50,000 prisoners to be freed early in bid to tackle overcrowded jails

Almost 50,000 prisoners have been granted early release from jails across England and Wales under a government scheme designed to ease overcrowding.

Ministry of Justice data reveals that 48,931 inmates had been freed by the end of September 2025.

This initiative was launched as an emergency measure on 10 September 2024, shortly after the prison population soared to a record 88,521.

The scheme permits eligible individuals to be released after serving just 40 per cent of their fixed-term sentence, a reduction from the standard 50 per cent.

A total of 44,108 of the 48,931 early releases (90.1%) were British nationals, 4,733 (9.7%) were foreign nationals and 90 (0.2%) had no nationality recorded.

The age group accounting for the greatest proportion of early releases was 30 to 39-year-olds (18,425, or 37.7%), followed by 40 to 49-year-olds (11,524, or 23.6%).

Some 14,381 of prisoners released early (29.4%) were serving sentences of six months or under, with a further 6,989 (14.3%) serving sentences of between six and 12 months.

HMP Humber in Brough, near Hull, has released the highest number of inmates so far under the scheme (1,459), followed by Fosse Way in Leicester (1,335), Berwyn in Wrexham (1,278) and Altcourse in Liverpool (1,087).

The current scheme for the early release of prisoners replaced a separate scheme introduced by the previous Conservative government.

Under this separate process, 13,325 prisoners in England and Wales were freed early between October 17 2023 and September 9 2024.

The Labour Government has pledged to create 14,000 new prison places by 2031.

An additional 2,900 places have been created so far, justice minister Jake Richards told the Commons on Thursday.

A further 5,000 places are already under construction, including category B HMP Welland Oaks in Leicestershire.

Separate data released by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) on Thursday shows there were 12,836 recalls to custody in July to September 2025 of offenders who had breached the conditions of their release.

This is up 29% on the equivalent period in 2024 (9,975) and a jump of 83% on the same period in 2023 (7,030).

Recalls are at a “historically high” level, the MoJ said, and the rise is “likely to be associated” with the Government’s early release scheme that began in September 2024.

It also attributed the rise to a change in the law introduced by the Conservative government in April 2024, which implemented fixed-term recalls and automatic release after 14 days in prison on recall for most offenders.

“The combined effect expected from these changes is an increased number of offenders released on licence and therefore more opportunities for offenders to be recalled,” the MoJ added.

The Government has also published an update of the nationality of people in prison in England and Wales.

Of the 85,613 prisoners on December 31 2025, 74,974 (87.6%) were British.

The next largest nationality was Albanian (944 prisoners, or 1.1% of the total), followed by Irish (679, 0.8%), Polish (677, 0.8%), Romanian (658, 0.8%) and Indian (389, 0.5%).

There were 10,376 foreign nationals in prisons at the end of December, down from 10,737 at the end of September but higher than 10,355 a year earlier in December 2024.

The proportion of the total prison population who are foreign nationals is unchanged year on year, at 12.1%.

This figure has remained around 12% for much of the past decade, reaching 12.5% in June 2021.