more and sex offences will be automatically excluded from the change, as will the early release of offenders in prison for domestic abuse connected crimes, including stalking and choking.

Speaking at HMP Five Wells in Northamptonshire, Ms Mahmood said jails had been operating at 99% capacity since the start of last year and were now weeks away from running out of space.

If that happened overflow police cells would be filled, she warned, leading to "van-loads of dangerous people circling the country with nowhere to go".

She added: "Soon, the courts would grind to a halt, unable to hold trials.

“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.

"In short, if we fail to act now, we face the collapse of the criminal justice system. And a total breakdown of law and order."

As Ms Mahmood painted a bleak picture she would have been aware that allowing some prisoners out early will not be popular with some people.

But she stressed that she had been “left with no choice at all” blaming the previous Conservative government for the crisis.

Ms Mahmood knows that the questions and criticism will quickly come her way if this scheme does not work or leads to a rise in offences.

Conservative shadow security minister Tom Tugendhat said in a social media post: "In what world is releasing 20,000 criminals onto our streets a good idea."

However, early release is not new, and the previous justice secretary Alex Chalk announced plans for some prisoners to be released up to two months early back in March under the Conservative government.

Mr Chalk, who lost his seat at the general election, told the Today podcast there had also been plans to go further and release some prisoners after 40% of their sentence – as has been announced on Friday – and to send fewer people to jail in the first place.

BBC News understands that several Conservative cabinet ministers supported the idea, but Rishi Sunak refused to sign it off and the election was called before the issue was resolved.

The Ministry of Justice's (MoJ) weekly statistics suggest there are currently 1,451 prison cell spaces left across England and Wales, and an increase of 1,161 inmates over the past 12 months.

Mark Icke, Vice-president of the Prison Governors Association (PGA), welcomed the announcement, saying the crisis is “unprecedented” and prison governors have been “warning for some time” that “we’ve got far too many prisoners in our system”.

Ex-Labour MP Harriet Harman believes that too many women are being locked up and says the criminal justice system should deal with them in a different way.

"Most women are in prison for very short sentences for non-violent crimes, [and] most themselves have been victims of violence as well," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"There is a very, very different pattern of men and women's offending", Ms Harman said, giving the example of women in for drug offences being less likely to be gang leaders than men, and instead often being victims themselves.

She added that 40% of women in UK jails are foreign nationals who should be serving sentences in their home countries.

Conservative MP Greg Smith said the Ministry of Justice should focus on building more prisons to ease the pressure on prison places.

He also argued it was "a bit rich" for Labour to claim they did not want to let prisoners out early.

He told the BBC: "I don't think Labour can pretend that this is anything other than something they would naturally do."

The chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor said "this measure will inevitably lead to the early release of some risky offenders" but a decision on how to tackle the issue "needed to be taken and none would have been without risk".

Mr Taylor added the move would add to the workload of already stretched prison OMUs [Offender Management Units] and probation services" so prison inspectors "will be watching very closely" for its impact.

However, the aunt of murdered law graduate Zara Aleena has branded the plans a “dangerous gamble with the public safety”.

Ms Aleena was murdered by Jordan McSweeney nine days after he was released from prison and while he was in the process of being recalled after his licence was revoked for failing to meet probation officers.

Her aunt Farah Naz told BBC Breakfast that underfunding in the probation service, which monitors prisoners when they are released from prison midway through their sentence on licence, means offenders like McSweeney are not being properly supervised in the community.

The Ministry of Justice is already building six new prisons to create an extra 20,000 places as demand grows for cell spaces, partially because of the Government's campaign to hire 20,000 more police officers.

About 6,000 spaces have been created and about 10,000 will be built by the end of 2025.