Labour unveils plan to free prisoners after just 40% of sentences: New Justice Secretary says overcrowding could cause 'breakdown of law and order' despite warnings she is 'gambling with public safety' - as minister suggests jail terms should be shorter

Labour was accused of taking a 'dangerous gamble with public safety' today as the government unveiled plans to release thousands of prisoners early.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced a series of measures designed to ease overcrowding in jails and avert a 'total breakdown of law and order'.

Offenders will be automatically freed after serving 40 per cent of their sentence, rather than the current 50 per cent. 

She stressed the rule would not apply to violent offenders serving more than four years, sex offenders or those in prison for crimes connected to domestic abuse. Dangerous offenders serving extended or life sentences would also be exempted from the scheme. 

But Keir Starmer's new justice minister Lord Timpson fuelled fury at the 'anti-prison' approach as he suggested that courts should be handing out shorter sentences in the first place.

The peer, a long-time campaigner for reform who has argued that two-thirds of inmates should not be in prison at all, said the authorities should be 'less focused on the length of a sentence' and more focused on rehabilitation.  

The aunt of Zara Aleena, who was murdered by a man who had been out on licence for nine days, raised concerns that convicts will not be 'supervised adequately'.

In a speech at HMP Five Wells, in Northamptonshire, she said prisons were 'on the point of collapse', with barely 700 places left in the adult male estate and jails operating at 99 per cent capacity since the start of 2023.

If prisons ran out of cell space, she warned, the country faced the prospect of 'van-loads of dangerous people circling the country with nowhere to go', police officers unable to arrest criminals and 'looters running amok'.

She said: 'In short, if we fail to act now, we face the collapse of the criminal justice system and a total breakdown of law and order.'

The change is expected to come into force in September, with the Justice Secretary also announcing the recruitment of 1,000 additional trainee probation officers by March and an end to the previous government's early release scheme, which saw 10,000 prisoners released up to 70 days early.

Ms Mahmood said there was now 'only one way to avert disaster', adding that the measures would 'give us the time we need to address the prisons crisis'.

Referring to a report from Bishop James Jones titled Making Sense of Sentencing, Lord Timpson told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme: 'The question is, do longer sentences fulfil the five purposes of sentencing, which are to punish, to protect, to reduce crime, to reform and rehabilitate?

'And the public rightly is outraged when there's a serious crime. They're entitled to be morally outraged, but we have to go beyond punishing and protecting society and think about 'how do we reform and rehabilitate those offenders?' Because unless we do, then we will not have a safer society.

'Everybody wants a safe society. You can only get that safety through reducing reoffending. And what our report in essence was proposing is that we should be less focused on the length of a sentence and concentrating more on the content of the sentence.'

By content of the sentence, he said he meant programmes in prison that would rehabilitate inmates, for example training, education or therapy to overcome addiction.

He added: 'The question over our prisons is this: are they simply to be warehouses for the incorrigible or become green houses for the redeemable?'

The PM teed up the move as he gave a press conference at the NATO summit overnight, insisting there were 'far too many prisoners for the prison places that we've got'. 

Pointing the finger at the previous government, he said: 'We knew there was going to be a problem, but the scale of the problem was worse than we thought.' 

However, Conservatives accused the Government of deploying scare tactics. A senior Tory source said: 'This is shameless scaremongering from the Labour Party that risks causing mass panic.

'Labour have come into government with hundreds of prison places available – but they've lost their nerve, and are now stoking public panic for political gain.' 

Ms Aleena's aunt Farah Naz told BBC Breakfast: 'If the system cannot deal with those people being released into the community, then those people are not going to be supervised adequately.

'And when people, perpetrators, even thieves are not supervised adequately, crime can escalate. It doesn't always escalate, but it can.

'Then we've got unsupervised people because of a poor probation service in the community and people become emboldened – 'well I can do what I like if nobody is supervising me' – and that's what happened in our situation.

'It was a man that was emboldened because he was not supervised, he was not assessed, he was constantly allowed to do what he wanted to do, and therein lies a dangerous gamble with public safety with this move right now.'

In the case of Ms Aleena's killer Jordan McSweeney, Ms Naz said the probation service was 'not fit to deliver supervision' or 'act in a timely way' when he broke his licence conditions.

Overall, 20,000 inmates could be released early in the next few months.

Answering questions at the NATO summit, Sir Keir said: 'The crux of the problem we face at the moment, and it is a terrible problem, is that we've got far too many prisoners for the prison places that we've got and we soon will have.

'That is gross irresponsibility of the outgoing government. It is a basic function of government that you should have enough places for your prisoners that judges are sending to prison.

'And for that to have failed I think tells you something material about the last government – that we have to pick this up and we have to fix it.

'I can't build a prison in the first seven days of a Labour government.'

Sir Keir added: 'We knew there was going to be a problem, but the scale of the problem was worse than we thought.

'And the nature of the problem is pretty unforgivable in my book, having worked in criminal justice, to have allowed your criminal justice system to get to a state where you simply haven't got the prison places for prisoners.

'This is a predictable problem – it's shocking. And I think that when further details are released of this, you'll have plenty of extra questions for those that came before us.'

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said plans to release some prisoners early were 'the least worst option'.

He told ITV's Good Morning Britain: 'The Government have got a situation where there's no easy solution.

'Prisons are very, very close to full and filling up day in day out. The worst possible thing would be for the system to block, because the system blocks in prisons if they get completely full. That kicks back into the courts and into what we do. And that's really dangerous for the public.

'So the Government are forced into making a rapid decision to avoid that risk. So it's going to be the least worst option they're going to have to find, so I understand what they're trying to do, however not ideal it is.'

It is understood that senior figures in the criminal justice system fear it could trigger looting, opportunistic crimes and brazen breaches of bail conditions by offenders living in the community.

Former Conservative justice secretary Alex Chalk – who lost his seat last week – said Labour's reported plan 'will buy you 18 months, but it won't buy you any more'.

Asked if former PM Rishi Sunak had blocked similar measures, Mr Chalk refused to disclose private discussions but added: 'It is reasonable to say there were a variety of views about what could be got through Parliament.'

Tory MP Neil O'Brien said: 'The idea that we would be safer if lots of criminals are let out of jail is absolute nonsense. 

'We already know the new prisons minister James Timpson thinks that only one third of prisoners should even be there. 

'Both he and the Prime Minister are fundamentally anti-prison.'