Prisoners including a serial shoplifter with 100 convictions were walking from jails in London on Thursday under a controversial mass-release plan.
Inmates were seen leaving HMP Brixton and HMP Wandsworth, as well as other jails around the country, with 700 set to be freed in the first wave of the controversially expanded programme to ease prison overcrowding.
Michael Bogle, 38, from Brent, north-west London, was released from HMP Wandsworth where he had served 78 days in prison after breaching a 32-week suspended sentence for shoplifting.
He said he had been jailed five separate times for 100 convictions.
Asked for his message to Andy Burnham, Bogle said: “Keep the early release going. It’s good.”
The former bus driver added that conditions inside the prison are “awful”.
Asked if he would vote Labour, he said he did not vote but if he did he would vote for the Labour Party.
He said there is a risk he would shoplift again “but hopefully not”, explaining that he had an approved premise to live in and plans to go to the job centre.
At Wandsworth prison, another man who refused to give his name, said he had been released early after spending “eight days” in prison for “breach of my conditional sentence”.
Asked if he thought it was right that people are being released early, he said: “Some people, yeah.
“There’s not enough space in the jails.”
Asked if he had anything to say to Prime Minister Andy Burnham, he said: “Thank you.”
However, Reform UK’s candidate for Mayor of London said if she was Prime Minister she would “hang my head in shame” over the prison early release scheme.
Speaking outside HMP Wandsworth, former Crown Prosecution Service lawyer Laila Cunningham said: “I’ve prosecuted domestic abuse crimes and I’ve sat and I’ve held the hands of victims, it takes so much courage to come.
“But when you get that conviction, that victim knows ‘I’m safe for that time. He’s in prison for two years, three years, whatever, I’m safe’.
“And now they’re told you’re not safe. Some are fleeing their homes, their communities.”
At Brixton jail, one prisoner emerged covered in a plastic bag in an effort to conceal his identity.
It is the latest in a series of early release schemes, including under the Conservative government and Sir Keir Starmer.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said offenders would be monitored under the “toughest supervision in British history”.
The plan to free up capacity in the overcrowded male prison estate comes as figures show the number of people behind bars has jumped by more than 1,700 in the past three months.
Some 5,000 prisoners are scheduled to be released in stages over the next year, down from 6,000, after ministers intervened to exempt rapists and the most serious child sex offenders.
Under a separate process introduced by the previous Conservative government, 13,325 prisoners in England and Wales were freed early between October 17 2023 and September 9 2024.
The prison population of England and Wales stood at 87,499 on Monday, according to weekly data published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).
This is up from 85,761 on June 29 – a rise of 1,738, or 2%.
Ministers say the expanded early release scheme is needed to prevent the justice system from collapsing, after a summer when the issue dominated news headlines.
Criminals will be excluded from the scheme if they have been jailed for a range of offences, including members of child grooming gangs convicted of indecent assault.
Prisoners guilty of manslaughter will also be excluded, meaning the killers of Pc Andrew Harper, who died in the line of duty in 2019, will not be eligible.
The Conservative Party accused the Government of putting the public at risk.
Shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy said the public would “pay the price” for the decision, which ministers have said is necessary to create capacity in jails.
