Sir Keir Starmer has been warned Labour is “rolling the dice” by releasing thousands of banged-up Britons next month in a bid to tackle overcrowding in prisons.
Ex-Parole Board Chief Executive Martin Jones, who now heads up the probation service, also claimed staff monitoring ex-convicts do not have the resources to cope with the move.
Jones accepted there were “no risk-free options” but argued the move would put further strain on the probation service.
“I think it’s inevitable, being realistic about it, that things will go wrong,” he told The Times.
Sir Keir Starmer has been warned Labour are “rolling the dice” by releasing thousands of banged up Britons next month in a bid to tackle overcrowding in prisonsPA“I wish we could live in a perfect world where that doesn’t happen.
“What I think you should, you should start to see, at least, is that if people have to focus on those, that they start to identify where things go wrong, and they draw lessons from that quite quickly.”
Jones added: “I also think there’s a little bit of a numbers game to some extent, you’re rolling the dice all the time in relation to serious further offences.
“You know, ultimately, if you release thousands of people, a number of those cases will ultimately, sadly, there will be things that will go wrong.”
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A prison officer watches prisoners as they collect their medicationGETTYThousands of prisoners will leave prison early from September 10 after Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood last month revealed inmates some inmates would only need to serve 40 per cent of their stretch.
An estimated 2,000 prisoners serving sentences of less than five years will be released on September 10.
A further 1,700 will leave jail on October 22 after serving sentences of more than five years.
The announcement will put further pressure on the Probation Service which is already monitoring 240,000 offenders.
Riots broke out in the UK Getty However, Jones conceded the eight-week notice period ensured the Probation Service “at least [has] a fighting chance of getting this right”.
Sir Keir Starmer prides himself on standing up for the rule of law, having served as head of the Crown Prosecution Service.
He also ramped up efforts to bang up Britons involved in violent riots between July 30 and August 5.
The riots resulted in more than 1,100 arrests, with over 700 people charged.
The Ministry of Justice defended its decision to accelerate the release of certain convicts, highlighting plans to recruit an extra 1,000 trainee officers.
However, the new recruits will not likely join in time given it takes at least nine months to fully train a probation officer.
Sir Keir Starmer
PA
The Probation Service is also struggling to retain staff and faces criticism for maintaining its three-days-a-week face-to-face work.
However, an MoJ spokesman said: “The new Government inherited a prison system in crisis, which is putting pressure on the wider justice system, particularly probation staff.
“Because of this, the Government has been forced into taking difficult but necessary action so it can keep locking up dangerous criminals and protect the public.
“The new Lord Chancellor announced in July that she was scrapping the old early release scheme introduced by the previous Government and replacing it with a system which gives probation staff more time to prepare for a prisoner’s release.
“The Government has also set out plans to recruit over 1,000 new trainee probation officers by March 2025 to meet additional demand.”
