Labour was last night accused of a cynical election ploy after scrapping its controversial early release scheme for prisoners only weeks before polling day.
Jack Straw announced the ending of the scheme, which has resulted in nearly 80,000 offenders walking free 18 days before their sentence reaches its halfway point.
The policy was introduced to ease overcrowding, but the Justice Secretary said a rise in prison places meant it was now ‘safe’ to do away with it.
However, his department also slipped out separate plans to release more prisoners on bail and electronic tags.
The Conservatives seized on the announcement as evidence that Labour was electioneering and accused ministers of ‘rebranding’ the early release scheme under a different name.
Known officially as End of Custody Licence, the scheme has been contentious since its introduction in 2007.
Prisoners set free early have allegedly carried out 1,512 offences including three murders, and rapes and assaults.
The system covered all prisoners sentenced to less than four years, excluding serious violent and sexual offenders and terrorists.
Mr Straw told MPs yesterday that it would be scrapped from March 12 – with no more prisoners released under the scheme from April 10.
He admitted that it had been ‘inherently unsatisfactory and potentially damaging to public confidence in justice’.
The Justice Secretary said the prisons were currently ‘close to capacity’ but insisted that there were now enough spaces to scrap it.
He told the Commons: ‘ECL was introduced as a temporary measure. I have always said that we would end it as soon as we could.’
Mr Straw added that extra spaces had been made available as a result of the Government’s building programme.
Meanwhile, in a written answer, Mr Straw’s junior minister, Maria Eagle, revealed that the Government had awarded a new contract to allow prisoners to serve out their sentences at home rather than in prison.
She said the prime aim of the deal was ‘to enable the courts and prison governors to make greater use of conditional bail and early release on home detention curfew’.
Ministers are reported to be keen to blunt an expected assault by the Conservatives on their law and order policies during the election campaign.
Tory justice spokesman Dominic Grieve said ‘the timing of the end of the scheme’, only weeks before an election, ‘confirms our fears that the Government is acting out of political desperation, not the national interest’.
He asked: ‘Is the Justice Secretary talking tough on crime before the election, to make it tough on us after?’
He claimed government officials expected prison capacity to be exceeded by June 2011 and predicted a ‘crisis of overcrowding’ within two years.
He said: ‘On this side of the House we want an end to early release, but it would compound the very recklessness of the scheme to end it when it can only be done temporarily, or to reintroduce it under another name.’
He accused ministers of ‘ giving with one hand’ and taking away with the other.
There are now 83,820 prisoners held in jails in England and Wales, and an ‘operational capacity’ of 86,324.
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