The plans, drawn up under Sir Kier Starmer’s premiership and two years in the making, would have seen an estimated 6,000 prisoners released early in monthly tranches, starting in September. The releases were approved by Parliament as part of the Sentencing Act 2026, in a bid to stop prisons from overflowing.
Prison staff had been busy calculating new release dates, with individual prisoners due to be told their dates in August ahead of the start of the releases on 2 September.
But Mr Burnham stated on 23 July, two days after he took over from Sir Kier in Number 10: “I am working closely with the new Justice Secretary and have instructed my team to put a pause on the changes that were due to start in September.
“No prisoners will be let out under this policy until we have conducted an urgent review and done everything we can to minimise risk to the public. Where changes are needed, we will not hesitate to make them.”
Tania Bassett, national officer for the National Association of Probation Officers, told The Guardian that Mr Burnham’s announcement had “created a sense of chaos in HM Prison and Probation Service”.
She said: “This is really worrying for our members who are currently working hard on pre-release work for those due to come out in September. It was already an incredibly short timeframe to meet the implementation date. This review could potentially reduce the timeframes even further, putting more pressure on our already overworked members. We urge the prime minister for clarity as soon as possible.”
One unnamed prison officer told the BBC: “We’re super overcrowded – this isn’t great news. If we don’t let people out in September we could be at a critical point come November where we’re at full capacity. It’s a bonkers decision.”
The Sentencing Act 2026 enacted reforms recommended by former
Conservative justice secretary David Gauke in his Independent Sentencing Review, commissioned by Sir Kier’s government in 2024. Motivated by a need to tackle the capacity crisis in jails, they would have changed the system so that most prisoners in England and Wales would serve 33 per cent of their sentence in custody, instead of 40 per cent at present.
The early releases would not have benefited some 18,000 people serving life, IPP (Imprisonment for Public Protection) or EDS (Extended Determinate Sentences). But unlike previous waves of emergency early releases, those who stood to benefit included people convicted of sexual offences and serious violent offences including manslaughter.
From a longer article in https://insidetime.org/newsround/andy-burnham-halts-thousands-of-early-prison-releases/