'Scrap early prison release scheme for thugs and domestic abusers too,' says Rotherham MP Sarah Champion
“...victims across the country remain in a state of fear and limbo”
A South Yorkshire MP wants a review of the early prison release scheme to go further by keeping violent offenders and domestic abusers locked up.
A controversial plan by Keir Starmer’s government to free up overcrowded prisons by releasing thousands of prisoners was paused with new PM Andy Burnham announcing an “urgent review”.
However, No 10 also confirmed that should the scheme return, rapists, groomers and serious child sex offenders would be excluded from early release.
On Monday (August 3), MP for Rotherham Sarah Champion welcomed the “swift leadership” in pausing the scheme - but called for the list of offences not fit for early release to be extended.
“Without an explicit, statutory reinstatement of the exemptions on sex offenders, serious violent offenders, terrorist and domestic abusers (...) victims across the country remain in a state of fear and limbo,” Ms Champion said in an open letter to the PM.
“...extending automatic early release to these high-harm cohorts creates an unmanageable risk to public protection., frontline policing and victim safety.”
Ms Champion also pointed to a “severe national shortfall” of 2,200 probation staff, writing she was “simply not assured” there is a workforce in place to manage the “en-masse” release of sexual offenders and domestic abusers.
The early release scheme moved to use electronic tagging, curfews and bans from visiting certain areas to manage prisoners.
But Ms Champion criticised this as insufficient to police domestic abusers and child sex offenders, stating it “fails to account for how grooming networks operate, while improperly shifting the burden of self-protection onto victims.
“The cost of these operational gaps must not fall on victims and survivors who have already endured unimaginable pain.
“If this scheme moves forward without reinstating exemptions, it risks not only deflating sentence lengths but undermining victim trust.”
The review has been fast tracked after it emerged the killers of Berkshire policeman PC Andrew Harper, who was dragged behind a car by a towrope around his ankle down a country road for a mile in 2019, could also have been eligible for early release.
The early release scheme would have come into force in September under the Sentencing Act 2026, with some 6,000 prisoners eligible after serving a third of their sentence.
The scheme will now be delayed until October.
Mr Burnham said he “wanted to go even further” with exemptions, but that was not possible without the prison system “collapsing” and putting the public “at much greater risk”.
Other rollouts include £10m in victim support, a new national helpline for affected victims, and a pledge to deliver “the fastest prison building programme since the Victorian era,” aiming to create 14,000 new prison places by 2031.
The Prime Minister has also asked Justice Secretary Alex Norris to look at how the UK can remove more foreign offenders and faster, review Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentences and free up space in women’s prisons.
The changes also introduce a new progression model which will end automatic release for badly behaved offenders.