Labour measures to alleviate the prison overcrowding situation may see the release of up to 40,000 convicted offenders who have served less than half of their terms in prison.
To clear up space and keep jails from running out of room within weeks, lags might be released on licence after serving 40% of their sentences.
It came after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer at the weekend said prisons are an ‘obvious example’ of a ‘broken’ system.
There are reportedly fewer than 700 prison spaces left in England and Wales, where there are currently 88,225 inmates.
A radical reformer was named by Sir Keir on Friday to oversee prisons in Wales and England.
James Timpson, the newly appointed minister for Prisons, Parole, and Probation, has a lengthy history of supporting prison system changes in the United Kingdom.
The Timpsons’ CEO and son of the British cobbler’s founder has previously advocated for shorter prison sentences and has been applauded for his schemes in rehabilitating offenders.
The recently appointed peer has also backed community sentencing, which would see more offenders spared time in jail, and argued that two-thirds of convicts did not need to be there.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said there is not going to be a ‘quick fix’ to the problem of overcrowding in prisons and that the new Labour Government has to deal with the legacy the Tories have left behind.
Speaking after meeting police officers in Lewisham, she said: ‘I’m extremely concerned with the legacy that the Conservatives have left us with our prisons. It seems to have been a complete scorched earth policy in which they have failed to build the prisons that we need.
‘They have allowed the number of remand prisoners, of people waiting for trial to increase because of the chaos and the backlog in the criminal justice system.
‘All of those things are going to need to be addressed and to be fixed, and the Prime Minister has said there isn’t going to be a quick fix, but we’re going to have to deal with the legacy that we inherit.
‘But I think it’s been totally irresponsible, the way the Conservatives have handled this for not just recent months, but in fact, for years. It’s deeply, deeply damaging what they have done, and we are going to have to look at what it is we now inherit.’
The emergency early release plan might spare jails from running out of room in a matter of weeks, according to information provided to Shabana Mahmood, the newly appointed Justice Secretary.
This would be a good plan if they had enough Probation Officers, but they don’t, and many criminals who they allow out of prison will be allowed to roam the streets. For this to work Labour need to pump money into the Probation Service, otherwise we will have streets of mayhem.
The police will be told to stop arresting people. Even the police force has been cut to the bone. Once you could go to your local police station to report a crime, now it all has to be done online, although I’m not sure why this is because people pay their taxes, isn’t that what we pay our taxes for – no of course it’s not, it’s for lining politicians pockets!
So, how do we stop overcrowding? Well, someone said, which made me chuckle, “Bring back the death sentence!” Make it less appealing for criminals to commit crimes. I hate to tell this person, we live in 2024, not 1824.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 