Image source, PA Media

We're about to close this live page but before we go here's a quick summary of what's happened today:

• "Low thousands" of prisoners will be released in September due to overcrowding, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said
• Speaking from HMP Five Wells in Northamptonshire, she said prisons would have run out of space within weeks without immediate action
• It has been announced that prisoners on “standard determinate sentences” will be released after serving 40% of their sentences, rather than half
• However, there will be exemptions for sexual and serious violent offenders, she says
• The last government "left this country on the brink of disaster", Mahmood said in a scathing, adding she has "no choice" but to release some prisoners early
• Plans will be reviewed in 18 months and a "10 year strategy on prison supply" will be announced in due course, Mahmood has said
• The prison population last week was 87,505, close to 2011’s record high of 88,000

This page was written by Jamie Whitehead, Jack Burgess, Ben Hatton, Seher Asaf and Sophie Abdulla. It was edited by Emily McGarvey, Johanna Chisholm and Emily Atkinson.

Thanks for joining us.

Sophie Abdulla
BBC News

As we've been reporting, thousands of prisoners on standard determinate sentences will serve 40% of their sentence in jail, instead of 50% under new measures announced by the justice secretary.

The chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust welcomes the move, saying the incoming government has had "the good sense to listen to the advice of its officials and introduce further emergency measures to prevent dangerous levels of overcrowding and the criminal justice system literally grinding to a halt”.

Pia Sinha says it's now “vital” that the probation service is supported “to prevent the prison crisis becoming a probation crisis”.

Why not build more prisons?published at 17:31 12 July

17:31 12 July

By Ben Chu and Lucy Gilder

In its 2021 Spending Review, external, the then Conservative government said it would build an extra 20,000 prison places in England and Wales "by the mid-2020s".

But only about 6,000 have been built.

The chief civil servant in the Ministry of Justice wrote in July last year, external that only £1.1bn of the £4bn committed to this prison building programme had been spent.

One of the obstacles has been the planning system and local objections to new prisons, including from some Conservative MPs, external.

The Labour government says it wants to continue building the remaining prison places but has not said when they will be completed.

The Ministry of Justice estimates, external that the average direct cost of funding each prison place in England and Wales in 2022-23 was £51,108.

Image source, OPCC

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood outlined her plan for prisons to crime chiefs National Criminal Justice Board meeting yesterday.

Among those attending was Donna Jones, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

She told the BBC Radio 4 World at One programme: "If I was Shabana Mahmoud, I would have taken exactly the same decision yesterday".

She also said the government “clearly they need to review the prison build[ing] programme”.

We can bring you some comment now from James Jones, the former bishop of Liverpool who chaired a report called Making Sense of Sentencing.

He spoke to BBC Radio 4's World at One ahead of the announcement of the government's early release scheme.

Within the justice system, officials should be "less focussed on the length of a sentence and concentrating more on the content of the sentence", he said.

Jones added there needed to be more investment in training, education and restorative justice so prisoners come out "with less intention to reoffend".

The question is whether longer sentences “fulfil the five purposes of sentencing which are to punish, to protect, to reduce crime, to reform and rehabilitate”, he adds.

“The public, rightly, is outraged when there’s a serious crime.

“But we have to go beyond punishing and protecting society and think about, how do we reform and rehabilitate those offenders."

How many prisoners could be released early?published at 17:10 12 July

17:10 12 July

By Tamara Kovacevic

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) told us it can't give exact figures for how many prisoners could be released early from September, when the government’s scheme to allow some inmates out of jail after serving 40% of their sentence comes into force.

It says currently around 40,000 prisoners are released every year in England and Wales when they have served 50% of their sentence.

Over the next 18 months, the MoJ estimates that up to 4,000 additional male prisoners and fewer than 1,000 female prisoners will be released under the new measures. But this is only if the number of people convicted, and the type of sentences they receive, stay similar to the recent averages.

In her speech earlier this afternoon, the new Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the number of prisoners being released early - in September - would be “in the low thousands”.

The decision for domestic abusers and stalkers to be exempt from the scheme to release prisoners early is a "welcome and necessary step", says Baroness Newlove, the victims' commissioner for England and Wales,

Newlove says this reflects "the concerns raised by victims and those who advocate for them" but adds it highlights these exclusions have "limitations and cannot address every potential risk".

She says public safety must remain the top priority as these changes are implemented and "clear communication with victims is essential to building trust throughout the process".

Transparency and rigorous oversight are "crucial to ensure this new regime effectively prioritises victim safety while putting our justice system on a more sustainable footing", she adds.

Image source, Reuters

Former Conservative home secretary Suella Braverman has been reacting on social media, external to Labour's plan to reduce prison time for some offenders, saying: "I opposed this, both inside and outside government."

"With 40 MPs, I tabled amendments to the Sentencing Bill to stop the early release of criminals and put public safety first," she says.

The bill, which would have required whole-life sentences for the worst murders, fell in May when former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called a general election.

Braverman says "we managed to stop the government doing it" and adds "Labour is picking up Tory ideas and putting the public at risk".

Earlier, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said plans to reduce the length of some prison sentences, would include "important safeguards and exemptions to keep the public safe".

