Few things are more certain to generate bad headlines than releasing thousands of prisoners early—as Britain’s government did last autumn. Some of the country’s more attention-seeking villains duly arranged showy cars, and were only too happy to brief the waiting press. “Big up Keir Starmer,” said Daniel Dowling-Brooks, who had been in for kidnap and grievous bodily harm. Things got worse when it emerged that 37 inmates had been wrongly released. One committed a sexual assault hours after being freed.
Given that start, ministers will now feel that Britain’s largest-ever prisoner release could have gone worse. More than 3,000 prisoners were let out over two days—almost as many as is typical in a month. Releases have continued at an elevated rate since. So far, there is no sign of the “crime wave” some critics feared. Rates of recall to prison, already high by historical and international standards, have merely remained steady.
But the action has shone light on a neglected point of failure in Britain’s prisons: release. More than four in ten who walk out of the gates are back within a year. For those on short sentences it is even worse. High reoffending is often put down to lousy conditions inside. But stretched prisons also push out inmates with little or no plan for housing or work. Seen this way, emergency releases are a quick fix that exacerbates the underlying problem.
Under the government’s latest scheme, a prisoner becomes eligible for release after serving 40% of their sentence (down from 50%), with the exception of sexual offenders and serious violent offenders. This has little merit. Public understanding of sentencing is already poor. Politicians attempting to explain why criminals should serve less than half of their tariff behind bars will not help. Still, it was the least-bad option the government had, since it inherited prisons so full that they were days from turning away new inmates.
The most obvious thing a freed prisoner needs is a home. Those without settled accommodation are twice as likely to end up back in custody. Yet less than half of freed prisoners had a place to go to in the year to August 2024. Those data were collected before the two big tranches in September and October; things have probably got worse. One prison officer admits that the sheer number of releases meant housing-resettlement work was often not completed before cells had to be vacated.
Parting gifts of a tent and a sleeping bag have become more common. Upon release, around one in eight inmates are now homeless or sleeping rough. Those problems seem to persist: three months after being let out, almost one in ten were still sleeping rough, and only two-thirds had found settled accommodation. Part of the problem, inevitably, is the scarcity of social housing. But hostels are also riddled with drugs and criminality. Given that choice, says Nathan, a prisoner with months left to serve, many take the tent.
The second thing a freed prisoner needs is work. Yet only around one in five has a job after six weeks. After six months, it is still less than one in three. Some have little interest in going straight. But for those who do, the path is often narrow and precarious. Only a handful of prisons are rated “good” for rehabilitation and release planning. Britain also has stringent criminal records compared with other rich countries. Even minor crimes stay on them for years, in effect barring ex-offenders from many entry-level jobs.
Some of these problems are hard to fix. But establishing rudimentary links between life inside and outside should not be. To see how it can be done better, visit HMP Northumberland, a large men’s prison north of Newcastle. There the Oswin Project, a charity, runs a host of activities—a market garden, a bakery, two cafés, a bike-repair shop, a building-and-decorating businesses—that purposefully span the prison fence. The idea is that inmates gain skills they can put to use outside.
Last year Oswin employed around 240 current and former inmates, many in profit-making activities. On the day your correspondent visits, guards are tucking into meat pies prepared by inmates. One of the bakers, nearing the end of a sentence for drug offences, says the charity is helping him to look for work outside. Oswin also runs a peer-mentoring network and helps released prisoners find housing, filling gaps left by a threadbare probation service. It calculates that only 4% of the inmates it has worked with have gone on to reoffend.
The main factor preventing this kind of work in most prisons is not a lack of money or space, says Fiona Sample, a doughty former vicar who founded Oswin ten years ago. It is risk-aversion. Years of lobbying and legal discussions (”like wading through treacle”) were required to get security clearance for a handful of volunteers to train bakers and gardeners. Prison governors like high walls, but staff have come round to the project. Ms Sample has plans to convert a disused block into a pie factory, to supply local football stadiums.
Yet having weathered two waves of early releases, HMP Northumberland and other prisons may soon have to brace for more. Ministers rode out the headlines and bought themselves a little time, but the prison population has shot back up and is now even higher than when they entered office. Even though more cells are being built, without more radical measures supply will outstrip demand soon. There is one underrated way to ease the pressure: get better at release. ■
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