Prison service 'now in crisis' as system is 'understaffed, underinvested in and overwhelmed'

Nick Smart, the president of the Police Superintendents' Association (PSA) has joined the growing number of voices to criticise the Government's early release scheme.

The subject has become the centrepoint of criminal justice discussion after it emerged two people who killed Thames Valley Police’s PC Andrew Harper – Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers – were set to be released early.

Cole and Bowers remain eligible for early release after their convictions for manslaughter a year later. They were both given 13-year sentences, and are eligible to be released halfway through.

But a growing number of voices have been highly criticial of the scheme, including Mr Smart who said the situation facing prisons across the nation is “deeply concerning, and a dangerous and damaging result of the chronic underfunding of the criminal justice system”.

He continued: “We face the exceptionally traumatic situation in which victims of horrendous and deeply harmful offences are seeing the perpetrators of their crimes being released early, and ultimately failing to see true justice.

“We, along with many others, have called for an overhaul of the criminal justice system for years. We were promised a Royal Commission seven years ago, which never happened. This has not been a priority for over a decade, and has been allowed to decline into the state it is now.

“We are now in crisis. Every part of the system is understaffed, underinvested in, and overwhelmed by demand. It is not working in harmony and the public and victims deserve better.

“The early release scheme does nothing to instil confidence in the criminal justice system within the general public, and it is likely that police will face the brunt of this as the visible side of this system. This loss of confidence will be hard to turn around.

“We support calls for anyone who is serving a sentence linked to an offence against an emergency service worker to not be considered for early release, in the same way as those convicted of the most serious crimes.

“As colleagues in probation services struggle with their workloads and as prisons struggle to fully prepare offenders for release without the correct resources to do so, police will be expected to pick up the pieces.

“Whilst this is damaging for our already over-stretched service, it is the impact on victims and survivors that should cause us the most concern. It is hard to imagine what they must be going through when knowing their offenders are being released far earlier than their sentence dictated. They have been let down.

“Again, our call is clear. Police reform must happen and is being progressed, but it cannot happen in isolation. Reform of our entire criminal justice system is essential and must happen now.”

A petition aiming to reverse the decision to release PC Harper’s killers early has now been signed by 500,000 people in just over 48 hours.

TVP’s Chief Constable, Jason Hogg, also said he was receiving legal advice on whether the force could join a legal challenge mooted by the local Police Federation to prevent their release.

While the Government announced on Monday that some crimes would be exempted, including rape, serious sexual abuse of children and grooming gang offences, other criminals are still due to be released earlier than scheduled.

The policy has been brought in as prison capacity has been put under severe strain, and fears that courts may not be able to jail offenders if the crisis continues.

On Tuesday, Justice Secretary Alex Norris said families affected by the scheme are “carrying the can” for failures of previous Conservative governments.