Harry Farley
Political correspondent

The language the new justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, used was pretty stark.

She talked about “vanloads of dangerous people circling the country, with nowhere to go,” if prisons were full and warned: “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.”

The reason Mahmood was painting such a bleak picture is she knows that allowing some prisoners out early – as she announced today – will not be popular with many people.

She wants to stress that, in her words, she has been with “left with no choice at all”.

The speech was framed around blaming the previous Conservative government for the crisis. Given Labour have only been in power a week, that is perhaps not unreasonable.

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

Her repeated description of Rishi Sunak’s government as “the guilty men” showed a politician still in campaign mode. The election may be over. But Labour know that before the next one they will have to take difficult decisions.

And they want to argue it’s not them, but the Conservatives, at fault.

If you're just joining us, or are in need of a quick recap, here are the key lines from Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood's speech from HMP Five Wells in Northamptonshire:

• Thousands of prisoners will be released early to prevent a "collapse" of the prison system due to overcrowding, the justice secretary has said

• Mahmood estimates that by September, when the plans come into force, the number of prisoners released will be in the "low thousands"
• Prisons would have run out of space within weeks without immediate action to address overcrowding, Mahmood says
• It has been announced that prisoners on “standard determinate sentences” will be released after serving 40% of their sentences, rather than half
• There will be exemptions, she notes, for sexual and serious violent offenders
• Mahmood accused the last Conservative government of having "left this country on the brink of disaster" in a scathing criticism of former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's administration
• Because of this, the justice secretary says, she has been left with "no choice" but to release some prisoners early
• Plans will be reviewed in 18 months and a "10 year strategy on prison supply" will be announced in due course

Stick with us for the latest reaction to and analysis on today's announcement.

Before wrapping up the Q and A portion of her speech, the justice secretary takes a question about the data supporting the government's plan.

Mahmood says that in the early part of September she expects the number of prisoners released early to be in the low thousands.

After that, there will be a quarterly release of the data, she says, adding there will be more detail when they lay the statutory instrument before Parliament.

In Labour's manifesto, Mahmood says, her party made a commitment on a sentencing review. Without saying much more, she highlights that more details of this commitment will be set out later in the year.

She also gives a message to victims of crime: "We have designed this in a way to keep the public safe," she says.

The next question from a reporter centralises around issue of probation staff pressures. Mahmood says she recognises the difficulties this group people are facing and notes that it is is a huge ask.

"If we don't do this we face the collapse of law and order in our country," she says, adding there are "no good choices" in the current situation.

They need to strengthen the probation service, she says, adding that the government will say more in the weeks and months to come.

It's a clear and big part of how they want to do things differently, she says

Image source, UK POOL

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is next asked how long it's going to take to fix the crisis in prisons.

She says the government intends to publish "a 10 year strategy on prison supply", which she adds will be announced in due course.

The justice secretary continues by saying rehabilitation "has to be part of the picture as well".

She calls this "common sense".

Onto questions from the media, Mahmood is first asked how the government's plan differs from Rishi Sunak's plans - which were teased back in March.

The justice secretary says this new scheme is "very different" to the previous government's early release scheme which "created a lot of chaos and confusion".

She says frontline prison staff faced a more difficult job under the Tory scheme and this policy being introduced today is "one sentence calculation".

"We'll have to move at pace to begin with, which is unavoidable given the scale of the crisis", she says, adding that frontline staff and the public will be better off as a result of these new plans.

In addition to today's early release plans for some prisoners, the justice secretary also announces a review "into how this crisis was allowed to happen".

It will look at "how and why necessary decisions were not taken" and the lessons that must be learned.

She says the measures she has set out are "not a silver bullet" and will take time to take effect.

When they do, they will "give us the time we need" to address the "prisons crisis" for years to come, she says.

On building more prisons, she says they will publish a 10-year strategy, and place planning decisions in ministers hands to speed up the process.

"Our prisons today create better criminals, not better citizens," she says.

Shabana Mahmood continues by saying she does not think the plan for some prisoners to be released after serving 40% of their sentences should stand forever.

The justice secretary then commits to reviewing plans in 18 months.

Mahmood blames the previous government again and says "it must be impossible for this to ever happen again".

Mahmood continues by explaining that her government's decision to release thousands of inmates early to make space in prisons "is the only safe course of action".

She says she understands some will feel worried by this move, but insists they are "taking every precaution that is available to us".

There will be exclusions, including for sexual and serious violent offences where sentences will remain at 50% or 67% "for the most dangerous crimes", as well as others for domestic violence.

"This is an emergency measure," she says. You can see more on those details here.

Image source, UK POOL

We've just been getting some new lines from Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood's speech.

She begins by saying how the last government "left this country on the brink of disaster" with prisons "on the point of collapse".

Mahmood continues by saying "what is worse" is that "the previous government knew this would happen".

She says former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his "gang" at No 10 "put their political careers ahead of the safety and security of our country".

"It was the most disgraceful dereliction of duty I have ever known," she says, and adds "the last government left us with a timebomb".

We're now hearing from Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who's speaking to the press about the government's plans to tackle prison overcrowding.

Stay with us as we bring you all the key lines.