About 700 prisoners serving sentences of up to 19 months are being released across England and Wales under a new early release scheme, with the first departures beginning at 8.30am.
The releases mark the start of a programme expected to free more than 4,500 offenders by June, including some domestic abusers, fraudsters and people convicted of certain violent or sexual offences.
Prisoners were seen leaving jails including Brixton, Durham, Leeds and Berwyn. Some smiled and raised their fists, while inmates at Brixton reportedly shouted and laughed inside the prison.
One man leaving HMP Brixton, who said he had been jailed for “stealing a load of cigarettes”, said he was being released almost a year before his expected release date in August 2027. Asked what he wanted to say to the Prime Minister, he replied: “Thank you.”
At HMP Berwyn in Wrexham, drug offender Wesley Austin, 33, said he planned to celebrate his first night of freedom by “getting a German donor kebab”. A young man leaving HMP Leeds was carrying a bag of trainers.
Early release scheme criticised over victim safety
The scheme has prompted warnings from victims’ groups and opposition politicians, who have questioned whether sufficient safeguards are in place to protect the public and those targeted by offenders.
Dame Nicole Jacobs, the domestic abuse commissioner, said survivors were “uprooting their lives” because they did not trust the arrangements for managing perpetrators in the community.
“As the first perpetrators start to be released, survivors across the country will be looking over their shoulder and living in fear because the government and our criminal justice system has failed to protect them,” she said.
Dame Nicole said she had no assurance that the risks posed by offenders had been properly assessed with meaningful input from victims and specialist services. She added that some survivors felt they had been treated “as an afterthought throughout this process”.
She called on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to take urgent steps to improve victim safety, warning that many domestic abuse perpetrators remained eligible for early release.
Under the changes, most prisoners who would previously have served 40 or 50 per cent of their sentence will be released after serving one-third. Some offenders convicted of violent or sexual offences, who had previously been eligible for release after two-thirds of their sentence, will instead be released after half.
Ministers have said prisoners will undergo risk assessments before release and that there will be a presumption that they are electronically tagged. However, concerns have been raised about the operation of the tagging system.
The National Audit Office found that thousands of offenders ordered to take part in electronic monitoring were not fitted with tags, while a report published earlier this week found that almost half of tags used to track offenders’ movements were not fitted on time.
Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, said the public would “pay the price” for the releases.
“Today’s releases are an insult to victims, a danger to the public, and will only encourage more lawbreaking from criminals who know they have a ticket out of prison,” he said.
The Government has altered the scheme following criticism. Offenders convicted of rape, serious child sexual offences and grooming were excluded, while those convicted of unlawful killing, including manslaughter, were also removed from its scope after it emerged that two of the killers of PC Andrew Harper could have been eligible.
The changes follow an earlier early release programme, introduced two years ago, under which 70,066 prisoners were freed between September 2024 and the end of March.
Domestic abuse survivor fears former husband’s release
Claire Milne, who was abused for eight years by Robert Dales, said she feared for her safety when he was released on licence. Dales, 36, was sentenced in March to three years in prison for controlling and coercive behaviour.
Ms Milne fled her home with her nine-week-old baby in April 2025. “I am scared that he will come after me – I don’t want to die,” she said.
“I am not a silly woman. I know that I’ve been in a very high-risk domestic abuse relationship and I know what he’s capable of because I lived it.”
Justice Secretary Alex Norris said the Government understood victims’ anxiety, but claimed the greatest danger would be prisons running out of cells for dangerous offenders.
“Our plan will make sure this never happens again by building 14,000 prison places while subjecting offenders to the toughest ever controls – leaving them nowhere to hide and under no doubt that we are watching them,” he said.
