Labour is flooding Britain's streets with a tidal wave of dangerous criminals: PHILIP FLOWER

Daily Mail​

14 hours ago

As a young sergeant in the Met 30 years ago, I chased and tackled an armed robber who had stabbed a sub-postmistress during a raid.
I had a truncheon. He had a whacking great knife, and he tried to wield it against me and another copper as a crowd of schoolchildren in the street watched in mute horror.
We disarmed the man and arrested him. The sub-postmistress was badly shaken but recovered from her injuries.
And the robber got four years. At the time, I was disappointed with the sentence, but today it's likely he would serve less than half that.
Under Labour's shambolic scheme to reduce overcrowding in prisons he might well be deemed a 'low risk' and released after serving just 40 per cent of his time. In other words, if he'd already done a year on remand waiting for trial, he could be sentenced this week – and out by Christmas.
Such a travesty of justice is not a rare event. It's happening 100 times a day: According to the Ministry of Justice, criminals are being given early release at the rate of 3,000 a month. Latest figures show over 26,400 prisoners have been let out early in the first seven months of the scheme – with a significant number of them, around 3 per cent, sentenced to ten years or more.
To describe such people as 'low risk', as the Government does, is farcical. Judges do not sentence criminals to ten years unless they are a real danger to society.
As well as violent offenders, these could be serious drug traffickers, or people who supply guns to gangs, or fraudsters who prey on the elderly.
Not only will they have committed a serious offence, but it's very likely their record will also show a long list of previous crimes. Sentencing Council guidelines are stringent. Many judges admit privately that they would like to impose tougher penalties, but their rulings are tightly constrained by directives that must be followed. If a defendant gets ten years, it's because anything less is not safe.
Surveys show that between two-thirds and three-quarters of the public believe sentences are already too lenient. Few officers disagree with that. It is demoralising for police to put their safety on the line every day to protect society, only for the thugs and the lawbreakers to smirk as they are once again let off lightly.
And if they do get sent to jail, they have the reassurance of knowing they will probably serve less than half their sentence. That undermines the deterrent effect of prison and allows criminals to feel they've beaten the system.
It's no wonder that, when the first wave of prisoners won early release in September last year, they were blowing kisses and flicking V-signs at the cameras.
There's no way, of course, that the parole boards operating under Labour's hastily devised scheme can begin to assess each case thoroughly. With an average of 100 releases a day, seven days a week, the authorities can barely have time to shout 'Next, please!' – let alone discuss the potential risk each felon presents.
Serious issues such as mental health and past history of violence are all too likely to be overlooked. Despite this mass release, Britain's prisons are still gravely overcrowded.
Last year, the former chief inspector of prisons, Dame Anne Owers, warned the system could be only days from breakdown. Her successor, Charlie Taylor, says: 'The Government dealt with the problem not by turning off the taps but by letting out the bathwater.'
That's an understatement. To flood the streets of Britain's towns and cities with 3,000 criminals a month isn't overflow.
It's a tidal wave.