Shabana Mahmood, the justice secretary, is plainly preparing public opinion for an announcement next week that more prisoners will be released early. She announced at a news conference today that male prisons are at 99 per cent capacity and will run out of space by November.
If this sounds familiar, that is because she said something similar in the days after the general election, when she announced an emergency early release scheme. At the time, any reasonable observer accepted her argument that she had inherited an intolerable situation from the Conservatives.
