The impossible dilemma of early release - The Story

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[00:02]
A
From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manveen Rana. It was 11.17pm on 15 August 2019 and a man in Berkshire was calling 999
[00:25]
B
such emergency. I've got four masked men outside my house and they've got weapons. They came around earlier and now they're in my hat. They're at my property.
[00:34]
A
It seemed a burglary was underway.
[00:37]
B
Oh, and they're stealing my spotlight. I'm going out there now. No, no, don't go out there. I'm going out there now. Please send someone on their way. No, no, don't go out there. Have you sent someone or not? Officers are on their way, but you can't go out there.
[00:54]
A
Two police officers responded, 28 year old PC Andrew Harper and his colleague. Police dash cam footage shows the officers coming across the thieves as they were towing a stolen quad bike behind their car. PC Harper jumps out to arrest the teenagers. But then in the dark, the suspects drive off and he seems to disappear.
[01:21]
C
My colleague, PC Harper got out the vehicle. Run after the vehicle.
[01:26]
D
I've now lost him.
[01:39]
A
PC Harper had got caught in the tow rope used to attach the stolen quad bike to the car. He'd been dragged more than a mile shortly before midnight. He died at the scene. His three teenaged killers were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to between 13 and 16 years. But now two of them are up for early release after serving just half of their sentences because of new plans to ease pressure on the UK's overcrowded prisons. And it's caused an outcry. Bitterly disappointed. Andrew deserves better than this and so do we.
[02:25]
D
I was appalled. I think the Government's position is, is one that they need to review.
[02:30]
C
Do everything you can to keep these guys, these scumbags, inside. I won't give up. I and I believe there is more I can do. It's my job to speak up for the public on this issue.
[02:49]
A
Can the Prime Minister intervene in this case? Should the Government move ahead with releasing thousands of criminals this autumn? And with our prisons at breaking point, is there any other option? The story today, the impossible dilemma of early release.
[03:18]
C
I'm Oliver Wright, Policy Editor at the Times.
[03:21]
A
Ollie, it's been four weeks since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister and he's already facing quite the crisis. Just describe what the problem is.
[03:33]
C
Britain's prisons are massively overcrowded and this has been a problem for years. The prison population has risen by 94% since 1990 and currently stands at about 85,000 people in prison and it's only expected to grow. And the problem is we simply don't have enough prisoners, prison places to meet the number of people that are expected to be jailed over the coming months.
[04:04]
A
So if this is an ongoing issue and has been for successive governments now, why are we suddenly talking about it this week?
[04:12]
C
We're talking about it this week because of Andy Burnham. When he came into office a little over three weeks ago, one of the first things he announced was that he was going to do a review on of the previous government's plans to release prisoners early. Now, that was due to take place in September. So it was a kind of pressing issue on Burnham's desk when he arrived in Downing street. And as a result, it has become a huge political issue.
[04:36]
A
Just talk us through the plan that existed before Andy Burnham came in. What was the policy he inherited?
[04:43]
C
So the policy that he inherited was one which was put in place by his predecessor, Zakir Starmer, and that was they needed to release more prisoners at an earlier point in their sentence to relieve the immediate prison overcrowding problem. Now, the previous Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, had an early release scheme for prisoners convicted of lesser offences. Now, those prisoners would normally have been released at the point at which they had served half their sentence. And under Mahmood's plan, they would be released at the 1/3 point in their sentence. Now, what David Lammy did, who succeeded Shabana Mahmood, was he extended that prisoner release scheme to take in far more serious offences, like child sex, offences like rape, like manslaughter. Now, these prisoners would normally be released at the two thirds point, when they'd serve two thirds of their sentence. And under the plans that Lammy put forward, and indeed, there was legislation that the government passed in Parliament to this effect, the those prisoners would have been released at the halfway point in their sentence, rather than at the two thirds point in their sentence.
[05:52]
A
And that caused a bit of an outcry. People were shocked that people that these quite dangerous prisoners would be let out so much earlier. Andy Burnham comes in saying he wants to change that policy. What are the options that he's presented with? What could he have done?
[06:08]
C
It's a numbers game and he was given various different options. One of those options was to look at the length of sentence people had been given. So, for example, anyone who had been sentenced by a judge to more than 10 years in prison would not be eligible for early release. But anyone who was sentenced to less than 10 years would have been eligible for this early release scheme. Now, the political problem from that, as far as Burnham was concerned, was less than 10 years, still included a whole series of pretty nasty and emotive cases of, you know, child sex offences, of grooming, et cetera. And, you know, he could see that coming from space in terms of a political problem that was going to cause him difficulties down the track.
[06:50]
B
Track.
[06:51]
C
And then this other option that he was given was to exclude specific categories of offences. Now, if only it were that simple. And I'm not even sure that Downing street were really aware of just how complex it was when Burnham took this decision. So he decided, well, yeah, I'm going to go down the category route. I'm going to exclude anyone that's been convicted of rape, of grooming offences, of child sex offences. They will not be eligible for early release. Now, here's the rub. A lot of those offences were brought in in an act of parliament in 2003 called the sexual Offences act, and those defined those various different offences and they broke them up into categories. But a lot of the historic sexual abuse cases, grooming cases, possibly took place before 2003. So they went. They were sentenced under previous legislation. And largely at that point, the offence that everyone got done for, regardless of what it was, was indecent assault. So what it meant, in effect, was if you committed your offence pre 2003, you weren't caught by these new restrictions and so you would still be released.
[08:09]
A
There's been a similar problem with one of their other policies and that was around manslaughter. So just explain what's happened there.
[08:17]
C
