Met chief: Starmer's early release scheme will lead to more crime
Sir Keir Starmer's early release schemes for prisoners will lead to more crime, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has warned.
Sir Mark Rowley said a proportion of offenders who would otherwise remain in prison would commit 'further offences' if they are freed early under the Ministry of Justice's (MoJ) shake-up of sentencing.
The Met Commissioner called for extra funding, and said the Government had not assessed the impact the early release scheme would have on policing those who could be freed as little as a third of the way through their sentences.
'A proportion of those who would have been in prison will be committing further offences because probation can't do a perfect job. It's impossible. That extra offending is work that police have to do to protect communities,' Sir Mark said.
'That involves more arrests, more cases, we'll get more prison recalls. We're the agency tasked with chasing around offenders who don't want to be caught, and using all our covert tactics and surveillance teams to find people who are now at large and a risk to communities. So this will generate a lot of work for the police.'
His comments come days after police chiefs wrote to Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, warning of the need for extra resources for police and probation to cope with the early release of thousands more prisoners.
They said there would be a surge in reoffending by freed prisoners unless Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, provided more funding for probation officers in her spending review, which is set to take place on June 11. They feared the plans could be 'of net detriment to public safety'.
Up to 43,000 criminals are set to avoid prison each year under government plans to combat jail overcrowding, according to an analysis of official figures by The Telegraph.
The criminals, including burglars, shoplifters and knife offenders, will instead face community sentences under the plans to scrap most jail terms of under 12 months.
The analysis also reveals that up to 1,500 killers, rapists and other serious offenders will be eligible for early release each year if they behave well under the shake-up, which is designed to free up nearly 10,000 prison spaces.
Up to a further 28,600 offenders on standard determinate sentences will be eligible for release as little as a third of the way through their sentences, depending on behaviour.
However, Sir Mark said that while an extra £700 million had been earmarked for probation, there had been no impact analysis of the sentencing reforms on the police, which could cost forces 'hundreds of millions'.
'They've done no analysis on the impact on policing. No analysis of that whatsoever. So that has been settled without any analysis of the impact on policing, the effect on us,' he said.
'Every time you put an offender into the community, a proportion of them will commit crime, and a portion of them will need chasing down by the police,' he said.
Sir Mark said police chiefs had asked the MoJ for data on the types of offenders to be released early 'to help us respond to the extra demand on communities '.
He was among six senior police chiefs who warned Sir Keir Starmer that without significant extra funding, he will fail to deliver his crime pledges to halve knife crime, reduce violence against women and girls and recruit 13,000 extra officers.
He said that while the Government's pledges on law and order were 'balanced and sensible', they were also 'very, very ambitious'.
Sir Mark added: 'We're carrying the scar tissue of years of austerity cuts, and the effects of that. Forces are much smaller, when you compare the population they're policing, than they were a decade or 15 years ago.'
However, he insisted that police forces were 'not just asking for more money', but wanted 'radical reform' as well.
He said: 'We think there should be fewer police organisations across the country that can be more efficient, more capable. We need a proper national police agency that helps co-ordinate things.
'So we're up for change, we're up for doing things differently, we're up for radically reforming. But it also needs more money, because policing is a people game.'
A MoJ spokesman said: 'This Government inherited prisons in crisis, close to collapse. We will never put the public at risk by running out of prison places again.
'We are building new prisons, on track for 14,000 places by 2031 – the largest expansion since the Victorians. Our sentencing reforms will force prisoners to earn their way to release or face longer in jail for bad behaviour, while ensuring the most dangerous offenders can be kept off our streets.
'We will also increase probation funding by up to £700 million by 2028-29 to tag and monitor tens of thousands more offenders in the community.'
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