Tories accused of ‘cover up’ over prisoner release data

THE Government has been accused of a “cover up” for refusing to publish details on the number of violent criminals being released from prison early to deal with an overcrowding crisis.

Shabana Mahmood, the shadow justice secretary, said that ministers’ “stonewalling” over the early release scheme was “nothing short of a scandal” and that they had a “moral responsibility” to “come clean”.

In October, Alex Chalk, the Justice Secretary, announced that hundreds of prisoners would be freed up to 18 days before their scheduled release date halfway through their sentence to alleviate pressure on the most overcrowded jails. In March, the “end of custody supervised licence” (ECSL) scheme was expanded to enable prisoners to be freed up to 60 days early.

Violent offenders sentenced to less than four years in jail are eligible for the scheme, as are burglars, thieves, shoplifters and fraudsters serving any length of fixed-term sentence. Sex offenders, convicted terrorists, category A prisoners and all violent offenders serving four or more years are excluded.

Labour have asked at least 14 parliamentary questions requesting data on the scheme, such as how many criminals are being released early and the breakdown by different offences.

However, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has refused to comply, saying that it cannot release figures “intended for future publication” and that statistics will “be based on one year’s worth of data and published on an annual basis”.

Labour say this is despite the MoJ releasing weekly prison statistics and quarterly figures on a range of other measures.

Ms Mahmood suggested that the Government was motivated by political reasons and that the eventual data dump could come after the general election. She told The Sunday Telegraph: “They should level with the public about the sort of people that they are releasing early.” She said those eligible for release include “violent offenders, domestic abusers, stalkers”.

While Labour introduced its own 18-day early release scheme to deal with overcrowding when it was in government in 2007, Ms Mahmood said “the big difference” was “we released data, we replied to parliamentary questions”.

An MoJ spokesman said: “We make no apology for ensuring the data we release is accurate and quality assured which is why figures on ECSL – which began in October 2023 – will be published on an annual basis, in line with other comparable statistics.”