What Britain's Prisoner-Release Backlash Gets Right and Wrong
The UK will release around 5,000 prisoners from October to free up overcrowded prisons. New Prime Minister Andy Burnham is being sharply criticized. Some of it is justified, much of it is not.
In the week of October 11, Thomas Waring will walk out of a British prison roughly a year ahead of schedule. Waring was jailed for nine years in 2023 for his part in one of Britain’s most notorious gangland killings: he hid the Skorpion sub-machine gun that Connor Chapman used to murder 26-year-old Elle Edwards outside a Merseyside pub on Christmas Eve 2022, then burned out the getaway car. Chapman is serving life. The Skorpion has never been found.
“That gun is still out there,” Elle’s father, Tim Edwards, wrote to Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, this week. Burnham’s reply: “I don’t want to release any of these people. But we have been forced to do so.”
Here are the details:
Under the Sentencing Act 2026, which received royal assent in January, prisoners serving standard fixed-term sentences — the burglars, drug dealers and fraudsters who make up the bulk of the prison population — will be released after one-third of their sentence, down from the 40 to 50 percent required today.
The also includes violent offenders sentenced to under four years, and those who committed actual bodily harm or unintentional wounding at any sentence length, because they don’t carry a maximum of life. A three-and-a-half-year sentence for assault now means about 14 months inside.
The most serious offenders on fixed sentences — four years or more for crimes carrying a life maximum, such as manslaughter and wounding with intent — currently serve two-thirds of their sentence before automatic release. The Act cuts that to half: a 13-year manslaughter sentence now means six and a half years inside.
Rape and serious child sex offences were due to make the same two-thirds-to-half jump, until Burnham barred them on August 4.
Selection is automatic, by sentence type. There is no case-by-case risk review. Release is delayed only if a prisoner is formally disciplined inside.
The first 700 or so walk on October 7, an estimate made before the new exclusions, with around 5,000 expected in tranches ordered by sentence length, ending in June 2027.
The reason is mathematical. The adult male prison estate has run at 98 to 99.7 percent occupancy since October 2022, with nearly a quarter of prisoners doubled up in cells built for one.
A Conservative building program promised 20,000 new places but delivered 6,518 by late 2024, five years late and £4.2 billion over budget. In December 2024, the Ministry of Justice calculated it would run out of cells by early 2026.
This is the third release scheme in three years. The Conservatives freed 13,325 prisoners early in 2023–24, initially up to 18 days before their release date, rising to 70 days by May 2024.
Labour’s SDS40 scheme cut release to 40 percent of sentence from September 2024 and freed 38,042 prisoners in its first ten months — roughly triple the Conservative pace — and releases have continued since. The Sentencing Act makes the emergency permanent.
Burnham rightly explains he has little choice. Two previous release schemes saw the Conservatives release 13,325 prisoners up to 70 days early in 2023–24, and Labour’s SDS40 scheme, which cut releases to 40 percent of sentence from September 2024, accounts for most of the 70,000-plus early releases since. The Sentencing Act makes the emergency permanent.
Burnham, prime minister since July 20 without a general election, paused the scheme within days of taking office as anger built over the eligibility of two of the men convicted over the killing of police constable Andrew Harper. The August 4 relaunch excluded sex offenders but not manslaughter — so the Harper killers stayed eligible. And reporters soon found that grooming-gang members convicted prior to a 2003 law change outside the new exclusions too, because their crimes were prosecuted as indecent assault under the old statute.
Why the fury, if the Conservatives did it first?
Every government since 2023 has released prisoners early. The difference now is scale, permanence and visibility.
The Conservative scheme shaved up to 70 days off sentences and was run quietly enough that Labour, then in opposition, accused ministers of a “cover-up” over unassessed risk. The Sentencing Act instead rewrites the release point itself, permanently, and cuts far deeper, slashing sentences to eligible prisoners to a third, while extending for the first time to serious violent offenders on long determinate sentences.
It is also the first scheme the public could see coming. More than 7,000 victims received letters telling them their attacker was eligible. Many learned of it that way for the first time.
Rotherham grooming survivor Sammy Woodhouse discovered her rapist was being considered for early release. Fellow survivor Sarah Wilson told the press that, “If this new law goes through, I’ll have fought longer for justice than they’ll have served in prison.” Bradford survivor Fiona Goddard told the Yorkshire Post the letters had left her unable to sleep or leave the house.
And the politics have changed. Burnham is the seventh prime minister in ten years, installed unopposed after Labour’s local-election collapse, facing a Reform party whose “lawless Britain” platform promises to end early release altogether.
Nigel Farage’s attack must have been easy to write: “Andy Burnham said it would be awful if PC Harper’s killers were released early. But he’s now letting it happen.”
