Britain must release thousands of convicts ahead of schedule, free prisons after riots

The emergency measures are thought to free up around 5,500 places in British prisons over the next 18 months, the paper wrote The Daily Telegraph with only around 300 to 500 places available in UK men’s prisons at present.

Around two thousand convicts who will be released early in the first wave on September 10 are currently serving sentences of less than five years. In the next step on October 22, 1,700 prisoners who were sentenced to more than five years will be released, they were added every day, adding that more waves would follow later. Those released in this way should not include perpetrators of violent crimes who have been sentenced to more than four years, as well as perpetrators of sexual violence or convicted of terrorism .

Earlier, the Starmer government decided that, due to prison overcrowding, most prisoners would only serve 40 percent of their sentences behind bars instead of the previous half. It was also decided that suspected criminals would be held directly in police stations and would only go to trial when a cell was freed for them in prison.

However, Starmer said overcrowded prisons would not prevent the government from cracking down on people arrested in the recent riots. More than 1,000 people have been arrested in connection with them, and more than 470 people have been charged so far.

Riots broke out across the country after several children were stabbed at a dance club in Southport, three girls did not survive. Rumors, later contradicted, that the perpetrator was an asylum seeker and a Muslim spread almost immediately on the Internet, fueling the riots.

The police then announced that the children were murdered by Axel Muganwa Rudakubana, aged 17, who was born in Cardiff, Wales to a family of Rwandan immigrants. During the riots between July 30 and August 5, according to the authorities, more than a hundred police officers were injured, and cases of shootings and arson were also reported.