Hundreds more prisoners being freed in second phase of early release scheme

About 650 more offenders are leaving jails in England and Wales on Tuesday, in the second phase of the early release scheme - the government's plan to tackle the prison population crisis.

It includes offenders serving up to two and a half years for crimes who are leaving jail after serving a third of their sentence behind bars, rather than half.

The second wave of releases comes as the government takes its plan to radically overhaul criminal courts back to Parliament - but also as probation officers prepare to vote in a ballot that could lead to a strike over pay and workload.

Some 700 offenders left jail early on 1 October - all of whom were serving terms of less than 19 months.

Tuesday's second stage begins the process of releasing batches of offenders serving increasingly longer sentences - culminating next June with those serving more than 12 years.

Around 5,000 prisoners are scheduled to be released in stages, down from 6,000 after ministers intervened to make rapists and the most serious child sex offenders exempt.

Prisoners convicted of manslaughter are also excluded, meaning the killers of PC Andrew Harper, who died in the line of duty in 2019, will not be eligible. Those jailed for a range of offences, including members of child grooming gangs convicted of indecent assault are also ineligible.

Victims' groups have raised fears about the scheme.

Alice Russell-Harris from the charity Refuge - which supports survivors of domestic abuse - told the BBC that domestic abuse perpetrators are among those being released.

This "will put survivors at serious risk of harm," she said.

Even though they may walk out of prison with conditions such as electronic tagging and restriction zones, "we know that license conditions are frequently breached by perpetrators."

Victims are worried that prisoners who walk free "will be able to continue their campaign of abuse once out of prison," she said, adding that there are concerns about recent reports revealing that electronic tags are often not fitted on time for release.

Typically, those being released should expect to be electronically tagged and subject to other monitoring conditions for the second third of their sentence.

But the probation service union, Napo,said the releases put enormous strain on its members, who monitor offenders in the community.

Probation officers are "absolutely overwhelmed with work," Napo's general secretary Ian Lawrence told the BBC, saying those being released require "intensive supervision" and "the sheer weight of numbers causes pressure".

"None of our people go to work to see people injured, hurt, or for reoffending to happen," he said, but the numbers coming out means the probation service need more resources.

There are also concerns over delays in fitting electronic tags, which are used by probation officers to track curfews and conditions of a court or prison order.

A report by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Probation (HMIP) found that almost half of the tags used to track offenders are not fitted on time, with some criminals waiting up to five months.

Official data which will show if there has been any improvement to electronic tagging will not be released for several months.

On Tuesday, the union's members will meet to discuss next week's vote, which could lead to strike action. Probation officers have been offered a 5% pay rise by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), while it had demanded 12% as part of a plan to make up for loss of earnings caused by cuts from 2010.

The MoJ says the offer is fair and has been accepted by two other unions and is twinned with a £700m investment in probation to recruit 1,300 extra officers and the roll-out of AI tools to cut the workload of monitoring offenders.

Several people were released under the first tranche of the scheme are already back behind bars. Eight men were arrested by Greater Manchester Police (GMP) days after leaving prison under the government's early release scheme.

Five were arrested for breaches of criminal orders, including a domestic abuse prevention order, and others were held on suspicion of robbery, drug offences and domestic violence, GMP said.

While the second phase of prison releases gets under way, the government is bringing its criminal court reform plan back before MPs, after announcing a week ago that it had abandoned the most controversial element of it.

The revised plan drops proposals for a new form of Crown Court where a judge alone, sitting without a jury of ordinary people, would reach a verdict against suspects facing up to three years in prison.

However, jury trials will still be scrapped for the most complex and long fraud cases - and another 5,500 trials will be kept in the lower magistrates court by ending a defendant's right to ask for a jury trial.

The government says it will expand the use of so-called "blitz" or "short trial" courts after pilots have shown that grouping similar cases together can speed up their progression through the courts - cutting backlogs.

One of the pilots at the Old Bailey led to the London backlog of 500 cases concerning assaults on emergency workers being cut in half over the summer.

A major review of criminal courts by former appeal judge Sir Brian Leveson recommended more virtual hearings for defendants to slash wasted time bringing them to and from cells. The government has now ordered pilots for defendants to appear direct from police cells.

On Monday, the government announced it had accepted more than 150 of his 180 recommendations to modernise the criminal courts.

It has rejected his advice to retain a restriction on volunteer magistrates that means they can only jail an offender for 12 months. Under the government's plan magistrates will have the power to jail for up to two years - the aim being to keep more cases out of Crown Court, to help clear backlogs.