Andy Burnham has given the go-ahead for two of the men convicted in the killing of PC Andrew Harper to be freed from prison earlier than their original sentences allowed, a decision that has drawn sharp criticism from the murdered officer’s widow and from senior police figures.
Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole were sentenced to 13 years in 2020 after being found guilty of manslaughter over the death of PC Harper, who was dragged to his death by a car in August 2019 while responding to a report of a stolen quad bike near Sulhamstead, Berkshire.
Under the terms of the release scheme now confirmed by the Prime Minister, the pair could be let out of custody having served roughly half of their sentence, meaning both could be back in the community before the end of this year. A third man convicted over the killing, Henry Long, remains outside the scope of the early-release provisions.
The announcement follows weeks of scrutiny after reporting revealed that Bowers and Cole stood to qualify for release after around six and a half years behind bars, a disclosure that had forced Burnham to temporarily halt the release of thousands of other offenders while ministers reconsidered the policy.
As part of that reconsideration, Burnham has now excluded rapists and those convicted of serious sexual offences against children, including offenders linked to grooming gangs, from qualifying for early release, a concession made, he said, in direct response to pressure from campaigners, victims and MPs. However, that carve-out does not extend to manslaughter convictions, leaving PC Harper’s killers still eligible.
Lissie Harper, the officer’s widow, condemned the outcome in the strongest terms, describing it as a “betrayal” and telling reporters she was “beyond appalled” that the men who killed her husband would soon walk free. She said the killers had shown no remorse and argued that releasing them early amounted to an insult on top of an already lenient sentence, adding that she did not feel able to forgive the decision.
PC Harper’s mother, Debbie Adlam, said she learned of the Government’s decision directly from Justice Secretary Alex Norris, who she said acknowledged privately that the situation was unjust even as the policy went ahead regardless. She said the move made a mockery of the circumstances of her son’s death and vowed to keep fighting it.
Thames Valley Police Chief Constable Jason Hogg was also strongly critical, noting that under the law introduced in PC Harper’s name following his death, anyone convicted of the same offence today would face a life sentence with no possibility of early release, calling the situation demoralising for police officers across the country.
Writing in the pages of a national newspaper, Burnham defended the decision as the outer limit of what he could offer without risking a collapse of the prison system, warning that overcrowded jails could otherwise leave police unable to make arrests and courts unable to process new offenders. He also confirmed he had asked Norris to examine releasing more women from custody early, citing their generally lower risk profile, and called for a review of prisoners still held under the now-abolished Imprisonment for Public Protection scheme.
Downing Street said future releases under the scheme would come with mandatory electronic tagging and stricter supervision requirements.
The Conservatives dismissed the changes as insufficient. Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy said the policy still amounted to freeing thousands of offenders, including killers and paedophiles, calling it one of the defining failures of Burnham’s early premiership. The government has pointed to a pledge to build 14,000 additional prison places by 2031 as a longer-term fix for overcrowding, which official figures show reached 72 per cent of capacity last year, up from 63 per cent two years earlier.
Norris defended the revised policy, saying ministers had listened to victims and gone further than originally planned to protect them, while acknowledging that decisions of this kind were never ones a minister would want to make.