In Burnham's original announcement, he basically confirmed that cases of manslaughter would not be exempt under the early Release scheme, I. E. If you're convicted of manslaughter, you will be released at the halfway point in your sentence rather than the 2/3 point in your sentence. Now, the difficulty is this, is that there is one extraordinarily emotive case, that of PC Harper, who was killed in 2019. And as a result of the changes, his killers will be due under the early Release scheme to be set freed next year. And obviously there was huge public concern about that. A lot has been written about that and Burnham has come under tremendous pressure to rethink the whole early release scheme as a result of PC Harper. Now, the difficulty with that is he can't simply make an exception for PC Harper's killers. There is a division between politics and the law. And, you know, if he decided to say, well, all other manslaughter cases other than PC Harper's killers can be set free, but they're going to remain in jail. Lawyers would go to court and say that this is fundamentally unjust and they would be correct that politicians are not responsible for sentencing individual criminals. That is a matter for the courts. But the problem is, if you exclude all manslaughter cases, then you get back to your problem with prison overcrowding, that there are around, I think, sort of 550 people who fall into that category and they can't afford not to release those prisoners early if they're going to avoid a prison crisis.
[09:57]
A
It's hard to see how you make an exception around that. And yet Andy Burnham and number 10 have been promising that they are about to. They've even told PC Harper's family that they think they found a way around. What is the way around?
[10:12]
C
You can speculate. So here's one thought. PC Harper's killers are not due out until next spring. So actually, the government have a little bit of time. So if, for example, you release all the manslaughter cases that are eligible to be released in October, so all those people that have served more than half their sentence in October, you'll get rid of some of Those sort of 500 odd, so you'll have less. And then maybe at the same time, you look at things that Burnham has talked about, about whether you can reduce the size of the women's prison estate so you create a bit more space there, you look at some of these indeterminate sentences, which are another issue of crime altogether, and see whether you can free some of those prisoners before the point at which you actually have to release PC Harper's killers. And then you can say, actually, from this point onwards, we're going to end the early release scheme for those people convicted of manslaughter under which PC Harper's killers would fall. But, you know, there's quite a lot of ifs in that sentence and, yeah, I don't think the government can be sure on it. And I think, you know, the fact that Downing street have said, you know, they want to do something but can't tell anyone exactly what it is they're going to do is a problem. And, you know, if you talk to people like the victims Commissioner, she is utterly exasperated by the government and really quite angry. She says, you know, this doesn't just affect the family of PC Harper, it affects all the other victims of people who've been in for manslaughter. They have no idea what's going to happen.
[11:50]
A
And, Ollie, if, as you say you end up with a change that leads to these early releases this autumn and then a change back before the spring in order to stop the people who are in prison for manslaughter being released. Does it make sense in the law? Can you keep changing the goalposts in that way and still a system that works?
[12:11]
C
I think you probably, from a legal perspective, yes, you can change the goalposts in that because it is a category of offence. Parliament is sovereign and it can change legislation for a category of offence. What it cannot do is change it for an individual. I think that's the important distinction you have to make.
[12:38]
A
Coming up, how did we get here? Why are Britain's prisons so overcrowded? And what can be done to solve the problem? That's in just a moment.
[13:10]
D
I was a civil servant for seven years and I worked in government communications. I just noticed over the years how much policy making, criminal justice policy particularly, was often dictated by media coverage of crime and criminal justice issues, and also by politicians attempts to manage that kind of media coverage or expectations of media coverage.
[13:37]
A
Andrew Nielsen is director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, the world's oldest charity that campaigns for prison reform. This summer has been the perfect media storm around the issue of prison overcrowding and early prisoner releases. For those of us who haven't followed this over years in the way that you have, just explain how we've got here. Why are Britain's prisons so overcrowded?
[14:10]
D
The key driver is something called sentence inflation. So over many decades, successive governments have inflated the length of sentences, often in response to media campaigns around sentencing of particular crimes, but also because of a sort of political arms race that developed in the mid-1990s, when Michael Howard, the then Conservative Home Secretary, declared that prison works. And then New Labour under Tony Blair decided to, in a way, run with that rather than challenge it. And so what we saw was, as I say, a sort of arms race between the parties as to who could be seen to be toughest on crime. The problem with sentence inflation is that it has developed in a way where people are definitely spending longer in custody than they did before. But sentences have now run away from the government's ability to actually provide the prison cells for the sentences. Now, that has been the case, actually, for some time, but it really came to a head, I think, in 2024, where the then Conservative government faced running out of cells. There was various emergency release schemes being tried. Keir Starmer then came into office, inheriting a situation where really, literally from week to week it was unclear by the Friday of that week whether the government would have enough cells to put everybody that the courts were sending to the prison system in.
[15:41]
A
Wow. And as you say, a lot of this has come down to sentences being extended, becoming longer and longer. Are there particular crimes that that applies to or has that happened across the board? And is it just that sentences are getting longer, so people are in prison for longer and need their cells for longer, or is it that more people are being locked up too?
[16:02]
D
It's actually been across the piece in sentencing. Most sentences have got longer over time. There is no doubt that some changes in the, in the early noughties to the law around murder, which set a mandatory minimum sentence for murder, that has had a drag effect on different other offences. So everything has kind of moved towards the more punitive because of that.
[16:25]
A
In terms of the prisons themselves, you know, we know that they're overcrowded. Has there been a lot of investment into the prison estate? I mean, what condition are they in?
[16:35]
D
