Kemi Badenoch urges Andy Burnham to scrap early prisoner release scheme

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has urged Prime Minister Andy Burnham to scrap the early prisoner release scheme, after it was paused for an urgent review. She called for emergency legislation to stop the release of hundreds of prisoners before 2 September, saying only that could keep violent offenders inside.

Badenoch appeared at a press conference with women who were sexually abused as children. One of them, Jade Belgrove, delivered a box of signatures to Downing Street. The victims said the scheme puts survivors at risk and that offenders should not leave prison a day before the sentence promised in court. "Prime Minister Andy Burnham should revoke the commencement order now and then work with us for emergency legislation to stop this release before the 2nd of September," Belgrove said.

Speaking alongside the women, Badenoch said: "We are not the government. They are releasing a category of prisoners, killers, rapists and paedophiles, who have never ever been released before." She accepted that earlier early release schemes existed, but said they did not cover this category. She also set out three proposals: build more prisons, rent prison spaces abroad and remove foreign offenders to prisons in their home countries. No further detail was given.

The government says offenders deemed the most dangerous are automatically blocked from early release. Last week, Burnham paused the scheme for urgent review after complaints from victims and survivors. But many women who received a letter in June telling them the perpetrator in their case might be released early do not feel they have time to pause. One said the pause was "just pausing the outrage" and giving the situation time to calm down. Another said: "There has been no process and there's been zero support."

The political context is difficult. In 2024, an independent report attributed the prison capacity crisis to the failure of successive governments to match the number of prison places with policies such as sentencing. Badenoch was asked whether repeated votes for longer sentences had contributed to overcrowding. She said: "We didn't build enough prison spaces." She added that sentencing and prison capacity go hand in hand and that more prison space was needed for those policies to function effectively. She did not row back on longer sentences, but accepted the two issues were linked.

Frontline criminal justice figures warned that there are no easy answers. A probation union representative from NAPO, a former prison governor and the deputy national chair of the Police Federation in England and Wales said the system had suffered from 30 years of underinvestment. They said the government recognised that without action there could be a shortfall of 7,000 to 10,000 prison places by 2028. New legislation will change early release rules from September, reducing some sentences, but with caveats. Those caveats do not cover all the victims' concerns.

One police representative said he would stop all early releases, but that this would not solve the crisis. He pointed to a backlog of 80,000 outstanding court cases and said that as many people as are released will end up back in prison. A former prison governor said politicians must be decisive. Dithering, he warned, leaves a "no man's land" of frustrated prison staff and overcrowded jails with rising violence. He personally disliked early releases, but said "something has to give."

The row leaves Burnham under pressure from victims and the opposition to stop the releases, while prison and probation staff warn that the system cannot absorb more pressure without serious consequences.