First 700 Inmates Walk Free as England and Wales Begin Mass Early Release Programme

Hundreds of prisoners began walking out of jails across England and Wales on Thursday as the first phase of a large-scale early release scheme got under way, a move the government says is necessary to stop the prison system from running out of space.

Around 700 inmates were expected to be freed on the opening day of a programme that will eventually see roughly 4,500 offenders released in ten separate waves, with the final group due to leave in June 2027. The plan applies to prisons in England and Wales only.

Ministry of Justice figures published earlier this week showed 87,499 people were being held in the two nations' prisons, putting the overall population at 98.2% of usable capacity. Officials have warned that the estate is only months away from filling up completely.

The scheme forms part of the Sentencing Act introduced under Sir Keir Starmer's government, which changed the proportion of a sentence that certain offenders must serve behind bars. Those who would previously have been required to serve 40% or 50% of their term now become eligible for release after a third, while prisoners who once served two-thirds will leave after half.

The initial wave of releases covers inmates serving sentences of up to 19 months. The most serious offenders covered by the scheme, those serving fixed terms of more than 12 years, are scheduled to leave in later waves.

The number of prisoners eligible under the programme was reduced from about 6,000 after Prime Minister Andy Burnham intervened to review its terms. His review removed crimes including all forms of manslaughter, grooming offences, and causing or allowing the death of a child. Indeterminate sentences, handed down for the most serious offences such as murder, are unaffected, since those cases still require a parole board to decide whether a prisoner is safe to release.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Treasury minister James Murray acknowledged the strength of public feeling. He said he understood that concern and perhaps anger would be intense, and argued there was no painless option available, describing the situation as a series of very difficult choices. Murray said the government had inherited a prison system on the brink and warned that without early releases, people arrested in future would have nowhere to be held.

He added that restrictions would continue to apply to freed prisoners once they returned to the community, including expanded use of electronic tagging, and said officials had done everything possible to limit the number of people let out. However, he conceded he could not guarantee exactly what would happen.

The approach echoes an earlier early release programme brought in by the Conservatives, which saw more than 10,000 prisoners freed between October 2023 and September 2024.

Criticism has focused on the impact on victims and on whether the Probation Service can cope with supervising thousands of additional people in the community. London Victims' Commissioner Andrea Simon said the list of exemptions had not covered some offenders whose imminent release is a genuinely terrifying prospect for their victims.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Simon said there was no real reason to believe that a shorter spell in prison would have addressed the risk those offenders pose. She also cast doubt on electronic tagging as a safeguard, noting that the technology can show where someone is but cannot stop them from doing something they should not do.

Her concerns were reinforced earlier in the week by Martin Jones, the Chief Inspector of Probation, who said the electronic monitoring regime had not kept pace with demand and could create a false sense of assurance unless its failings were addressed.

Some of those released on Thursday gave the BBC their own accounts. Former bus driver Michael Bogle described conditions inside London's Wandsworth Prison as awful and said tagging was better than prison, voicing support for the scheme. Other newly freed men raised concerns about a lack of support waiting for them on the outside, and one told the BBC he had not learned he was being released until Thursday morning.

For victims such as Kirsty Pellant, the uncertainty is its own form of punishment. A man convicted of several offences against her, including stalking, was jailed for five years in January 2025 after she discovered her photograph had been used to build a fake identity online that portrayed her as a sex worker.

Pellant told the Today programme she had been assured her perpetrator would not be freed in the first wave, but was given no date for when he would be. She said the not knowing leaves victims in a dangerous position, because they need to be prepared and to understand what they are dealing with.

Prisoners released early can be returned to custody immediately if they breach the conditions attached to their licence, a mechanism the government insists provides a swift backstop. Whether that reassurance is enough to satisfy victims, probation staff and critics of the policy will become clearer as the remaining nine waves of releases unfold over the next twenty months.