London safety fears after crime sentencing review

UK prisons to allow earlier releases of some offenders as government warns jails threatened by overcrowding

Officers from the Metropolitan Police on patrol in central London. Alamy

Britain’s street crime will intensify following a tranche of reforms aimed at easing overcrowding in prisons, The National has been told.

With jails dangerously crammed, the Ministry of Justice has decided on a series of changes to prison tariffs that will allow violent criminals and sex offenders to be released early.

Fewer criminals would be put behind bars and more would serve sentences in the community, while judges could be given more flexibility to impose punishments such as football or driving bans. Short sentences of less than 12 months would also be scrapped, apart from exceptional circumstances, after an independent sentencing review led by former justice secretary David Gauke recommended an overhaul.

With the probation service under severe stress, failing to lock up criminals posed a “real danger” on the streets of London and risked other cities becoming crime hotspots, said Robert Buckland, who was the justice secretary from 2019 to 2021.

“I really don't think that we should be letting out violent and sexual offenders earlier without very good justification,” he said. “This should not just be for good behaviour, but concrete evidence that they're making progress and that they don't present the risk of reoffending.”

‘Bust in months’

The Labour government has condemned the 14 years of Conservative rule during which it claims just 500 prison places were added while the prison population nearly doubled.

Lord Chancellor and Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood. PA

The latest projections showed that jails will be “bust within months” and 9,500 places short by early 2028 without drastic action, said Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood.

Latest figures show the prison population in England and Wales is 88,103, just 418 below the record of 88,521, which was reached on September 6, 2024.

The only way to end the crisis was to build more prisons, said Ms Mahmood, with the government promising £4.7 billion to make 14,000 places by 2031 in what it promises will be “the largest prison expansion since the Victorian era”.

“If our prisons collapse, courts are forced to suspend trials, the police must halt their arrests, crime goes unpunished, criminals run amok and chaos reigns,” Ms Mahmood warned. “We face the breakdown of law and order in this country.”

Street crime fear

When the government came to power in July last year it inherited dangerously overcrowded jails just as race riots broke out across the country that led to more than 200 convictions.

This forced the new government to give early release to a number of non-violent offenders to free up prison space.

That was a temporary measure and led to Mr Gauke being asked by Labour to undertake the full review that reported on Thursday.

The government has accepted his recommendation to reduce time served for those convicted of “standard determinate sentences”, such as burglary or drug offences. This also includes certain violent and sexual offences, but not rape.

Those criminals will now serve just one third of the sentence in jail, a third on probation and the final period without supervision.

But Mr Buckland argued that there was a “danger of people out in the community who aren't going to be properly supervised” and the lack of supervision element “rings alarm bells”.

His concern was that on the streets of London there was an increased chance of dangerous violent reoffending, such as muggings and sexual offences “that the public need protection from”.

A prison van leaving Manchester Magistrates' Court. AFP

Mobile phone theft in London has reached what has been described as “epidemic” levels, prompting the Met Police to step up undercover operations.

Police data shows that 75,105 mobile phones were stolen in London in the year to April, an increase of 13 per cent on the previous year.

The new proposals, said David Jones, the former Conservative Welsh secretary, were “manifestly not making the streets of London or the UK safer” and that “arguably, it's going to make things a lot worse”.

He was also concerned about the early release scheme, “because prison should be a deterrent and the longer the sentence the bigger the deterrent”.

Mr Buckland also said the probation services were “under huge pressure” and its leader had warned that “without proper resourcing this won’t work”.

The former minister said the probation service's work with young offenders in recent years had seen the under-18 prison population plummet from more than 3,000 to 500.

The government has pledged that it will increase funding for the probation service, rising by £700 million to £2.3 billion in three years.

Prevent reoffending

However, think tanks in favour of prison reform suggested that early release could lead to less repeat offending.

“The three things that stop people reoffending are family relationships, secure housing and employment,” Andrea Coomber, a barrister and chief executive of the Howard League, told The National.

She said that to reduce crime it was better to have people serving “an element of their sentence in prison and then the rest in the community” where they can be supported.

“The ‘tough on crime’ thing sounds great, but it doesn't work,” she added. “A prison governor recently said to me: 'Punishment sounds fantastic, and I wish it worked, but unfortunately, it doesn't because punishing people is inherently inconsistent with rehabilitating them.'”

The Prison Reform Trust’s chief executive Pia Sinha said the reforms were a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to reset sentencing and reduce reoffending.

She supported the government’s move away from giving sentences of under 12 months, labelling them “pointless short spells in custody” that blocked cells and did not reduce reoffending.

However, Mr Jones argued that the 12-month rule was “basically a charter for shoplifters” that was telling thieves “you can pinch as much as you want and you will not be put in prison”.

Mr Buckland suggested it would take just “one crisis” with a serious reoffending to occur for the public to turn against the early releases and “the aims of these reforms will be utterly lost in an understandable backlash”.