Prison staff expose 'shambles' of early release scheme as they back new plan
Almost three in five prison and probation staff (59%) are in favour of releasing prisoners early for good behaviour, polling shows.
Officers working in jails and those who monitor the release of inmates back Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood 's plans to bring in a Texas-style behaviour model. It comes as the polling also revealed some 80% of officers were against both the Tories' and Labour 's emergency early release schemes, which saw thousands urgently freed to create more jail space.
Some 87% of staff said the plans derailed day-to-day activity and 80% said work-related stress had increased since the schemes' introduction. One staff member told the survey the release plans had been a 'shambles', adding: 'It was too rushed. It did not allow sufficient time or resources for prisoners to be released safely. People were not being tagged or monitored. The whole thing was a shambles.' It comes after The Mirror's Kevin Maguire wrote: 'Labour must find engaging story for the UK - or face election wipeout'.
Another said staff members are having to take stress leave as the workload is unmanageable. 'I started this role motivated and ready to do my job but as more and more pressure is placed on us, I feel myself breaking,' they said. 'The job role, currently, is unmanageable, stressful, and ridiculous. Numerous staff members are having to take stress related sick leave, and I feel the organisation as a whole will collapse should this continue.'
Another added: 'Workload pressures on probation are immense, and without the appropriate resources to manage all the prison releases, something will go wrong, and the public are at risk of serious harm.' More than 10,000 people were released under the Tories' End of Custody Supervised Licence (ECSL) scheme, which was launched in October 2023.
Under the plan, certain prisoners were released up to 70 days early. This was increased from an initial 18-day early release, then from 35 days. The scheme was widely criticised for not giving enough time for probation services to efficiently plan for the release plans of offenders, with just a day's notice given at times.
Last September, Ms Mahmood ordered a new scheme to automatically release low-risk prisoners after serving 40% of their sentence - down from 50%. The scheme introduced exclusions for prisoners serving time for serious violent or sex offences.
The Labour government, following a major review of the system, is looking to introduce an 'earned progression' model, inspired by prisons in Texas. It would see inmates on standard sentences of up to four years released after serving a third of their time inside if they behave well.
Jon Czul, managing director at Skills for Justice, which did the report, said: 'Whilst the measures introduced last September are generally viewed as an upgrade on previous arrangements, the circumstances in which prisons and probation services were expected to implement and deliver the policy has been met with disapproval.
'For understaffed prisons and probation services, the sheer volume of prisoners needing to be processed in such a short timeframe has contributed to the sense that workloads in the sector are increasingly unmanageable.'
Ian Lawrence, general secretary of probation service trade union Napo, said: 'Decades of underinvestment in prisons meant that once breaking point came, the burden fell disproportionately on the shoulders of probation services. We cannot keep expecting probation officers to pick up the pieces.'
Skills for Justice surveyed 481 respondents in May and June 2025. Prison Officers' Association, Prison Governors' Association, Napo, Probation Institute and Community Union supported the survey data collection.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'This Government inherited prisons days from collapse and had no choice but to take decisive action to stop jails overflowing – an event that would have been cataclysmic for frontline staff.
