More than HALF of prisoners freed early this yr already again in jail

More than half of the prisoners freed in the first three months of this year are already back behind bars, it has been revealed.

Martin Jones, His Majesty’s Chief of Probation, warned that Labour‘s plans to curb prison overcrowding would be undermined by a high level of recalls.

He told how for every 100 inmates released in the first quarter of 2024, 56 had been brought back to prison for reoffending or breaching their licence.

He was speaking as more than 1,200 inmates who had been sentenced to more than five years in prison were due to be freed early across England and Wales today.

That follows the early release of another 1,750 last month under a new government scheme under which prisoners serve 40 rather than 50 per cent of their sentences.

The SDS40 was meant to free up to 5,500 prison places but fears of further overcrowding have been fuelled by the large numbers of people jailed following this summer’s widespread riots across the country.

And the number of recalls will cause further problems, Mr Jones has now forecast – amid concerns jails could run out of spaces again next July.

He said: ‘My assessment is that there is a significant risk that the amount of space that has been created by the SDS40 changes will be reduced as a result of the high level of recalls that we have been seeing historically over a number of years.

‘I see no indication that there will be fewer recalls as a result of this. There will be some benefit but it will be quickly chipped at and is the reason why a hard look at recalls is necessary in the long term.’

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has ordered a sentencing review, led by her Conservative predecessor David Gauke.

She hopes this will guarantee there would be sufficient space to imprison the most dangerous criminals and expand punishments outside jails.

The minister insisted rates of recall in the cohort of early releases were ‘broadly in line’ with usual prison releases, in response to Mr Jones’s comments.

Ms Mahmood told LBC: ‘We’ll do a statistics release in due course, as we normally would, on rates of recall and on reoffending in our prison estate.

‘What I can tell you is our early assessment is that the rates of recall and potential reoffending in the cohort that has been released as a result of the emergency release measures is broadly in line with what we would expect.’

She said there was ‘no doubt’ that recalls put pressure on the prison system but said they are an ‘important mechanism’, adding: Because at the end of the day, when somebody is still serving a sentence but they’re not in prison, they’re out in the community, they are subject to strict licence conditions.

‘You break those conditions, you do go back to prison.’

Dozens of prisoners were incorrectly freed under Sir Keir Starmer’s early release scheme after a system error, the Ministry of Justice last month admitted.

Those mistakenly freed included stalkers and domestic abusers but Ms Mahmood today said the issues had now been ‘ironed out’.

She told Times Radio that those wrongly freed were sentenced according to an older act of Parliament and the error was down to a ‘mistake in the application of the law’.

She said: ‘All 37 were returned to custody, and that operational part of the system actually ended up working exactly as it should.

‘But those mistakes have now been ironed out, and I’m confident that the releases taking place will now be exactly as we need them to be, and victims who are required to be notified will be notified.’

She said it had been a ‘curveball’ that the Government could not have foreseen.

Ms Mahmood added: ‘That issue has been sorted and it has been resolved, and for the releases that are taking place today, that is not a mistake that will occur again.’

But she admitted that emergency measures such as releasing prisoners early needed more done to help prison overcrowding, telling BBC Breakfast: ‘Even pulling these emergency release levers, it only buys us some time.

‘It’s not going to make the problem, the underlying problem, go away, and that is because the demand for prison places is going up by around 4,500 every single year.’

She said that the Government was committed to building to create 14,000 extra prison places that the last Conservative Government ‘failed to deliver’.

She went on: ‘But it’s not going to be enough, because this is not a crisis that you can build your way out of, because the demand is going up simply, very, very quickly, and that’s why I’ve announced a sentencing review today.

‘It’s why we need to think more long term about how we bring that down, because we cannot build our way out of this crisis.’

Labour will open the door to wider use of community punishments for criminals – including house arrest – as part of the new reviews.

Ms Mahmood has said extending technology such as electronic tags would see the creation of a ‘prison outside prison’ for non-dangerous offenders.

She today said the review of prison sentencing aims to expand the range of punishments outside prison, but would not confirm the overall goal is to reduce levels of incarceration in the UK.

Ms Mahmood told BBC Radio 4’s Today: ‘We have to expand the use of punishment outside prison, and I’m very clear that that has to maintain the confidence of the public.

‘People still have to know that you are being punished for breaking the laws of our land, even if you’re not serving time in custody.

‘There are real consequences that you really feel the loss of your liberty still.”

Technology including tags is already used to supervise and monitor offenders serving sentences outside prison and the review will look at whether that can be taken further with emerging technologies other countries are using, she said.

But, asked if she was taking a new approach and wanted fewer people incarcerated in Britain, she said that the rate of increase was such that ‘nobody can keep up with demand’.