Police are at “the centre of a storm” caused by poor planning after 1,700 prisoners were released early across England and Wales to ease overcrowding, a senior officer has said.
Amid concerns that hundreds of inmates could end up homeless or return to crime, the president of the Police Superintendents’ Association, Nick Smart, said some inmates were being set free without a programme and that the police would be left to deal with the consequences.
His comments were made after the first early releases under the SDS40 scheme began on Tuesday morning from dozens of prisons across the country. Footage of prisoners and their families popping corks from champagne bottles and thanking Keir Starmer for their freedom were condemned by Downing Street.
Smart told the association’s annual conference: “My colleagues are once again being placed at the centre of a storm that is not their doing, with the prospect of arresting offenders who can then not be placed in prison, and dealing with the fallout from the thousands of criminals being released early today, many potentially without proper rehabilitation and release plans.
“Will the public understand the position the police officers and the service are being put in here, or will we once again be viewed as a service getting it wrong?”
The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced plans in July to temporarily cut the proportion of sentences which inmates must serve behind bars from 50% to 40% as the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said overcrowding had pushed jails to the “point of collapse”.
On Tuesday, she told MPs that the scheme coming into force was the start of the “rescue effort” for the justice system.
“I have authorised probation directors to make use of alternative arrangements including budget hotels as a temporary measure, for the cases that we will see in the next few weeks,” she said.
She told the Commons that inmates who were homeless on release could be temporarily placed in taxpayer-funded budget hotels if there was not enough space in bail hostels and other community accommodation.
MoJ figures showed the prison population hit a record high of 88,521 on Friday, having risen by more than 1,000 inmates over the past four weeks.
It also emerged Rishi Sunak had ignored calls from Britain’s most senior police officers a week before the election, warning him that failure to trigger the SDS40 policy would be exploited by criminals.
A letter dated 27 June, signed by figures including Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, and first disclosed by the Times, said the overcrowding crisis in prisons was hampering police officers’ ability to do their job as they urged the then prime minister to put the plan in motion immediately because it would take “many weeks to safely implement”.
Martin Jones, the chief inspector of probation, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme it was a “certainty” some of those released early would reoffend, adding that “around a third” would commit further crimes.
The SDS40 scheme was putting a huge amount of pressure on the probation service and that due to a lack of probation officers the system was “significantly overstretched”, he said.
In the aftermath of the releases, campaigners against violence against women and girls and homeless charities said they were braced for a barrage of police reports.
The domestic abuse commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, who had called for a blanket exemption for all known perpetrators, said: “I worry that it might not be possible for every victim to be notified of their abuser’s release and I fear they may be left blindsided, without the time to seek vital support and guidance”.
Andrea Coomber KC, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said prisons and probation needed to be completely reset after she described the “woeful education and training” for inmates and “squalor, self-harm, drugs, violence and unmet mental health needs, all in the midst of severe overcrowding”.
Hundreds more prisoners are due to be freed early next month in the second stage of the scheme. Ministers are under pressure to find longer-term solutions to the problem, with prison governors warning without further measures the same problem could be faced in about a year’s time.
Francesca Albanese, the executive director of policy at the charity Crisis, said: “While the early release scheme will help to address bottlenecks in prisons, we can’t see this pressure transferred into the homelessness system instead.
“We know people leaving prison have often faced homelessness before and many may have lost their jobs while serving their sentence, which makes finding a place to rent practically impossible. We cannot expect anyone to successfully integrate back into society when they’re sleeping on a stranger’s floor or facing the dangers of life on the streets.”
An MoJ spokeswoman said: “It is important for offenders to have a roof over their head when they leave prison, otherwise there is a high risk they will reoffend and end up back behind bars.
“That is why the Prison and Probation Service has basic housing for offenders who would otherwise be forced to sleep on the streets with additional ad hoc arrangements only to be used as an absolute last resort.”
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