'To ensure we never run out of prison places again, we are building 14,000 prison places and reforming sentencing so our jails reduce reoffending, cut crime, and keep victims safe.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Powys County Times
10 minutes ago
- Powys County Times
Homelessness minister must resign over rent hike after tenants' exit, Tories say
Labour's homelessness minister is facing calls to resign after reports claimed she hiked rent on a property she owns by hundreds of pounds just weeks after the previous tenants' contract ended. Four tenants who rented a house in east London from Rushanara Ali were sent an email last November saying their lease would not be renewed, which also gave them four months' notice to leave, the i Paper reported. Ms Ali's property was then re-listed with a £700 rent increase within weeks, the newspaper said. Kevin Hollinrake, the Conservative party chairman, called for the minister to stand down, accusing her of 'staggering hypocrisy' over her handling of the rental property. A spokesperson for the minister said: 'Rushanara takes her responsibilities seriously and complied with all relevant legal requirements.' The house, rented on a fixed-term contract, was put up for sale while the tenants were living there, and it was only re-listed as a rental because it had not sold, according to the i Paper. Tory frontbencher Mr Hollinrake said: 'I think it shows staggering hypocrisy. Rushanara Ali has been somebody who's obviously a Government minister in charge of homelessness. 'She's spoken out about exploiting tenants, about providing more protections to tenants. 'You can't say those things, then do the opposite in practice, as a landlord. She's got to resign.' He said the conduct appeared to be 'unethical, not illegal' but 'we can't just say one thing and do another'. Speaking to the i Paper, Ms Ali's former tenant Laura Jackson said she was one of four tenants who received an email giving four months notice to leave the property, for which they collectively paid £3,300 in rent. Ms Jackson, a self-employed restaurant owner, said she saw the house re-listed weeks after she and her fellow tenants had left, but with a rent of around £4,000. The 33-year-old told the i Paper: 'It's an absolute joke. Trying to get that much money from renters is extortion.' She also said two letting companies managing the property for Ms Ali had attempted to charge £395 in cleaning fees and £2,000 to repaint the house when they left. The tenants successfully challenged this, as landlords are prohibited from charging tenants for professional cleaning, and from repainting costs unless serious damage has occurred. A Labour voter, Ms Jackson suggested it was a 'conflict of interest' for MPs to be landlords, especially in their own constituencies. Ms Jackson declined to comment further when approached by the PA news agency but confirmed the details of the i Paper's story. The minister's actions have also faced scrutiny from rental rights campaigners, as the Government seeks to clamp down on what it sees as unfair rental practices. The Renters' Rights Bill includes measures to ban landlords who end a tenancy to sell a property from re-listing it for six months. The Bill, which is nearing its end stages of scrutiny in Parliament, will also abolish fixed-term tenancies and ensure landlords give four months' notice if they want to sell their property. Ben Twomey, chief executive of Generation Rent, described the allegations as 'shocking and a wake-up call to Government on the need to push ahead as quickly as possible to improve protections for renters'. He added: 'It is bad enough when any landlord turfs out their tenant to hike up the rent, or tries their luck with unfair claims on the deposit, but the minister responsible for homelessness knows only too well about the harm caused by this behaviour. 'These allegations highlight common practices that the Government can eradicate. 'The Renters' Rights Bill would ban landlords who evict tenants to sell the property from re-letting it within 12 months, to deter this kind of abuse – but unfortunately members of the House of Lords have voted to reduce this to six months. 'The Government can also use its review of the deposit protection system to penalise landlords who make exaggerated claims at the end of the tenancy.' Tom Darling, director at the Renters' Reform Coalition, said: 'It's mind-boggling that we have a homelessness minister who has just evicted four people in order to rake in more rent – something that will soon be illegal under the Renters' Rights Bill her own department is bringing through Parliament. 'The Government are currently considering an amendment to the legislation from the House of Lords which reduces the ban on re-letting after eviction from 12 months to six months. 'The Government must remove this amendment, and at the very least minister Ali must recuse herself from any discussions on this within Government.' Mairi MacRae, director of campaigns and policy at homelessness charity Shelter, said it 'beggars belief that after months of dither and delay, the Government's own homelessness minister has profited from the underhand tactics the Renters' Rights Bill is meant to outlaw'. Cabinet ministers lined up to defend Ms Ali when questioned about the allegations. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, speaking to broadcasters, said: 'I don't know any of the details of this but I understand that she has followed all of the rules in this case.' Chancellor Rachel Reeves said she 'didn't understand' why the Conservatives were calling for Ms Ali to resign, as she was interviewed in South Wales, saying: 'I don't know the details but Rushanara Ali seems to have done everything in accordance with the law.'
