Why England and Wales Are Letting 2,000 Prisoners Out Early
About 2,000 prisoners will be let out early in England and Wales starting 1 October 2026 because prisons are too full.
Several hundred will leave on 1 October in the first wave, with releases across dozens of prisons The Guardian. This group includes domestic abusers and violent offenders.
The October releases are only the start. Another 3,000 prisoners are due out in stages over the next year. That makes about 5,000 in total, down from an earlier plan for 6,000 after Prime Minister Andy Burnham stepped in.
The law behind the plan is the 2026 Sentencing Act. It lets ministers let some prisoners with set-length sentences out after one-third of the sentence instead of 40%. Think of it like moving the finish line earlier. The full sentence stays on paper, but the person leaves jail sooner.
Some crimes are excluded. People jailed in child grooming gang cases or convicted of indecent assault cannot leave early. People convicted of manslaughter are also excluded. That means the killers of police officer Andrew Harper, who died in 2019, cannot leave early.
Release mechanism and exclusions
The rule changes time spent in jail, not the length of the sentence. It applies to set-length sentences. People convicted of certain sex crimes and killings must stay longer. The maximum stay in a probation hostel for serious offenders such as freed rapists and murderers was cut in the past from 12 weeks to eight weeks, so beds turn over faster.
Probation and tagging capacity
There is little room to house and watch people after release. A probation worker said hostel beds for ex-offenders are full and some prisoners will leave with nowhere to live. Napo, the union for probation officers, raised the housing shortage with prison bosses.
People in probation hostels in England and Wales usually stay about eight to 12 weeks. They can be sent back to prison if they refuse drug and alcohol tests.
The next crunch comes on 13 October 2026, when a second group is due out. Hostels are full. Staff numbers are short.
Napo national chair Ben Cockburn said HM Prison Service was in absolute denial about the Probation Service. He pointed to large staff shortages, heavy workloads and failing electronic monitoring.
The Ministry of Justice says it will expand electronic monitoring, with a new rule that offenders will normally wear a tag when they leave prison. The government has said up to 22,000 more offenders and defendants could be tagged each year, with £100 million in extra funding UK Government.
Tagging often arrives late. A joint report by probation and police inspectors found only 55% of location tags were fitted on time, and 60% for alcohol tags. Some people waited up to five months for a tag.
Precedent
A similar early release plan started under Keir Starmer's government in September 2024, months after the general election. That plan, called SDS40, aimed to release up to 2,000 prisoners in the second week of September. It was later extended without an end date. A police association chief said criminals may have been freed without proper support plans when 1,700 prisoners were released.
The government said in January 2026 that jails would have fully run out of space by June if it had not acted UK Government. Prison governors have said people freed under the last early release plan are returning to jail quickly BBC.
The broader context here is a system trying to free space by changing release dates instead of building more prison places. The key tests will be how many people are sent back to jail, how fast tags are fitted, and whether hostels find beds after 13 October.
What this means in practice is that the cut from 6,000 to about 5,000 shows care around who is let out. Domestic abusers and violent offenders are included, while grooming, indecent assault and manslaughter cases are not. Much will depend less on the law and more on probation staff, tag fitters and local housing.
