Inmates left a Gloucestershire prison early today (Tuesday, October 22) amid the latest round of early releases by the Government. Some men were pictured carrying bags as they left HMP Leyhill.
The government is currently carrying out a plan to tackle overcrowding in prisons, which involves releasing over 1,000 additional offenders ahead of schedule. Under the new guidelines, convicts who have received a sentence exceeding five years will now be eligible for release on licence after completing just 40 per cent of their term.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said rates of recall in the cohort of early releases are “broadly in line” with usual prison releases. It comes after a probation officers’ union said a “significant number” of those let out in the first phase of releases had been recalled to custody.
She explained to LBC: “We’ll do a statistics release in due course, as we normally would, on rates of recall and on reoffending in our prison estate. What I can tell you is our early assessment is that the rates of recall and potential reoffending in the cohort that has been released as a result of the emergency release measures is broadly in line with what we would expect.”
Ms Mahmood added: “Because at the end of the day, when somebody is still serving a sentence but they’re not in prison, they’re out in the community, they are subject to strict license conditions. You break those conditions, you do go back to prison.”
Many of those leaving jail today come from open prisons such as HMP Leyhill.