Guido has put together some clips of today’s early release, as part of which about 700 prisoners were released after serving 40% of their sentence. Around 2,550 are to be released by the end of the year – even after Burnham tightened up eligibility…
Incidentally the Prosperity Institute has produced a report on how to sort the prison overcrowding and subsequent early release issue. Their Senior Researcher Alexander Baker says:
“Today’s early release of dangerous convicts will be no “one-off” event. Unless the Prime Minister commits to rapidly building more prison capacity, Andy Burnham will be forced to release thousands of criminals over the next few years, further endangering the British public.’”
Green Deputy Leader Rachel Millward said:
“The reality is that it’s Zack Polanski who brought the nation, Andy Burnham. And if we hadn’t had the success of the Green Party in this last year since Zack’s been leading, which has been unprecedented, phenomenal success and a growth from about 60,000 members to 230,000, if we hadn’t had that much pressure on Labour, then we’d probably still be in the Starmer regime, which was pretty much ushering in a Reform government with its lurch to the right. So actually, what we’re seeing now is that we’ve set the political agenda and the government is picking that up.”