By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
Hundreds of prisoners began leaving jails across England and Wales on Thursday as the British government activated a new sentencing system designed to relieve severe overcrowding, allowing some offenders to be released after serving as little as one-third of the prison term imposed by a court.
About 700 inmates were expected to leave custody Oct. 1 in the first phase of the government’s new “progression model,” according to official Ministry of Justice estimates.
The government projects approximately 4,500 first-day releases across 10 phased tranches running from October 2026 through June 2027, including Thursday’s initial group. The figures are estimates and could change depending on sentencing, disciplinary violations and other factors affecting individual release dates.
The new system changes the point at which many prisoners serving Standard Determinate Sentences become eligible for release into the community under supervision.
Under the Sentencing Act 2026, eligible offenders who previously would have remained in custody for 40% or 50% of their sentences can now be released after one-third, while some prisoners convicted of more serious offenses who previously served two-thirds can become eligible after serving half. Poor behavior can keep prisoners confined longer.
The changes do not mean the remainder of a sentence disappears. Released prisoners generally serve the balance in the community under license conditions and probation supervision, with electronic monitoring increasingly used under the government’s plan.
The government says the changes are necessary to prevent the prison system from running out of usable capacity.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government has argued that the overcrowding emergency developed over many years as the prison population increased while construction failed to keep pace with demand.
The Ministry of Justice says it is simultaneously pursuing 14,000 additional prison places and investing £700 million in probation and community services.
The first morning of releases produced highly visible reactions outside some prisons.
One serial shoplifter described as having approximately 100 previous convictions thanked the prime minister and said he intended to vote Labour following his release, according to The Telegraph.
Another departing inmate said, “God bless the Prime Minister.”
A third declared: “Justice system, what justice system? Thank you Andy Burnham”.
The scenes echoed criticism surrounding an earlier emergency release program introduced in 2024 under then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer, when images of prisoners celebrating outside jails became politically contentious.
That earlier system temporarily moved the automatic release point for certain offenders from 50% of their sentence to 40%.
The new model goes further for some offenders by establishing the one-third release point as part of a permanent sentencing framework rather than a short-term emergency measure.
Government modeling estimates that 700 prisoners are affected in Thursday’s first tranche, followed by about 650 in an Oct. 13 tranche and another 650 on Nov. 10. Later groups are scheduled through June 8, 2027.
The government initially planned a broader version of the policy, but Burnham intervened during the summer to remove additional serious crimes from eligibility.
Rape, specified child sexual offenses, offenses associated with organized child sexual exploitation and grooming gangs, manslaughter and other forms of unlawful killing, indecent assault and several additional serious crimes are now excluded from the progression model.
The exclusions reduced the government’s projected first-day tranche releases.
The Ministry of Justice estimates approximately 1,400 prisoners who otherwise might have qualified across the 10 tranches will instead remain ineligible because of the additional offense exclusions.
Life sentences and other indeterminate sentences are also outside the progression system.
Serious violent and sexual offenders serving Extended Determinate Sentences will continue to serve at least two-thirds of their custodial terms, with earlier release subject to Parole Board approval.
More than 18,000 prisoners serving sentence types outside the scheme are not covered by the progression model, according to the Ministry of Justice.
The exclusions do not remove every violent offender or every person with a history of domestic or sexual offending from the broader release population.
The Guardian reported that about 2,000 prisoners expected to leave during the next month include domestic abusers and violent offenders, while probation officials are preparing for additional releases afterward.
That has placed new pressure on a probation system already struggling with staffing, accommodation and electronic-monitoring problems.
Prisoners are generally supposed to have appropriate accommodation arranged before release, whether through their own housing, family accommodation, hostels or other temporary placements.
Probation officers have warned that suitable beds are in short supply in some areas.
One probation source told The Guardian that available hostel spaces were already full and that some released prisoners could go directly from jail to homelessness.
Housing is not merely a welfare concern in the release process. Stable accommodation can affect whether an offender can maintain employment, comply with probation appointments and avoid circumstances associated with reoffending.
The Ministry of Justice has said it is working with local councils and charities to cut prison-leaver homelessness in half by 2029.
Electronic monitoring has also become central to the government’s approach.
The administration says it is carrying out its largest expansion of tagging, with a presumption that many offenders released into the community will be electronically monitored.
