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On Tuesday, approximately 650 additional offenders will be released early from prisons across England and Wales as part of the second phase in the government’s strategy to address the ongoing prison population crisis. This group includes individuals serving sentences of up to two and a half years. According to the updated guidelines, these prisoners are now being freed after serving only one-third of their sentence behind bars, a shift from the previous requirement of serving half the term.
This second wave follows an initial early release of around 700 offenders on October 1, who were all serving sentences shorter than 19 months. The series of phased releases will continue, gradually including those with longer sentences, reaching offenders serving over 12 years by next June. The probation service union Napo has raised concerns about the increased pressure on its members responsible for supervising these individuals once they re-enter the community. Generally, released offenders will be electronically tagged and subjected to other monitoring conditions for the remaining portion of their sentence.
Probation officers are currently preparing for a ballot that could result in industrial action in response to ongoing issues with pay and workload. While the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has extended a 5% pay increase offer—which has been accepted by two other unions—Napo had requested a 12% rise to compensate for earnings lost due to austerity cuts since 2010. The MoJ defends its offer as fair, highlighting a parallel £700 million investment aimed at recruiting 1,300 new probation officers and implementing artificial intelligence tools to reduce supervision workloads.
Alongside these prison policy changes, the government has returned its criminal court reform proposals to Parliament after dropping the most contentious aspects. Notably, the idea of Crown Courts deciding cases without juries for suspects facing up to three years in prison has been abandoned. Nevertheless, jury trials will be eliminated for complex and lengthy fraud cases, and a further 5,500 trials will be held in magistrates’ courts without the option for defendants to request a jury.
The government intends to expand the use of “blitz” or “short trial” courts, which have demonstrated success in speeding up case progression by grouping similar cases—a measure that helped halve a backlog of 500 assault cases against emergency workers at the Old Bailey. Additionally, in response to recommendations from former appeal judge Sir Brian Leveson’s major review, pilots are underway allowing defendants to appear in court virtually from police cells, aiming to reduce time wasted in transporting defendants.
The government has accepted more than 150 of Leveson’s 180 suggestions to modernize the criminal courts. However, it has rejected his recommendation to maintain a limitation on the sentencing power of volunteer magistrates, who currently can only impose jail terms up to 12 months. Under the new plan, magistrates will have the authority to sentence offenders to up to two years in custody. This extension seeks to reduce the number of cases escalating to Crown Court, thereby alleviating court backlogs
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