Telegraph
11 minutes ago
- Telegraph
North Sea giant to move jobs overseas as tax rate hits 111pc
Britain's biggest oil and gas producer is to move skilled jobs out of the UK after windfall taxes left it with an 111pc tax rate. Harbour Energy plans to wind down its North Sea investments and has already announced 250 job losses in Aberdeen, a city once regarded as the oil and gas capital of Europe. On Thursday, a spokesman said the company would be offering jobs in its overseas operations to suitable UK workers but most of the staff marked for redundancy would be leaving the company. It came as Harbour report half-year results that made clear the impact of the energy profits levy, or windfall tax, which was initially imposed by the Conservatives and increased under Labour. Harbour made a profit before tax of $1.6bn (£1.2bn) but faced a tax bill of $1.8bn, resulting in a post tax loss of $174m. This was largely down to UK windfall levies plus foreign exchange transactions. The report said: 'The effective tax rate for the six months ending on June 30 2025 was 111pc, compared to 85pc for the same period in 2024.' The company said the increase was 'primarily' down to a deferred tax charge resulting from Labour's decision to extend windfall taxes to 2030. Linda Cook, Harbour's chief executive, said: '[The UK] remains a challenging environment for us... the fiscal regime means investment here just finds itself hard to compete with the opportunities we have in other countries. 'Going forward, we do expect investment to decline in the UK, given the fiscal and regulatory conditions. We will still have some high return opportunities, but overall investment is likely to decline and will be replaced by investment in Norway, Argentina and, over time, Mexico. 'The UK is one of our highest countries for unit operating costs… and it's one of our highest tax environments as well. So that [UK] production will get replaced over time with production from other countries, and that's a good thing for us overall.' Focus shifts permanently from UK Last week, Donald Trump said Britain was wasting a 'treasure chest' of oil and gas. He wrote on Truth Social: 'The taxes are so high, however, that it makes no sense. They have essentially told drillers and oil companies that, 'We don't want you.'' The US president said reopening the North Sea could deliver a 'vast fortune' for the UK and 'far lower energy costs for the people!' Harbour was a primarily UK-focused oil and gas producer but has shifted its focus as successive governments imposed ever-tougher windfall taxes and climate-related drilling restrictions. Last year the company acquired the upstream operations of Germany's Wintershall Dea, giving it production centres in Norway, Argentina, Germany and Mexico. The move tripled output to 475,000 barrels of oil a day compared to the 159,000 seen in the first half of 2024, with reserves also tripled at an estimated 1.3 billion barrels. The company still operates several oil and gas production hubs in UK waters. Investment is focused on two of them, J-Area and Greater Britannia Area, in the central North Sea. However, Ashley Kelty, an analyst at Panmure Liberum investment bank, said Harbour had permanently shifted its focus from the UK to other parts of the world. Harbour also published an 'adjusted profits' figure discounting the impacts of windfall taxes, showing underlying profits of $410m, and announced a $100m share buyback programme alongside a $455m dividend for shareholders.
The Guardian
41 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘It's not a coincidence': after Ghislaine Maxwell's prison move … what next?
When Ghislaine Maxwell was transferred to a minimum security prison camp last week, despite being convicted of sex trafficking for Jeffrey Epstein, her move fueled ever-growing speculation about authorities' handling of the late financier's crimes. For many, the timing of Maxwell's sudden relocation from a Florida penitentiary to a Texas lockup known for its more campus feel and celebrity inmates was especially suspect – with two Epstein victims reportedly describing the event as a 'cover-up'. Maxwell, who was found guilty in 2021 of luring girls into Epstein's abusive world, met with the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, one week before the move. This sit-down with Blanche – who defended Donald Trump in criminal proceedings before working in his justice department – came amid extensive criticism of the president's botched release of Epstein investigative files. The Epstein scandal is once again roiling American politics with many especially focused on the exact nature of Trump's own social links to Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019. Trump had vowed on the campaign trail to release the Epstein files, a siren song to the many Maga devotees convinced that a network of elites protected Epstein and potentially participated in his sex trafficking of teen girls. But Trump's justice department then later released a memorandum stating that there was no Epstein client list and elected not to release extensive case files. Following the backtracking, several reports highlighting Trump's past ties to Epstein stoked still more suspicion. The Wall Street Journal published an article alleging that Trump contributed a 'bawdy' letter to a birthday book for Epstein. Not long after this story was published, Trump said that he had instructed the justice department to request unsealing of grand jury transcripts in Epstein and Maxwell's criminal proceedings. The newspaper on 23 July reported that his attorney general, Pam Bondi, told him that there were multiple instances of his name in the Epstein files, potentially negating whatever benefit he hoped would come from his grand jury directive. The House oversight committee on Tuesday subpoenaed Trump's justice department for Epstein investigation files, per the Associated Press – further amplifying comment surrounding Maxwell's improved prison conditions. Several longtime defense attorneys said that Maxwell's reassignment to FPC Bryan suggested she provided useful information to the justice department officials she talked with. It's also possible that this transfer foreshadows still better conditions for Maxwell – including possible release, they speculated. 