But recent watchdog findings cited by The Guardian showed only 55% of GPS and radio-frequency tags were being fitted on time, while some offenders had faced delays lasting months.
That gap has intensified concerns about whether probation services can supervise thousands of people whose custody periods are being shortened.
Public opinion has also been strongly skeptical of the approach.
A YouGov survey highlighted Thursday found that building additional prisons and releasing foreign-national offenders early for deportation were the two most popular approaches among Britons for addressing the capacity crisis.
Detailed YouGov findings showed 81% supported building more prisons, while 78% supported early release of foreign offenders if they are then deported.
By contrast, 61% opposed reducing the custodial portion of less serious sentences from 40% or 50% to one-third, and 82% opposed reducing the prison portion of certain more serious sentences from two-thirds to one-half.
A separate Times report examined the political pressure surrounding the release program as ministers attempted to preserve enough capacity to keep the prison system functioning.
The same polling showed disagreement over which political party bears responsibility for the shortage.
YouGov found 45% of respondents blamed Labour and the Conservatives equally, 32% primarily blamed the Conservatives and 5% primarily blamed Labour.
The Conservatives governed Britain from 2010 until Labour’s 2024 election victory, a period during which prison capacity failed to expand sufficiently to prevent the current shortage.
Conservative politicians now argue that the government should pursue emergency physical capacity rather than releasing offenders earlier.
Proposals have included adapting unused conference centers, student accommodations or other large properties into temporary prison facilities.
Labour counters that the Conservatives had 14 years in power to expand the prison estate and left the system operating close to capacity.
Burnham’s government says prisons were already approaching collapse when Labour inherited the system and argues that simply refusing early releases without immediately available cells would create a different public-safety problem if courts were unable to impose custodial sentences.
Reform UK has proposed a substantially different capacity strategy.
The party says it would create approximately 22,000 additional prison places within five years — about 10,000 by transferring or deporting foreign-national offenders and roughly 12,000 through modular emergency prisons on Ministry of Defence land.
Reform leader Nigel Farage has described the modular facilities as “Nightingale prisons,” drawing a comparison with the temporary Nightingale hospitals constructed during the coronavirus pandemic.
Reform’s published criminal-justice proposal also calls for foreign offenders to serve sentences either in their home countries or in third countries, potentially including Kosovo or El Salvador.
Farage has argued that the approach would let Britain increase available prison space without shortening sentences for domestic offenders.
The proposal has not been implemented nationally and would raise practical, legal and diplomatic questions involving transfers, overseas detention standards and agreements with foreign governments.
The immediate government policy taking effect Thursday is instead based on reducing the portion of some sentences spent physically in prison while increasing supervision afterward.
Officials describe it as a progression model because release can depend partly on conduct while incarcerated, with disciplinary violations capable of extending the amount of time an eligible prisoner remains behind bars.
The government says the revised system is not an unrestricted release program and points to the categories it removed following criticism from victims’ families and public-safety advocates.
Burnham blocked manslaughter and other unlawful-killing offenses from the changes in August after controversy over whether offenders responsible for the death of police officer Andrew Harper could benefit from earlier release.
The government had already excluded rape, serious child sexual offenses and grooming-related crimes following an earlier review.
Those changes brought the modeled total for the 10 first-day tranches to about 4,500 rather than the larger number originally contemplated.
Even with the revised exclusions, the system is expected to remain under considerable strain.
The prison population in England and Wales stood at approximately 87,500 at the end of September, with ministers warning that capacity remains extremely tight.
The government argues the new releases provide enough breathing room for prisons and courts to continue functioning while new cells are constructed.
Critics argue that shortening custodial periods shifts risk and expense from prisons onto police, probation services, local governments, victims and communities.
Those competing claims will now be tested as successive groups leave custody.
Thursday’s 700 releases are only the first step.
Another large group is scheduled for Oct. 13, followed by additional tranches in November, December and monthly intervals through June.
By then, the government expects approximately 4,500 prisoners who were already incarcerated when the new rules took effect to have been affected by the phased first-day releases, while future offenders sentenced under the same framework will continue to move through the progression system on their individual release dates.
For England and Wales, the policy therefore represents more than another one-off attempt to empty crowded cells.
It marks a permanent change in how much of some prison sentences will be served behind bars — and begins under intense scrutiny over whether the government can relieve overcrowding without creating new problems for probation services, victims and public safety.
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