Keir Starmer’s government has acted to temporarily reduce the number of prisoners currently serving sentences in prison. The new measures would see certain sentences release point being reduced from the current 50% to 40%. This will come into force from September this year the government released.
Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood delivered a press conference describing the destructive state of prisons. ‘When prisons are full, violence rises – putting prison officers on the front line at risk. When no cells are available, suspects cannot be hold in custody. This means vanloads of dangerous people circling the country, with nowhere to go,’ Mahmood said.
‘The police would have to use their cells as a prison overflow, keeping officers off the streets. Soon, the courts would grind to a halt, unable to hold trials. In short, if we fail to act now, we face the collapse of the criminal justice system,’ she said.
In a prior article by The Justice Gap, concerns had been raised as the previous government had released people serving time for domestic abuse. The government states that prisoners serving serious violent offences of four years or more, sex offenders and domestic abusers will be excluded from this plan; domestic abuse crimes including stalking, controlling or coercive behaviour, non-fatal strangulation and suffocation, or breaches of protective orders.
Despite the plan addressing one of the public’s major issues, Martin Jones the chief inspector of probations doubts whether there is ‘enough time’ for probation officers to effectively deal with offenders once they leave prison and ensure public safety.
The Labour government released in addition to the prisoner release plan that it aims to recruit 1,000 probation officers by March 2025 ‘allowing for greater oversight and management of offenders once they leave prisons.’
The Guardian reports that Shabana Mahmood told the press conference that ‘if we fail to act now, we face the collapse of the criminal justice system, and a total breakdown of law and order.’