So they're not in a great condition, but it's not for want of money being put into prisons. Indeed, the government has earmarked 7 billion to build new prisons and yet it is still facing a situation where it runs out of cells. I mean, arguably some of that £7 billion could be better spent on the existing prisons, which are in a pre dilapidated state, but also potentially in the probation service in the community, which of course is being asked to manage people when they are released from prison, as well as those who are on community sentences. I think it's really important to stress that there are really two crises that the government is wrestling with. One is the capacity crisis. So that's the situation where the government faces running out of prison cells. But then the second crisis is the overcrowding crisis. Actually, none of the measures are coming in in the autumn. None of those measures actually address the overcrowding crisis. The overcrowding crisis is that prisons are holding more people than they're designed to hold. The System has almost 5,000 more people in it than it should be holding now. That isn't going to change because of the measures that are coming in. The measures are meant to buy the government a bit of time on the capacity issue to avoid running out of cells. But prisons themselves will remain overcrowded and remain holding more people than they're designed to hold them. What that means is that overcrowded prisons tend to be more violent, they tend to have problems with drugs and crucially, they are not really offering much in the way way of Rehabilitation to people.
[18:17]
A
Well, Andrew, you look at this all the time. If you were advising the government right now, if Andy Burnham called up, what would your advice be? I mean, what are the long term solutions that, you know, get you not just to this autumn, but beyond?
[18:32]
D
I think Andy Burnham is correct to identify that there are potentially other cohorts of people in the prison system that more could be done around in terms of seeing whether they need to be in prison in the first place. So he has spoken, for example, about people on the indeterminate sentence for public protection. So this was a sentence that was introduced by New labor when they were in power. And the idea was that you'd be given a tariff, so four years, say, and if the court considered you dangerous or a risk of being dangerous, then you could get this indeterminate sentence. You could be kept in prison for longer than that four years until you had proven that you were no longer dangerous. Now, that was a sentence that was abolished over a decade ago. And yet there are still thousands of people languishing on that sentence, despite the fact that they're well over the tariff that they were originally given by the court. So we think that there's something that could be done there. And he's right to identify that group. He's also talked about whether it's possible to reduce the number of women in custody. Women in prison don't tend to be imprisoned for serious or violent crimes. So there is some scope there potentially. I think also I would point to two other specific cohorts. One is the recall population. So there are a lot of people in the prison system who have been recalled to prison. So they've been released and then they've done something wrong and they've been recalled. Now the issue there is that quite a lot of those people haven't actually been recalled for committing a further crime. They've been recalled for administrative reasons, often for, for example, for missing a probation appointment or something like that. I don't myself believe that everybody who's been recalled to custody for those kind of administrative reasons should really be there. And then there's also the remand population, which is at its highest level in the last 50 years. These are people who are awaiting trial or sentencing if they have been convicted. And certainly for that first group, the group that are awaiting trial, surely more of those people could be on bail in the community than is currently the case. And that could also produce some reduction in immediate pressure. Now, I know that you were asking what's the kind of longer term solutions? Well, that's where it gets harder, because to tackle sentence inflation really does mean redrawing sentencing to make it more proportionate. And that would be very controversial because, to be honest, the area where the most inflationary pressure on the population is is on people who have committed sometimes quite serious crimes, and that's why they've got longer sentences. But I do wonder whether thinking about how we redesign the prison and probation system to be more responsive to communities and to be closer to communities might be, in the long term, a way of recasting things in a more sustainable light.
[21:29]
A
Ollie, in the long run, prisons overcrowding has been a problem for years. There is talk of new prisons being built, but they take quite a while to come. Why has it been so difficult to do something about it? Why has nothing changed?
[21:46]
C
It's an interesting point here. One of the things that politicians like to do is promise more police officers. If you promise more police officers, people think, oh, yeah, they're cracking down on crime, they're doing a good job. There are statistics that show that, unsurprisingly, perhaps if you have more police officers, you have more arrests, you have more people being charged, you have more people in prison. But there isn't the same attraction to a government going into an election saying, we're going to build loads more prison places. People don't really care, they just want them locked up, but they don't actually want to spend the money on it. So what successive governments have done is they have focused on the sort of criminal aspect of the criminal justice sector, but they haven't put money into the courts, they haven't put money into prisons, and that is what has led to the current crisis. And it's not the fault of Andy Burnham and it's not even the fault of. Of Sir Keir Starmer. It's the fault of successive governments and successive Justice Secretaries and successive chancellors, more to the point, that have not put this money into the alternatives.
[22:46]
A
Ollie, this is a problem that Andy Burnham has inherited, and yet it's. It's a policy. He's really made his own. How do you think he'll be judged on it? Is this the first real chink in. In the Armour after the Burnham bounce?
[22:59]
C
It's a good question. We did some polling at the back end of last week on this to sort of see who the public felt was responsible. And what YouGov found was that the vast majority of people were utterly opposed to this policy of letting serious criminals out early. But at the same time, Burnham was not getting the blame. For it. About 7% of people blamed Andy Burnham for it, about 30% of people blamed Satya Starmer for it, and a similar number blamed the previous Tory government, with the rest saying they didn't know. So up until this point, Burnham has really escaped political criticism for it. I think the danger from Downing street is that if you put it unkindly, the flip flopping makes it more likely that this will tarnish him, that he'll be more associated with it in the eyes of the public who are only paying a little bit of attention to it rather than sort of having taken a decision, blamed it on his predecessors and moved on.
[24:09]
A
That was Oliver Wright, policy editor at the Times, and before him you heard Andrew Nielsen, director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform. The producers today were Michaela Arneson and Olivia Case. The executive producer was Taryn Seagull. Sound design was by Dave Creasy and theme composition was by Malicetto. If you can do leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

