Kemi Badenoch has warned that the government’s early release scheme could still see child sex offenders and other serious criminals freed from jail ahead of schedule. The Tory leader said the plan amounts to a betrayal of victims and pressed the government to publish the full list of offences that will remain eligible for early release.
The dispute centres on a prison system under strain in England and Wales, where the government plans to release about 5,000 offenders well before the end of their sentences to ease overcrowding. Under the revised policy, people convicted of rape, serious child sex offences and grooming offences will not be eligible for early release from October. But Badenoch said that leaves room for offenders convicted under other categories, including indecent assault against children, to be freed sooner than many families would expect.
In a letter, Badenoch argued that the government had told the country one thing while leaving other offences exposed under the fine print. She pointed to indecent assault as a category not included in the government’s list of exclusions and said many child sex abuse cases committed before 2004 were charged that way, including cases linked to Rotherham and Rochdale. She said that omission was especially serious because it could allow people convicted of sexual offences against children to qualify for the scheme.
The government has not yet confirmed exactly which offenders will be released. But the current rules suggest some prisoners who are not specifically excluded could be let out after serving a third of their sentence rather than after 40% or 50% of it. The changes will be rolled out in stages, starting with prisoners serving less than 575 days and extending to inmates jailed for 12 years or more, who could become eligible in June 2027.
Burnham said he wanted to exclude more offenders, but said prison overcrowding made that impossible. He warned that expanding the exclusions further would risk collapsing the prison system and put the public at much greater risk. The prison population in England and Wales stood at 86,495 on August 3, which was 97% of usable capacity, underscoring how tight the system has become.