'My thinking is: if it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck,' said Randy Zelin, a longtime defense attorney who has taught law at Cornell Law School. 'If someone who is in a really not nice prison gets moved to a nicer prison, there is typically a reason behind that, and it's not merely because you are the next contestant on The Price Is Right or today's your lucky day. 'It would appear to me that when Ms Maxwell was questioned under what we call a 'proffer agreement' by the government, the answers that she gave were found to be credible, they were found to be truthful and they were found to be helpful,' Zelin said. 'In exchange for her being helpful and being truthful and being candid and being cooperative, she had a [benefit] conferred upon her, which is: she's in much nicer digs than she was before she provided her help to the government.' While the Bureau of Prisons has discretion over inmate placement, Zelin surmises there was probably an agreement between the correctional agency and the justice department to move Maxwell. 'It's not a coincidence, and it's either because she's helping the Department of Justice go after other people, or she has more or less exonerated the president, and she has told the Department of Justice that she knows of absolutely nothing inappropriate, untoward or gross that took place between the president and Jeffrey Epstein,' Zelin said. Asked if one should look at Maxwell's move as a one-off, Zelin said no. 'This is the beginning, not the end.' For Sam Bassett, a criminal defense attorney with Austin, Texas-based law firm Minton, Bassett, Flores & Carsey, publicity surrounding Maxwell's meeting is particularly interesting. 'One of the things that intrigued me about the whole situation with her interview is how public it was and how public her lawyer was about it. I know that when my clients cooperate, either post conviction or even before they're convicted, it's something that I like to keep under wraps,' Bassett said. He noted that one reason for privacy surrounding meetings and cooperation is because other inmates tend to look down upon those who cooperate. 'So it really flagged to me that this was kind of a political move on a lawyer's part. It puts some pressure on the president or his staff to consider a pardon or commutation at some point.' As for Maxwell's transfer, Bassett said it could stem from security reasons – such as threats at her previous prison in Florida – or her lawyers requested a move. But it was 'unusual' that a person found culpable of such a serious crime as sex trafficking would end up in a prison camp. 'Maybe it's to be a recognition for cooperation, giving her more freedom, so to speak, in a facility,' he said, noting that a move to a lower-security facility might be considered a favor to some. 'The question is: is this a foreshadowing of bigger favors to come? Neama Rahmani, founder of West Coast Trial lawyers and a former federal prosecutor, said there were multiple possibilities behind the move. 'It could be something huge or just a mere coincidence,' Rahmani said. 'The Bureau of Prisons has complete control over inmate placement, and especially when you deal with female inmates, there's not as many facilities, so the options are more limited.' Rahmani said that sex trafficking was considered a more serious crime, a crime of violence, 'so her being moved to a minimum security camp would be atypical, but it's not unheard of'. That said, the chronology continues to raise many questions. Maxwell met with Blanche, she is vying for relief from the US supreme court, and potentially will testify before Congress. 'The timing of it all leads me to believe that maybe something big is really happening, and by something big, that has to be a cooperation, right? That's really all she has to offer.' For Maxwell, relief could take the form of prosecutors requesting a resentencing, prison officials moving her to home confinement, or a pardon. A veteran legal public relations expert, who spoke under the condition of anonymity as they have clients in federal custody, surmised Maxwell 'must have provided prosecutors with information that was valuable enough post conviction for her to warrant these more favorable sentencing conditions – and they're considerably more favorable'. 'The interesting thing to outsiders is it appears that she's a cooperating witness, though, at this point, she's cooperating against a corpse, and a corpse cannot be convicted,' they said. The public relations veteran described the Maxwell-Blanche meeting as 'part one' of a process potentially resulting in better sentencing conditions. 'Part two is the public finding out, through DoJ disclosure, what information she actually provided,' they said. 'I do think that there's going to be some mechanism for them to release what she shared – and I think what she shared was indeed favorable enough to secure these lessened conditions.' Asked for comment about Maxwell's transfer, a senior administration official said: 'Any false assertion this individual was given preferential treatment is absurd. Prisoners are routinely moved in some instances due to death threats, and significant safety and danger concerns.' Trump's justice department pointed to Blanche's tweet about his meeting with Maxwell, in which he said they 'will share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time'. Neither the Bureau of Prisons nor Maxwell's lawyer immediately responded to requests for comment.
