Early release scheme will mean 'cuts to neighbourhood patrols', police chief warns

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Under Labour's prisoner early release scheme, which had been due to come into force in September, some serious offenders would be eligible for release halfway through their sentences.

Andy Burnham agreed to review the scheme last week after coming under mounting pressure, including from the family of police officer Andrew Harper whose two killers would have been eligible for early release.

But a senior police officer has warned that neighbourhood patrols and officers tackling anti-social behaviour are likely to be cut as pressure mounts on the force to deal with 6,000 criminals who are expected to be released early.

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Writing in The Telegraph, Assistant Chief Constable Jason Devonport said the prisons overcrowding crisis had led to the "uncomfortable reality" that criminals would spend "less time in prison and more time being managed in communities".

Mr Davenport, who is Assistant Chief Constable at Lancashire Constabulary, said that the mass release of killers, sex offenders and drug dealers would add further pressure on the system, which has already come under strain with the removal of sentences shorter than 12 months in March.

The abandonment of short custodial sentences has led many criminals to reoffend or breach their conditions.

It is understood that ministers are already drawing up plans to expand community service projects such as rubbish picking and cleaning up vandalism to shore up faith among the public that criminals are still facing justice.

Around 50,000 offenders already complete community service punishment for crimes such as theft, drug and driving offences which ministers want to make more common.

The police chief wrote that "every area" of policing would come under pressure, with a collective cost likely to run "into the hundreds of millions of pounds".

He admitted this meant that "difficult decisions" were likely.

Mr Davenport called for more collaboration between agencies, noting that "all too frequently" criminals are "entrenched in complicated problems that are driving their offending", such as poverty and substance addiction.

"Policing is not the arbiter of these problems," he wrote. "They are societal and require the collective action of dozens of agencies."

Mr Burnham has said he would review the scheme instituted to ease overcrowding in UK jails after the widow of police officer Andrew Harper has said it is “deplorable” that two of his killers are being considered for early release.

Lissie Harper, PC Harper’s widow, said it was “deplorable that we have reached a point where releasing prisoners early is even considered acceptable”.

The prime minister said he was making no guarantees but wanted to look at the details of the early release scheme, which was due to come into effect on September 2.

The Sentencing Act 2026 introduces an “earned progression model” that replaces automatic halfway release for prisoners serving standard determinate sentences in England and Wales with a tiered, behaviour-based system. It will allow most of them to be released.

The driver of the vehicle which caused Pc Harper’s death, Henry Long, received a 16-year sentence, and will not be eligible for the scheme.

But the Constable’s mother said she had been told that early release could be on the cards for Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, who were passengers in the car and handed 13 years in custody for manslaughter after a trial at the Old Bailey in 2020.

PC Harper was 28 years old when he sustained fatal injuries while responding to a quad bike theft in Sulhamstead, Berkshire, in August 2019.

He died after getting caught in a strap attached to the back of a car and dragged down a country road as three teenage suspects fled the scene of the burglary.