Kemi Badenoch has written to Prime Minister Andy Burnham demanding emergency legislation to stop the government's early prisoner-release scheme. She argues that gaps in the list of excluded offences mean child sex offenders convicted of indecent assault could walk free after serving as little as a third of their sentence. BBC News

The Conservative leader posted the letter on her X account on 6 August 2026, urging Burnham to publish the full list of offences that remain eligible for early release. She called the situation a "betrayal of victims" and said releasing sex offenders and other violent criminals early "at all, ever" is a "total disgrace." She argued instead for an end to the practice of sending non-violent criminals to prison. BBC News; Facebook

The government plans to release roughly 5,000 offenders in England and Wales early to ease pressure on overcrowded prisons. The prison population stood at 86,495 on 3 August 2026 — 97% of useable capacity. BBC News

Burnham reviewed the scheme after becoming prime minister. On 4 August 2026, the government announced that prisoners convicted of rape, serious child sex offences and grooming offences would be barred from early release from October. gov.uk; BBC News

The exclusions, however, do not cover indecent assault under sections 14 and 15 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956. Those sections are absent from the government's published list of excluded offences, meaning prisoners convicted under them could qualify for early release. gov.uk; BBC News

Badenoch's letter argued that this is no technicality. She wrote that the government had itself put in writing that some men convicted of grooming offences would be released early anyway. Many cases of child sex abuse committed before 2004, including those in Rotherham and Rochdale, were charged as indecent assault, she noted. BBC News

The cases illustrate the gap in practical terms. Shahid Hussain was jailed in September 2024 for eight years after being convicted of indecently assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Rotherham in 2003. Ajaz Karim was jailed in December 2024 for 21 months after being convicted of indecent assault for sexually abusing a 13-year-old girl at the school where he was a sports coach. Neither conviction falls under the offences the government has excluded from early release. BBC News

Some prisoners who are not excluded could be freed after serving a third of their total sentence rather than the 40% or 50% that has applied under recent frameworks. BBC News

Burnham said he had wanted to exclude more offenders but that prison overcrowding prevented this, and that making more prisoners exempt could cause the prison system to collapse. Justice Secretary Alex Norris, who apologised to families affected by the scheme, said the changes exclude rapists, groomers and child sex offenders from early release. BBC News; Instagram

The political fallout has not been confined to the letter. Badenoch had already called on 28 July 2026 for Burnham to bring in emergency legislation to stop the scheme entirely. The Conservative Party's "Labour's U-turns" page states that under the scheme rapists and serious child sex offenders could have been released before the end of their sentences. BBC News; Conservatives.com

Beyond the parliamentary exchange, individual families have spoken out. The mother of PC Andrew Harper, who was 28 when he was killed in 2019 after being dragged by a car as three teenagers fled the scene of a quad bike theft in Berkshire, said she was "devastated" to learn that two men jailed after her son's killing would still be eligible for early release. BBC News

The broader context here is one of competing pressures on the criminal justice system in England and Wales. The policy applies only to England and Wales; justice and prisons are devolved to Scotland and Northern Ireland, where separate administrations set their own release frameworks. The prison estate in England and Wales has been operating at or near capacity for months, and the government's decision to bar certain offences from early release does not resolve the underlying capacity shortfall that prompted the scheme. Burnham's own acknowledgment that wider exclusions could collapse the system concedes the point: the exclusion list is shaped by operational constraint as much as by penal policy.

The critical question is whether the statutory gap on sections 14 and 15 of the 1956 Act is a drafting oversight or a deliberate concession to capacity. The cases of Hussain and Karim show that real-world offenders fall through it. Until the government publishes the full list Badenoch has demanded, or Parliament legislates to close the gap, whether a pre-2004 child sex abuse convict qualifies for release after serving a third of their sentence turns on which statute the Crown Prosecution Service chose to charge under, in some cases more than two decades ago. That is a charging decision made long before sentencing reform was contemplated, yet it now determines eligibility for early release in a way the government's headline exclusions do not capture.