Summary6 min read

Podcast Summary: The Story – "The Impossible Dilemma of Early Release"
August 12, 2026 | Hosted by Manveen Rana | Guests: Oliver Wright (Policy Editor, The Times), Andrew Nielsen (Howard League for Penal Reform)

Episode Overview

This episode explores the deepening crisis of prison overcrowding in the UK and the highly controversial government plans for early prisoner release—including the outcry sparked by the potential early release of PC Andrew Harper’s killers. Through expert guests and grounded reporting, the hosts dissect legal, political, and moral complexities driving the “impossible dilemma” faced by policymakers.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Case of PC Andrew Harper and the Early Release Plan

Harper’s Death:
PC Andrew Harper, 28, was killed in 2019 after being dragged by fleeing thieves during a late-night burglary response. The teenage perpetrators were convicted of manslaughter and received sentences of 13–16 years.
(00:54–01:38)
Public Outcry over Early Release:
Two of Harper’s killers are now eligible for early release after serving only half their sentences, due to new governmental plans aiming to reduce overcrowding. This has provoked public anger and put immense pressure on politicians to respond.
- Quote (Unnamed official): "Bitterly disappointed. Andrew deserves better than this, and so do we." (02:25)
- Quote (Colleague): "Do everything you can to keep these guys, these scumbags, inside. I won't give up... it's my job to speak up for the public on this issue." (02:30)

How Did We Get Here?

Longstanding Overcrowding:
Oliver Wright (Policy Editor, The Times) explains the UK prison population has increased by 94% since 1990 to roughly 85,000 inmates, far outpacing the availability of prison places. (03:33–04:04)
- Quote (Oliver Wright): “Britain’s prisons are massively overcrowded… The problem is we simply don’t have enough prison places to meet the number of people that are expected to be jailed.” (03:36)
Successive Policies:
Early release schemes were first introduced under various governments as stop-gap measures, evolving over time to include more serious offenses due to the swelling prison population.
David Lammy, as Justice Secretary, expanded early release eligibility to serious crimes such as rape and manslaughter (normally released after two-thirds, now at halfway).
Andy Burnham, newly elected PM, inherited and attempted to revise these policies amid political and social pressure. (04:43–06:50)

Complexities and Legal Traps of Early Release Exemptions

Category vs. Individual Exemptions:
Attempts to exempt certain crimes (e.g., sexual offenses, manslaughter) from early release are complicated by changing laws, with historic offenses (pre-2003) classified differently, undermining clear-cut exclusions. (06:50–08:09)
- Insight: Pre-2003 sexual offenses are often categorized as "indecent assault," bypassing new release restrictions tied to modern legislation.
PC Harper’s Case as Flashpoint:
Legal constraints prevent politicians from creating exemptions for individual cases without undermining the rule of law.
- Quote (Oliver Wright): “If he decided to say, well, all other manslaughter cases… can be set free, but they’re going to remain in jail… that is fundamentally unjust… politicians are not responsible for sentencing individual criminals.” (09:13)
- Potential government strategy: release all eligible manslaughter cases this autumn, then end the scheme before Harper’s killers are due for release. This is legally complex and leaves other victims’ families in limbo. (10:12–11:49)
Law and Politics Clash:
Law allows Parliament to change rules for offense categories, not individuals; shifting policies risk eroding legal stability and public trust. (12:10–12:38)

Root Causes: Why Are UK Prisons So Full?

