How the new prison release scheme will work - and number of inmates to be freed

About 700 eligible offenders will leave jails in England and Wales on 1 October while some 2,550 are due to be released by the end of the year, under the government's early prison release plan.

So why are so many people being let out of jail earlier than expected and how have they been chosen?

Quite simply, prisons are almost full - and not for the first time.

As of last Friday, there were 87,499 people in 120 jails across England and Wales - with around 1,500 available beds. At this rate, there would be no spare cells by Christmas.

The early release scheme was developed because of a crisis the Labour government inherited when it came to power in July 2024.

Back then, prisons were rapidly running out of cells because courts were jailing more criminals than the number being released - part of a 30-year trend.

The outgoing government had also failed to build the prisons it had promised.

By the summer of 2024 there were virtually no free cells left, so the Ministry of Justice ran an emergency scheme, releasing some offenders after serving 40% of their sentence, rather than 50% - when most fixed-term prisoners are eligible for release.

From Thursday a permanent scheme passed by Parliament comes into force.

The scheme applies to roughly 70,000 offenders. If they had expected to serve half their term in jail and half in the community on a licence, the eligible prisoners will now leave at the one-third point.

The first eligible group are those jailed for up to 19 months. From November, it will be offenders serving up to three years and two months. By next June, serious offenders on fixed terms of more than 12 years will become eligible. Many of them will have expected to serve two-thirds of their sentence behind bars. Instead they will be on a community licence after serving half of their time.

The total length of their sentences has not changed - just the date when they become eligible to start serving part of that sentence in the community.

Some 18,000 inmates are completely excluded - including those convicted of murder, manslaughter, a sexual or grooming-related offence, or a driving offence that led to a death. Their earliest release dates remain unchanged.

Roughly 4,500 prisoners are due to be released by next summer. Some 700 will leave jail on the morning of 1 October - if spread equally across all jails that would be around six per prison.

In a typical month, around 4,500 people leave jails - so the first year of the scheme will see an 8% jump in releases.

When someone leaves prison while still serving a sentence, they are released on licence, which means they could be recalled if they break their conditions - this ranges from failing to make a probation appointment or not living at an approved address, through to more serious breaches such as contacting a victim, abandoning a rehabilitation programme or committing a crime.

The new rules, called "Earned Progression", are meant to encourage them to work harder to reform through enhanced monitoring and intensive supervision.

This means more released prisoners will have to wear electronic tags and be subject to other conditions.

If they step out of line, they can be returned to jail immediately.

Probation officers will have to work harder to monitor offenders all around the country. Martin Jones, the independent inspector of the service, has said he is "not fully confident" that the system will be able to cope.

The staff union says officers already have too many cases and the rate at which they are leaving the profession has increased. A report, published days before the start of the October early releases, warned that almost half of offenders were not tagged promptly, despite electronic monitoring being key to success.

The government says the probation service has recruited 1,300 more staff and has also received new AI tools to help it oversee offenders.

An offender can be recalled to prison immediately if their probation officer or the Parole Board believes they have broken their licence conditions, if the risk they pose increases, or if they pose a danger to the public.

According to the latest official figures, there were 51,419 licence recalls in the year ending March 2026 - up 28% on the previous year.

Those recalls were slightly lower than the previous three-month period.

Of those 51,419, around one in five was recalled for general "non compliance" and about one in 10 for failing to be in touch with their probation officer. Around 2,900 had committed another offence.

The government hopes - and this is the big bet - that if there is more community rehabilitation, more offenders can be kept out of jail.

The original scheme, which was devised when Sir Keir Starmer was prime minister, would have allowed about 500 more offenders to be released.

Sir Keir's successor Andy Burnham said he would rethink the proposals amid public alarm, lobbying from victims of grooming gangs and anger over the potential early release of two of the men who killed Pc Andrew Harper.

Burnham said if the scheme was scrapped, prisons would become full and the courts would have to stop sentencing new criminals.

The government projects that the prison population will still rise to around 100,000 by 2030. So the £7bn prison-building programme it has promised is crucial - aiming to deliver 14,000 extra cells by then.

Another key element of the plan is the effective scrapping of one-year jail terms. The law now says that judges should normally suspend such terms - meaning the offender won't go to prison unless they commit another crime.

That policy is backed by some long-standing evidence that fewer people re-offend if they receive intensive supervision to sort out their lives, rather than locking them up for short sentences.