Fifty thousand new UK jail locations pledged as lots of of criminals are launched early

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has pledged to deliver 50,000 new prison places by shrinking the overseas aid budget to £1 billion a year in a bid to end the early release of offenders

Kemi Badenoch has pledged to deliver 50,000 new prison places by shrinking the overseas aid budget to £1 billion a year in a bid to end the early release of offenders. The Tories said their plans would see the vast majority of extra spaces created over the course of a single Parliament and the full increase would be complete within seven years.

International development spending would be slashed to £1 billion a year, down from a previous Tory pledge reduce it from 0.3% of gross national income to 0.1% to help fund the proposals, the Conservatives said.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport budget would also be cut by £1 billion and spending on Cabinet Office communications reduced by £0.5 billion under the plans. Over the 14 years the Conservatives were in power, around 500 net prison places were created, which takes into account 14,142 added in existing and new jails, as well as 13,660 lost mainly to dilapidation and closures.

In a bid to ease overcrowding, the former Tory government began releasing some offenders before the end of their sentences in 2023, which the current Labour administration has continued to do under a different scheme amid ongoing capacity pressures.

Following Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s decision to exempt prisoners guilty of manslaughter, grooming offences and causing or allowing the death of a child from the current programme, the number due to be freed early over the next year has been cut from around 6,000 to around 5,000 over the next year.

More than 70,000 prisoners have been released let out of jail since 2024 under the Labour Government’s early release scheme, and more than 10,000 were freed up to 70 days early under the last Conservative administration, according to Ministry of Justice figures.

Under the current process, offenders serving fixed-term sentences will serve a third of their time behind bars before being released, rather than half.

But Opposition leader Mrs Badenoch said the Government was still letting “dangerous offenders” out early and accused Labour of “papering over the cracks” after entering government without a plan to fix the problem.

Echoing former Conservative home secretary Michael Howard’s mantra that “prison works”, she said “the first duty of government is to keep law-abiding people safe” pledged to oversee the “biggest prison increase since Queen Victoria”.

“A violent criminal doesn’t become less dangerous just because the Government has run out of prison cells,” Mrs Badenoch said.

“Labour cancelled our plans to rent spaces abroad and now they are stuck.

“Their answer is to let dangerous offenders out even earlier instead of building the prison spaces we need.

“And before we forced them to back down and reverse their reckless policy, they had planned to grant early release to rapists and serious child sex offenders including grooming gang leaders.

“If someone keeps burgling homes, assaulting people, stealing or offending again and again, they should have to face the consequences for doing so in prison.

“It is astonishing Labour came into government with no plan to build prison places.”

Mrs Badenoch conceded that the new places added under the previous Conservative government were “nowhere near enough” but added: “We now have a plan to solve this issue and build 50,000 new prison places, the biggest prison increase since Queen Victoria, instead of papering over the cracks, investing £2 billion a year in our prisons and reversing Labour’s dangerous early-release schemes.

“The first duty of government is to keep law-abiding people safe.

“Full prisons are a reason to build more cells, not release more criminals onto our streets.”

Shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy said jail time works by “punishing and deterring, but most importantly by incapacitating” and that prison “should keep violent and repeat offenders away from the law-abiding public.”

“Right now, we do not have the prison space to incarcerate those who commit serious crime or are repeat offenders,” he said.

“Labour have presided over an early release crisis that has seen thousands of victims told that the perpetrators of the crimes against them will be let out of prison early.

“And they have effectively abolished short sentences and custodial sentences for theft. Judges are deliberately handing out soft sentences to ease pressure on our prisons.”