Sentence Inflation:
Andrew Nielsen (Howard League for Penal Reform) identifies "sentence inflation"—a decades-long trend where politicians, pressured by media and public sentiment, keep lengthening prison sentences.
- Quote (Andrew Nielsen): “Successive governments have inflated the length of sentences, often in response to media campaigns… sentences have now run away from the government’s ability to actually provide the prison cells.” (14:10)
- Sentence extensions, especially for murder, have had a “drag effect” on sentences for other crimes, making prison time longer across the board. (16:02)
Infrastructure and Resource Gaps:
£7bn was allocated for new prisons, but capacity remains insufficient. The system holds nearly 5,000 more inmates than it was designed for, resulting in persistent violence, lack of rehabilitation, and staffing crises. (16:34–18:17)

Short- and Long-Term Solutions

Reform Proposals:
- Reviewing Indeterminate Sentences: Thousands remain in prison under abolished “indeterminate sentences for public protection,” many having served longer than their original tariffs. (18:32–19:30)
- Reducing Women’s Prisoners: Potentially lower-risk group where alternatives to incarceration are viable.
- Recall and Remand Populations: Many inmates are held for administrative breaches (e.g., missed probation) or await trial—groups that might safely be managed in the community. (18:32–20:13)
- Quote (Andrew Nielsen): “I don't myself believe that everybody who's been recalled to custody for those kind of administrative reasons should really be there.” (19:38)
Big Picture: In the longer term, reforming the system will require comprehensive sentencing review and a stronger probation/service investment. This is politically challenging, as the public tends to favor punitive approaches. (20:13–21:29)

The Politics of Prison Policy

Why Has Nothing Changed?
Policymakers focus on “law and order” optics (hiring police) but ignore building or improving prisons. No government wants to campaign on prison expansion due to public disinterest in funding institutions for offenders.
- Quote (Oliver Wright): “They have focused on the criminal aspect… but they haven't put money into the courts… or prisons, and that is what has led to the current crisis.” (21:45)
Political Fallout:
Despite public opposition to early release for serious offenders, polling shows current PM Andy Burnham isn’t being blamed. Most blame falls on predecessors or “the system.” The risk: ongoing policy U-turns may eventually erode his credibility.
- Quote (Oliver Wright): “The flip flopping makes it more likely that this will tarnish him… rather than having taken a decision, blamed it on his predecessors and moved on.” (22:59)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“Andrew deserves better than this and so do we.” — Member of the public/family, expressing the anguish over PC Harper's case. (02:25)
“Britain’s prisons are massively overcrowded… The problem is we simply don’t have enough prison places…” — Oliver Wright (03:36)
“Successive governments have inflated the length of sentences… sentences have now run away from the government’s ability to actually provide the prison cells.” — Andrew Nielsen (14:10)
“They just want them locked up, but they don't actually want to spend the money on it.”— Oliver Wright, on public and political attitudes to prison funding. (21:45)

Timestamps for Key Segments

PC Harper’s murder and sentencing: 00:54–01:38
Early release plan controversy explained: 03:18–06:50
Legal nuances in exemption categories: 06:50–09:56
Government’s struggle for a “workaround” solution: 09:56–12:38
Media and politics in sentencing policy: 13:09–14:10
Root causes: sentence inflation and systemic overreach: 14:10–16:02
Prison conditions and resource constraints: 16:34–18:17
Expert reform proposals: 18:32–21:29
Political challenges and polling insights: 21:45–24:09

Summary

This episode conveys the excruciating pressures facing government, victims' families, and society as Britain’s jails overflow. The debate over releasing serious offenders early—brought to an emotional head by the case of PC Harper—illustrates how decades of policy, media, and public emotion have created a system where every choice appears fraught and imperfect. Though short-term workarounds may delay crisis, only deeper sentencing reform and investment in alternatives can resolve the “impossible dilemma.”

