Early release scheme saves drug dealers up to 18 months in jail
DRUG dealers are set to be released up to 18 months early from prison under Labour’s scheme to tackle the jail overcrowding crisis.
Possession with intent to supply class A drugs such as cocaine and heroin carries a maximum penalty of 16 years in jail. Under the current rules, any drug dealer convicted of intent to supply can expect to be automatically released from jail halfway through their sentence with the remainder spent on licence in the community.
The early release scheme announced by Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, last week will reduce the time spent in jail for such drug dealers from 50 per cent to 40 per cent of their sentence. This would mean up to 18 months less time spent in jail. The scheme will also apply to burglars, who could be released from jail up to 16 months earlier than at present, as well as fraudsters and people convicted of bribery.
Drug dealers, burglars and fraudsters are eligible because the scheme applies to what are known as “standard determinate sentences”, where offenders are given a fixed time to serve in jail by the courts and an automatic release date at the halfway mark. More serious offenders who have to serve two-thirds of their sentence in jail and those who will be released only after a parole board decision are excluded and are not therefore eligible under the scheme.
Also excluded are criminals convicted of violence and jailed for more than four years, sex crimes, terrorism and offences linked to domestic abuse such as assaults of a partner, coercive control, non-fatal strangulation, suffocation and breaches of protection or restraining orders.
Domestic burglary carries a maximum prison sentence of 14 years, which would mean potential release up to 16 months early.
The same would apply to possession of class B and class C drugs with intent to supply, which also carry a maximum jail sentence of 14 years. Conspiracy to defraud and bribery carry maximum sentences of 10 years, which could mean release up to 12 months early.
Government sources said some of the jailed offenders would still be barred from the scheme because they would have been found guilty of other crimes of violence which would exclude them.
Ms Mahmood admitted on Friday that the early release of prisoners jailed for offences of violence, burglary and robbery is a risk to public safety.
In a speech at Five Wells prison in Wellingborough, she said she had no option because of the risk the prison crisis could collapse the criminal justice system within weeks, leading to the “total breakdown of civil law and order”.
“I do not take this decision lightly. I fully understand there is risk attached with doing so but to disguise reality and delay further, like my predecessors did, is unconscionable and will lead to disaster. I will not let that happen,” she said.
“I understand that people may feel worried. But we are taking every precaution that is available to us. Let me be clear, this is an emergency measure. This is not a permanent change.”