Six Hundred More Prisoners Released Early Today
About 650 offenders serving up to two and a half years leave jails in England and Wales today, freed after a third of their sentence rather than half. It follows roughly 700 released on 1 October, and the scheme escalates in stages, reaching those serving more than twelve years next June.
Those released are normally tagged electronically for the second third of their sentence, which is where this collides with a finding reported yesterday: more than 5,000 people who should have been monitored in the first four months of the year were never fitted with a tag, about 15% of all orders. The probation service that must absorb both is also in dispute. The union says the releases have placed enormous strain on members and will ballot for strike action next week, having been offered 5% against a claim of 12%; the ministry points to £700m of investment, 1,300 extra officers and new automated tools. Court reform returns to Parliament the same day, with jury trials still to be scrapped for complex fraud, 5,500 more cases kept in magistrates’ courts and magistrates’ sentencing powers doubled to two years. Two things are not yet on the record and are not assumed here: which offences are excluded from this tranche, and what victims’ organisations make of it.