Loading summary

Transcript43 lines

[00:02]
A
From the Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. I'm Manveen Rana. It was 11.17pm on 15 August 2019 and a man in Berkshire was calling 999
[00:25]
B
such emergency. I've got four masked men outside my house and they've got weapons. They came around earlier and now they're in my hat. They're at my property.
[00:34]
A
It seemed a burglary was underway.
[00:37]
B
Oh, and they're stealing my spotlight. I'm going out there now. No, no, don't go out there. I'm going out there now. Please send someone on their way. No, no, don't go out there. Have you sent someone or not? Officers are on their way, but you can't go out there.
[00:54]
A
Two police officers responded, 28 year old PC Andrew Harper and his colleague. Police dash cam footage shows the officers coming across the thieves as they were towing a stolen quad bike behind their car. PC Harper jumps out to arrest the teenagers. But then in the dark, the suspects drive off and he seems to disappear.
[01:21]
C
My colleague, PC Harper got out the vehicle. Run after the vehicle.
[01:26]
D
I've now lost him.
[01:39]
A
PC Harper had got caught in the tow rope used to attach the stolen quad bike to the car. He'd been dragged more than a mile shortly before midnight. He died at the scene. His three teenaged killers were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to between 13 and 16 years. But now two of them are up for early release after serving just half of their sentences because of new plans to ease pressure on the UK's overcrowded prisons. And it's caused an outcry. Bitterly disappointed. Andrew deserves better than this and so do we.
[02:25]
D
I was appalled. I think the Government's position is, is one that they need to review.
[02:30]
C
Do everything you can to keep these guys, these scumbags, inside. I won't give up. I and I believe there is more I can do. It's my job to speak up for the public on this issue.
[02:49]
A
Can the Prime Minister intervene in this case? Should the Government move ahead with releasing thousands of criminals this autumn? And with our prisons at breaking point, is there any other option? The story today, the impossible dilemma of early release.
[03:18]
C
I'm Oliver Wright, Policy Editor at the Times.
[03:21]
A
Ollie, it's been four weeks since Andy Burnham became Prime Minister and he's already facing quite the crisis. Just describe what the problem is.
[03:33]
C
Britain's prisons are massively overcrowded and this has been a problem for years. The prison population has risen by 94% since 1990 and currently stands at about 85,000 people in prison and it's only expected to grow. And the problem is we simply don't have enough prisoners, prison places to meet the number of people that are expected to be jailed over the coming months.
[04:04]
A
So if this is an ongoing issue and has been for successive governments now, why are we suddenly talking about it this week?
[04:12]
C
We're talking about it this week because of Andy Burnham. When he came into office a little over three weeks ago, one of the first things he announced was that he was going to do a review on of the previous government's plans to release prisoners early. Now, that was due to take place in September. So it was a kind of pressing issue on Burnham's desk when he arrived in Downing street. And as a result, it has become a huge political issue.
[04:36]
A
Just talk us through the plan that existed before Andy Burnham came in. What was the policy he inherited?
[04:43]
C
So the policy that he inherited was one which was put in place by his predecessor, Zakir Starmer, and that was they needed to release more prisoners at an earlier point in their sentence to relieve the immediate prison overcrowding problem. Now, the previous Justice Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, had an early release scheme for prisoners convicted of lesser offences. Now, those prisoners would normally have been released at the point at which they had served half their sentence. And under Mahmood's plan, they would be released at the 1/3 point in their sentence. Now, what David Lammy did, who succeeded Shabana Mahmood, was he extended that prisoner release scheme to take in far more serious offences, like child sex, offences like rape, like manslaughter. Now, these prisoners would normally be released at the two thirds point, when they'd serve two thirds of their sentence. And under the plans that Lammy put forward, and indeed, there was legislation that the government passed in Parliament to this effect, the those prisoners would have been released at the halfway point in their sentence, rather than at the two thirds point in their sentence.
[05:52]
A
And that caused a bit of an outcry. People were shocked that people that these quite dangerous prisoners would be let out so much earlier. Andy Burnham comes in saying he wants to change that policy. What are the options that he's presented with? What could he have done?
[06:08]
C
It's a numbers game and he was given various different options. One of those options was to look at the length of sentence people had been given. So, for example, anyone who had been sentenced by a judge to more than 10 years in prison would not be eligible for early release. But anyone who was sentenced to less than 10 years would have been eligible for this early release scheme. Now, the political problem from that, as far as Burnham was concerned, was less than 10 years, still included a whole series of pretty nasty and emotive cases of, you know, child sex offences, of grooming, et cetera. And, you know, he could see that coming from space in terms of a political problem that was going to cause him difficulties down the track.
[06:50]
B
Track.
[06:51]
C
And then this other option that he was given was to exclude specific categories of offences. Now, if only it were that simple. And I'm not even sure that Downing street were really aware of just how complex it was when Burnham took this decision. So he decided, well, yeah, I'm going to go down the category route. I'm going to exclude anyone that's been convicted of rape, of grooming offences, of child sex offences. They will not be eligible for early release. Now, here's the rub. A lot of those offences were brought in in an act of parliament in 2003 called the sexual Offences act, and those defined those various different offences and they broke them up into categories. But a lot of the historic sexual abuse cases, grooming cases, possibly took place before 2003. So they went. They were sentenced under previous legislation. And largely at that point, the offence that everyone got done for, regardless of what it was, was indecent assault. So what it meant, in effect, was if you committed your offence pre 2003, you weren't caught by these new restrictions and so you would still be released.
[08:09]
A
There's been a similar problem with one of their other policies and that was around manslaughter. So just explain what's happened there.
[08:17]
C
