Prime Minister excludes all manslaughter convictions from Labour’s controversial early release scheme, following mass public backlash.
Two men convicted over the death of PC Andrew Harper will remain behind bars, after Prime Minister Andy Burnham reversed plans that would have allowed them to walk free ahead of schedule. The decision marks a significant U-turn on the early release policy first put forward under Sir Keir Starmer, and comes after more than a million members of the public signed a petition demanding the killers serve their full terms.
Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole were sentenced to 13 years in 2020 for the manslaughter of the 28-year-old officer, who was dragged for over a mile along rural roads after becoming entangled in a tow rope. Reporting by the Telegraph last month first disclosed that the pair were among roughly 6,000 prisoners who stood to benefit from the scheme, which would have let them leave custody after serving either half or as little as a third of their sentences, rather than the usual two-thirds or 40 per cent.
From Partial Exemption to Blanket Ban
Labour had originally agreed to exclude around 1,000 offenders convicted of rape and child sexual offences from the early release scheme, but manslaughter convictions were not initially covered. That position shifted sharply after police leadership across the country, alongside rank-and-file officers and the wider public, pushed back against the omission.
Burnham has now gone considerably further than the earlier compromise suggested. Under the revised plan, anyone convicted of manslaughter in any form, including cases involving provocation as a partial defence, as well as those convicted of causing death by dangerous driving, indecent assault, or causing or allowing the death of a child, will be barred from early release altogether.
According to the Prime Minister, officials spent the summer examining every possible avenue before settling on a formula that would keep Harper’s killers, along with several hundred other offenders, in custody. He acknowledged that the decision was not straightforward, noting that those affected by the change had, in many cases, genuinely harmed others, but said he felt it made no sense to release such offenders early while others convicted of comparably serious crimes were not.
The indecent assault exemption is understood to close a separate loophole affecting historical child grooming cases prosecuted before 2003, when such abuse was sometimes charged as indecent assault rather than under later legislation, which would otherwise have allowed some of those offenders to qualify for early release too.
Prison Capacity Concerns
The broadened exemptions are expected to keep around 500 additional offenders in prison who would otherwise have been released early, bringing the number of the roughly 6,000 total early release candidates down to about 4,500, who will still be freed in stages over the coming ten months beginning in October.
The change adds further strain to a prison system already close to capacity, with only around 1,600 spare places currently available across men’s prisons in England and Wales, which are running at 98 per cent occupancy. To offset the pressure, ministers say they intend to accelerate the deportation of foreign national offenders, expand capacity within existing prisons, and phase out the imprisonment for public protection (IPP) sentence, an indefinite jail term used in the 2000s that was formally abolished in 2012 but never applied retrospectively, leaving more than 2,000 people still serving these sentences today. The Ministry of Justice is expected to review the roughly 2,271 remaining IPP cases with a view to release or resentencing, though officials caution that any change will require new legislation.
Downing Street also signalled it would look at expanding community-based punishments to relieve pressure on the prison estate, including reducing the number of young offenders and pregnant women or mothers of young children held in custody. Separately, the government plans to introduce powers early next year allowing some foreign offenders to be deported immediately after sentencing, with lifetime re-entry bans, in a system that currently holds more than 10,000 foreign nationals, roughly one in eight of the total prison population.
Reaction From the Harper Family
Debbie Adlam, PC Harper’s mother, welcomed the reversal but said the fight had, in effect, only restored the position her family held before the early release scheme was ever proposed. She called for a broader review of sentencing policy, arguing that recent legislative changes have weakened the justice system, including an expansion of eligibility for suspended sentences to cover offences carrying jail terms of up to three years. She said she believed the country needed stronger deterrents and tougher sentencing overall.
PC Harper’s widow, Lissie Harper, has campaigned publicly against her husband’s killers being released early, previously describing the prospect as unacceptable.
Justice Secretary Alex Norris is due to set out the full details of the revised scheme in a statement to Parliament on Tuesday. Burnham said the government would pair the changes with stricter post-release supervision, including electronic tagging and, for the first time, formal exclusion zones preventing offenders from approaching their victims.
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