Andy Burnham has a problem. Desperate to ensure that his government isn’t defined by releasing killers and sex offenders early, he’s ‘paused’ the planned early releases which are due to commence in September.
There is something in the argument that many women prisoners pose a low risk to the public, and that an early release scheme based on risk rather than time served would be more sensible
But, as I wrote yesterday, he’s quickly going to be warned that there is no slack in the prison system – if the Sentencing Act early release scheme isn’t implemented then our prisons will run out of room in November. Burnham finds himself in exactly the same trap Labour encountered after the 2024 election. To allow our prisons to run out of space would create chaos, with court and police cells rapidly filling. At that point the choice would be between the police ceasing to arrest people and uncontrolled emergency releases from jails. It would be the crime equivalent of Black Wednesday, and the government would never recover from it.
So it is not plausible that the early release scheme is paused for any meaningful length of time. Even if the government were to ‘only’ prevent the release of rapists and paedophiles, they would still have to find space in our prisons for almost 2,500 extra men. The problem is that, like the rest of the British state, the Ministry of Justice is unable to build infrastructure. If we don’t have enough prison places, governments are constantly going to be faced with this problem.
