Can Starmer's plan solve the prisons crisis?

Labour has announced plans to release some prisoners early in an attempt to tackle the overcrowding crisis it has inherited.

Keir Starmer will authorise emergency measures to lower the automatic release point from 50% of a sentence to 40%, according to Sky News. This would result in thousands of inmates in England and Wales being let out early on supervised probation. 

The politically tricky proposal, which excludes sexual and serious violent offenders, is seen as a last resort to relieve the "ballooning prison population". Prison space will reportedly run out in less than three weeks, with just 700 cells left for male offenders. 

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In May the Conservatives extended a similar emergency early-release scheme to alleviate overcrowding in prisons, an issue that the shadow justice secretary at the time, Shabana Mahmood, described as a "national scandal". Today, as Britain's justice secretary, former barrister Mahmood outlined Labour's emergency plans to relieve the crisis.

What did the commentators say?

Starmer's approach is definitely controversial, said Stephen Bush in the Financial Times's "Inside Politics" newsletter. The PM has previously said that the prison system is "broken": that the UK builds too few facilities and jails too many people. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper also admitted there is not going to be a "quick fix" to the overcrowding crisis. But "emphasising how everything is broken" may win Starmer the time he needs to "turn things around".  

But in the meantime, the PM's plan is effectively "putting more than 20,000 criminals back on the streets", said The Telegraph in an editorial. Labour's manifesto promised to uphold the "basics of a safe, secure, law-abiding society". This proposal "makes an utter mockery of this stance". The exemption is also ambiguous – who qualifies as a non-serious violent offender? 

The new prisons minister, reform-minded James Timpson, is a "decent man" – but his view that Britain is "addicted to punishment" is "wrong-headed". It is addicted to offering multiple chances to those "already found to present a danger to society". Rather than addressing this, Starmer is turning the prison system into "little more than a revolving door". The foremost duty of government is to keep the population safe – it is "remarkable" that a former director of public prosecutions has "cast aside" this duty. 

The plan is a "dangerous gamble with public safety", the aunt of Zara Aleena, who was murdered by a man who had been freed on licence nine days before. The probation service was "not fit to deliver supervision" or "act in a timely way" when Jordan McSweeney broke his conditions, she told BBC Breakfast.

But Starmer has "no alternative", said The Independent in an editorial. The Conservative Party "created the crisis and made the emergency measures unavoidable". Starmer's plan is "driven by sheer necessity" – not to mention the impact of Tory-era austerity cuts to courts, probation and prison services, or the "mania for incarceration". 

If Starmer does not release these prisoners, there will be no place left to put the most serious offenders. "Crime and punishment present tough choices – and they cannot be ducked any longer."

Starmer's plan is "the least worst option", agreed the head of the Metropolitan Police, Mark Rowley. "The worst possible thing would be for the system to block, because the system blocks in prisons if they get completely full," he told ITV. "And that's really dangerous for the public."

But it's most dangerous for the inmates, said the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, in The Spectator. Overcrowding is just one aspect of the crisis in the prison estate, much of which is "dilapidated", filthy and in some cases "falling apart". "This should be a source of shame for any civilised country."

There is also a "high volume of prisoners serving increasingly lengthy sentences", despite the perception that judges "let criminals off lightly". Drug use is rife and addiction makes reoffending more likely. Reducing prisoner numbers will not "make our jails fit for purpose".

What next?

Starmer's plan may "undermine the public's already low trust in the criminal justice system", said The New Statesman. Nevertheless, Labour will "still need more prison space" eventually. But the government "can't build new prisons overnight", said Bush in the FT, and expanding the prison estate will be extremely expensive. 

The key to solving the crisis, therefore, is tackling the causes of crime, said The Independent. Most of the women in prison are there for non-violent offences – things that are "too often the product of domestic abuse, poverty and desperation". Nobody is born an offender, after all. 

Common sense should tell us that the "constant drift to longer sentencing and cramming more criminals into the cells" is not sustainable.

Ultimately, said Taylor, "original thinking and a willingness to challenge the system will be the only way out".