In Burnham's original announcement, he basically confirmed that cases of manslaughter would not be exempt under the early Release scheme, I. E. If you're convicted of manslaughter, you will be released at the halfway point in your sentence rather than the 2/3 point in your sentence. Now, the difficulty is this, is that there is one extraordinarily emotive case, that of PC Harper, who was killed in 2019. And as a result of the changes, his killers will be due under the early Release scheme to be set freed next year. And obviously there was huge public concern about that. A lot has been written about that and Burnham has come under tremendous pressure to rethink the whole early release scheme as a result of PC Harper. Now, the difficulty with that is he can't simply make an exception for PC Harper's killers. There is a division between politics and the law. And, you know, if he decided to say, well, all other manslaughter cases other than PC Harper's killers can be set free, but they're going to remain in jail. Lawyers would go to court and say that this is fundamentally unjust and they would be correct that politicians are not responsible for sentencing individual criminals. That is a matter for the courts. But the problem is, if you exclude all manslaughter cases, then you get back to your problem with prison overcrowding, that there are around, I think, sort of 550 people who fall into that category and they can't afford not to release those prisoners early if they're going to avoid a prison crisis.
[09:57]
A
It's hard to see how you make an exception around that. And yet Andy Burnham and number 10 have been promising that they are about to. They've even told PC Harper's family that they think they found a way around. What is the way around?
[10:12]
C
You can speculate. So here's one thought. PC Harper's killers are not due out until next spring. So actually, the government have a little bit of time. So if, for example, you release all the manslaughter cases that are eligible to be released in October, so all those people that have served more than half their sentence in October, you'll get rid of some of Those sort of 500 odd, so you'll have less. And then maybe at the same time, you look at things that Burnham has talked about, about whether you can reduce the size of the women's prison estate so you create a bit more space there, you look at some of these indeterminate sentences, which are another issue of crime altogether, and see whether you can free some of those prisoners before the point at which you actually have to release PC Harper's killers. And then you can say, actually, from this point onwards, we're going to end the early release scheme for those people convicted of manslaughter under which PC Harper's killers would fall. But, you know, there's quite a lot of ifs in that sentence and, yeah, I don't think the government can be sure on it. And I think, you know, the fact that Downing street have said, you know, they want to do something but can't tell anyone exactly what it is they're going to do is a problem. And, you know, if you talk to people like the victims Commissioner, she is utterly exasperated by the government and really quite angry. She says, you know, this doesn't just affect the family of PC Harper, it affects all the other victims of people who've been in for manslaughter. They have no idea what's going to happen.
[11:50]
A
And, Ollie, if, as you say you end up with a change that leads to these early releases this autumn and then a change back before the spring in order to stop the people who are in prison for manslaughter being released. Does it make sense in the law? Can you keep changing the goalposts in that way and still a system that works?
[12:11]
C
I think you probably, from a legal perspective, yes, you can change the goalposts in that because it is a category of offence. Parliament is sovereign and it can change legislation for a category of offence. What it cannot do is change it for an individual. I think that's the important distinction you have to make.
[12:38]
A
Coming up, how did we get here? Why are Britain's prisons so overcrowded? And what can be done to solve the problem? That's in just a moment.
[13:10]
D
I was a civil servant for seven years and I worked in government communications. I just noticed over the years how much policy making, criminal justice policy particularly, was often dictated by media coverage of crime and criminal justice issues, and also by politicians attempts to manage that kind of media coverage or expectations of media coverage.
[13:37]
A
Andrew Nielsen is director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, the world's oldest charity that campaigns for prison reform. This summer has been the perfect media storm around the issue of prison overcrowding and early prisoner releases. For those of us who haven't followed this over years in the way that you have, just explain how we've got here. Why are Britain's prisons so overcrowded?
[14:10]
D
The key driver is something called sentence inflation. So over many decades, successive governments have inflated the length of sentences, often in response to media campaigns around sentencing of particular crimes, but also because of a sort of political arms race that developed in the mid-1990s, when Michael Howard, the then Conservative Home Secretary, declared that prison works. And then New Labour under Tony Blair decided to, in a way, run with that rather than challenge it. And so what we saw was, as I say, a sort of arms race between the parties as to who could be seen to be toughest on crime. The problem with sentence inflation is that it has developed in a way where people are definitely spending longer in custody than they did before. But sentences have now run away from the government's ability to actually provide the prison cells for the sentences. Now, that has been the case, actually, for some time, but it really came to a head, I think, in 2024, where the then Conservative government faced running out of cells. There was various emergency release schemes being tried. Keir Starmer then came into office, inheriting a situation where really, literally from week to week it was unclear by the Friday of that week whether the government would have enough cells to put everybody that the courts were sending to the prison system in.
[15:41]
A
Wow. And as you say, a lot of this has come down to sentences being extended, becoming longer and longer. Are there particular crimes that that applies to or has that happened across the board? And is it just that sentences are getting longer, so people are in prison for longer and need their cells for longer, or is it that more people are being locked up too?
[16:02]
D
It's actually been across the piece in sentencing. Most sentences have got longer over time. There is no doubt that some changes in the, in the early noughties to the law around murder, which set a mandatory minimum sentence for murder, that has had a drag effect on different other offences. So everything has kind of moved towards the more punitive because of that.
[16:25]
A
In terms of the prisons themselves, you know, we know that they're overcrowded. Has there been a lot of investment into the prison estate? I mean, what condition are they in?
[16:35]
D
