Thousands of rapists and paedophiles will be freed early from jail by the British government to ease prison overcrowding, while UK courts continue to hand out long sentences for protests and social media posts.
Labour’s early release scheme will result in more than 5,000 prisoners being set free halfway through their sentences instead of serving the current minimum of two-thirds, and the Ministry of Justice has said that without it prisons will run out of space in November.
That number includes 2,462 sex offenders, 100 of those being rapists jailed for more than 15 years, according to analysis by the Conservative Party based on official sex crime sentence statistics, The Telegraph reported.
Almost 9,000 victims have been notified that offenders connected to their cases may be released sooner than originally planned, sparking outrage in the UK, and a petition to exclude violent sex offenders from the scheme launched by a woman who was raped as a teenager has been signed by 85,000 people.
The early releases are due to begin on September 1, but some sex offenders are already being released early, with GB News reporting on Sunday that three Pakistani rape gang members had been set free after serving less than half of their sentences.
During a parliamentary debate on July 7, Conservative MP Robbie Moore read out comments from Sarah Wilson, a survivor of child sexual exploitation who received one of the victim notification letters.
“I feel that all my hard work fighting for that little girl I used to be has been thrown back in my face like it was all for nothing,” she said.
“I’m scared that in a couple of years I could potentially see some of my perpetrators back on the same streets they abused me on.”
Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy said the government “could have moved faster on deportation and freed up those places”, and Conservative MP Sir John Hayes asked why emergency prison places had not been considered.
Ministry of Justice figures show that foreign nationals accounted for 10,487 prisoners, 12% of the prison population, as of March 2026.
Labour MP Paula Barker also questioned how “releasing dangerous sexual predators and grooming gang members fits with our manifesto commitment to halve violence against women and girls”.
Under-Secretary of State for Justice Jake Richards responded by saying the prison system in England and Wales would fall apart without the early release scheme.
“This is ultimately the choice: either strict licence conditions in the community for those who have already served time in prison under the changes; or, simply put, the collapse of the system altogether,” he said.
He added that the government would invest “a further £100 million” to expand offender monitoring, and said in an earlier debate that “no space in prisons would mean no trials, no justice for victims and no punishment for offenders”.
But the early release scheme was signed into law at the same time as right-wing protesters and social media users were being thrown in jail for years over online posts and participation in demonstrations.
In June the same 10 men who joined protests against the police handling of the murder of Henry Nowak were jailed for between two and three and a half years, while others have been given long sentences for anti-immigration X posts, anti-Semitic X posts, and possessing “extreme right-wing” music.
Header image: Rape gang members Ismail Haji, his brother, Imran Haji, and Ibrahim Kola who were all released early (West Yorkshire Police).
