The British government announced on Tuesday that offenders convicted of rape, serious child sexual offences and grooming will be excluded from its emergency early release scheme, reducing the number of prisoners to be freed from 6,000 to 5,000. The releases, designed to avert the collapse of the prison system in England and Wales, will now begin in October 2026, a delay from the originally planned September start, to give probation services more time to prepare and to allow victims to contribute to licence conditions.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham said keeping the public safe was his top priority and that he had wanted to exempt more categories of offenders, but doing so would cause the prison system to reach capacity and collapse, putting public safety at much greater risk. Justice Secretary Alex Norris apologised directly to the family of a police officer killed by offenders who will still be eligible for early release, stating that the government had “listened to the concerns and gone further to protect victims.” The family of PC Andrew Harper, whose killers were convicted of manslaughter, reacted with anger and disappointment: the two men will still be able to leave prison after serving half of their 13-year sentences instead of two-thirds.

The 5,000 prisoners will be released gradually over 10 months and will face stricter community supervision, including a presumption of electronic tagging, longer supervision periods, exclusion zones, near real-time GPS monitoring, random drug testing and expanded powers for probation officers to restrict activities such as driving or attending pubs. Adult male prisons are currently operating at 98 per cent capacity, and the government warns that without the releases there would be no free cells to accommodate new court-ordered detentions. An additional 18,000 inmates serving life sentences or extended determinate sentences remain excluded from the scheme.

The crisis follows years of underinvestment in the prison estate. A previous government promise to create 20,000 new places by 2026 delivered only 8,500, while the prison population rose from 79,000 to nearly 90,000. Burnham has pledged the fastest prison building programme since the Victorian era, aiming for 14,000 new places by 2031. The Independent newspaper has argued that releasing some of the approximately 2,400 prisoners still serving indefinite IPP sentences would free up enough space to keep more serious offenders incarcerated, including the killers of PC Andrew Harper.