More than 60,000 released under ‘temporary’ Labour schemepublished at 16:10 BST
By Lucy Gilder
A total of 60,108 prisoners were released under the government’s early release scheme between September 2024 and December 2025, according to the latest Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures.
There is no breakdown by offence type, as the MoJ only publishes figures for sex, age, nationality, ethnicity, sentence length and the prison they were released from.
This scheme, which allowed some prisoners in England and Wales serving a fixed-length term to be released after serving 40% of their sentence, was introduced as a temporary measure by Labour in September 2024.
Justice Minister Jake Richards previously described the old scheme as a “bridge to a more sustainable solution”. This solution was to come in the form of the Sentencing Act, of which the early release provisions have now been paused by Burnham.
A temporary scheme under the last Conservative government saw 10,082 offenders released early between October 2023 and June 2024.
This initially allowed some prisoners to be released up to 18 days before their release date. The Conservatives gradually increased this to a maximum of 35 days before extending it to 70 days.
Both governments said that early released prisoners would be subject to strict license conditions.
