Prisoner freed early declares ‘huge up Keir Starmer’ as jail disaster plans broaden

Thousands of criminals will serve a year of their sentence under house arrest to free up more space in jails, the Justice Secretary has announced.

Shabana Mahmood has set out fresh measures to deal with prison overcrowding as offenders were seen celebrating their early release from jail. Around 1,100 prisoners were released early on Tuesday – the second tranche after around 1,700 were let out early last month. One inmate said “big up Keir Starmer” as he celebrated with friends and family who picked him up in a convoy of a white Bentley and black Mercedes G-wagon outside of HMP Swaleside in Kent.

Ms Mahmood admitted more needs to be done to deal with prison overcrowding as the early release scheme “only buys us some time”. She said prisons could run out of space again by next summer because of the spike in people being jailed during the riots in July and August.

The Cabinet minister announced plans for thousands of criminals to spend up to a year under house arrest – an extension of the current six-month period. Home Detention Curfews allow certain prisoners to be released earlier than their release date under strict licence conditions, including keeping to curfews or wearing tags to monitor their location or measure alcohol levels through their sweat.

The reoffending rate for released prisoners is 50%. It is half that for those released under the HDC scheme. Some 7,920 offenders were released on HDC in 2023 and 8,695 in 2022, according to official stats. Drugs and alcohol use rates are also rife in prisons but the compliance rate for sobriety tags is as high as 97%.

Addressing the Commons on Tuesday Ms Mahmood told MPs the Government “must be smarter about who receives a prison sentence”. “Now let me be clear, there will always be a place for prison, and there will always be offenders who must be locked up,” she said. “But we must also expand the range of punishments that we use outside of prison and consider how we punish those offenders who have broken our rules but are not a danger to society.”

She added: “Those under home detention curfews are in practice under a form of house arrest, with a tag on their ankle, and a censor in their home, they are placed under curfews, generally for 12 hours each day. And should they break that curfew they can be picked up and if needs be, locked up. In some ways, punishment outside a prison can be even more restrictive than prison.”

Among other measures to create more jail space, Ms Mahmood said she will accelerate plans to deport 10,000 foreign criminals and look at speeding up the process of releasing inmates who have been recalled to prison after previously being freed.

She also announced a Sentencing Review that will explore tougher punishments outside prison while making sure there is space to incarcerate the most dangerous offenders in the long term. Its findings will be submitted by spring of next year with any results expected to take effect by March 2026 at the earliest. The cost of punishment outside prison is estimated at around £5,000 annually per person compared with more than £50,000 to imprison someone for a year.

Speaking ahead of thousands of prisoners being released early on Tuesday, a senior Prison Service source reminded the public that prisoners are freed from jail under regular releases everyday. She said: “In terms of prisoners being happy to see their friends and family when they’re released – there is a limit to what we can realistically do about that.”

The Prime Minister “shares the public’s anger” at scenes of criminals celebrating their early release from prisons. Inmate Daniel Dowling-Brooks said “big up Keir Starmer” after he was released. The 29-year-old told reporters he had been in prison for seven years for kidnap and grievous bodily harm of someone who owed money to his friend, and was leaving jail seven weeks earlier than planned.

The PM’s official spokesman said: “The Prime Minister shares the public’s anger at these scenes and thinks it is shocking that any government should ever inherit the crisis that this government has when it comes to our prisons.

“But just to be clear, there was no choice not to act. If we had not acted, we would have faced a complete paralysis of the system. Courts unable to send offenders to prison, police unable to make arrests and unchecked criminality on our streets, so the Government clearly could not allow this to happen.”