So they're not in a great condition, but it's not for want of money being put into prisons. Indeed, the government has earmarked 7 billion to build new prisons and yet it is still facing a situation where it runs out of cells. I mean, arguably some of that £7 billion could be better spent on the existing prisons, which are in a pre dilapidated state, but also potentially in the probation service in the community, which of course is being asked to manage people when they are released from prison, as well as those who are on community sentences. I think it's really important to stress that there are really two crises that the government is wrestling with. One is the capacity crisis. So that's the situation where the government faces running out of prison cells. But then the second crisis is the overcrowding crisis. Actually, none of the measures are coming in in the autumn. None of those measures actually address the overcrowding crisis. The overcrowding crisis is that prisons are holding more people than they're designed to hold. The System has almost 5,000 more people in it than it should be holding now. That isn't going to change because of the measures that are coming in. The measures are meant to buy the government a bit of time on the capacity issue to avoid running out of cells. But prisons themselves will remain overcrowded and remain holding more people than they're designed to hold them. What that means is that overcrowded prisons tend to be more violent, they tend to have problems with drugs and crucially, they are not really offering much in the way way of Rehabilitation to people.
[18:17]
A
Well, Andrew, you look at this all the time. If you were advising the government right now, if Andy Burnham called up, what would your advice be? I mean, what are the long term solutions that, you know, get you not just to this autumn, but beyond?
[18:32]
D
I think Andy Burnham is correct to identify that there are potentially other cohorts of people in the prison system that more could be done around in terms of seeing whether they need to be in prison in the first place. So he has spoken, for example, about people on the indeterminate sentence for public protection. So this was a sentence that was introduced by New labor when they were in power. And the idea was that you'd be given a tariff, so four years, say, and if the court considered you dangerous or a risk of being dangerous, then you could get this indeterminate sentence. You could be kept in prison for longer than that four years until you had proven that you were no longer dangerous. Now, that was a sentence that was abolished over a decade ago. And yet there are still thousands of people languishing on that sentence, despite the fact that they're well over the tariff that they were originally given by the court. So we think that there's something that could be done there. And he's right to identify that group. He's also talked about whether it's possible to reduce the number of women in custody. Women in prison don't tend to be imprisoned for serious or violent crimes. So there is some scope there potentially. I think also I would point to two other specific cohorts. One is the recall population. So there are a lot of people in the prison system who have been recalled to prison. So they've been released and then they've done something wrong and they've been recalled. Now the issue there is that quite a lot of those people haven't actually been recalled for committing a further crime. They've been recalled for administrative reasons, often for, for example, for missing a probation appointment or something like that. I don't myself believe that everybody who's been recalled to custody for those kind of administrative reasons should really be there. And then there's also the remand population, which is at its highest level in the last 50 years. These are people who are awaiting trial or sentencing if they have been convicted. And certainly for that first group, the group that are awaiting trial, surely more of those people could be on bail in the community than is currently the case. And that could also produce some reduction in immediate pressure. Now, I know that you were asking what's the kind of longer term solutions? Well, that's where it gets harder, because to tackle sentence inflation really does mean redrawing sentencing to make it more proportionate. And that would be very controversial because, to be honest, the area where the most inflationary pressure on the population is is on people who have committed sometimes quite serious crimes, and that's why they've got longer sentences. But I do wonder whether thinking about how we redesign the prison and probation system to be more responsive to communities and to be closer to communities might be, in the long term, a way of recasting things in a more sustainable light.
[21:29]
A
Ollie, in the long run, prisons overcrowding has been a problem for years. There is talk of new prisons being built, but they take quite a while to come. Why has it been so difficult to do something about it? Why has nothing changed?
[21:46]
C
It's an interesting point here. One of the things that politicians like to do is promise more police officers. If you promise more police officers, people think, oh, yeah, they're cracking down on crime, they're doing a good job. There are statistics that show that, unsurprisingly, perhaps if you have more police officers, you have more arrests, you have more people being charged, you have more people in prison. But there isn't the same attraction to a government going into an election saying, we're going to build loads more prison places. People don't really care, they just want them locked up, but they don't actually want to spend the money on it. So what successive governments have done is they have focused on the sort of criminal aspect of the criminal justice sector, but they haven't put money into the courts, they haven't put money into prisons, and that is what has led to the current crisis. And it's not the fault of Andy Burnham and it's not even the fault of. Of Sir Keir Starmer. It's the fault of successive governments and successive Justice Secretaries and successive chancellors, more to the point, that have not put this money into the alternatives.
[22:46]
A
Ollie, this is a problem that Andy Burnham has inherited, and yet it's. It's a policy. He's really made his own. How do you think he'll be judged on it? Is this the first real chink in. In the Armour after the Burnham bounce?
[22:59]
C
It's a good question. We did some polling at the back end of last week on this to sort of see who the public felt was responsible. And what YouGov found was that the vast majority of people were utterly opposed to this policy of letting serious criminals out early. But at the same time, Burnham was not getting the blame. For it. About 7% of people blamed Andy Burnham for it, about 30% of people blamed Satya Starmer for it, and a similar number blamed the previous Tory government, with the rest saying they didn't know. So up until this point, Burnham has really escaped political criticism for it. I think the danger from Downing street is that if you put it unkindly, the flip flopping makes it more likely that this will tarnish him, that he'll be more associated with it in the eyes of the public who are only paying a little bit of attention to it rather than sort of having taken a decision, blamed it on his predecessors and moved on.
[24:09]
A
That was Oliver Wright, policy editor at the Times, and before him you heard Andrew Nielsen, director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform. The producers today were Michaela Arneson and Olivia Case. The executive producer was Taryn Seagull. Sound design was by Dave Creasy and theme composition was by Malicetto. If you can do leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.