{"id":707491,"date":"2026-07-23T18:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T18:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/707491\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T18:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T18:11:10","slug":"burnham-pauses-plan-to-release-some-prisoners-early-from-september-live-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/707491\/","title":{"rendered":"Burnham pauses plan to release some prisoners early from September – live updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BBCMore than 60,000 released under \u2018temporary\u2019 Labour schemepublished at 16:10 BST<\/p>\n

16:10 BST<\/p>\n

By Lucy Gilder<\/p>\n

A total of 60,108 prisoners were released under the government\u2019s early release scheme between September 2024 and December 2025, according to the latest Ministry of Justice (MoJ) figures.<\/p>\n

There is no breakdown by offence type, as the MoJ only publishes figures for sex, age, nationality, ethnicity, sentence length and the prison they were released from.<\/p>\n

This scheme, which allowed some prisoners in England and Wales serving a fixed-length term to be released after serving 40% of their sentence, was introduced as a temporary measure by Labour in September 2024.<\/p>\n

Justice Minister Jake Richards previously described the old scheme as a \u201cbridge to a more sustainable solution\u201d. This solution was to come in the form of the Sentencing Act, of which the early release provisions have now been paused by Burnham. <\/p>\n

A temporary scheme under the last Conservative government saw 10,082 offenders released early between October 2023 and June 2024.<\/p>\n

This initially allowed some prisoners to be released up to 18 days before their release date. The Conservatives gradually increased this to a maximum of 35 days before extending it to 70 days. <\/p>\n

Both governments said that early released prisoners would be subject to strict license conditions. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 60,000 released under \u2018temporary\u2019 Labour schemepublished at 16:10 BST 16:10 BST By Lucy Gilder A total…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-707491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}