Inmates will earn points by taking part in workshops to cut jail time in latest prison reform

Prisoners could have their time behind bars reduced if they behave well and take part in workshops.

In new reforms modelled on the US state of Texas, prisoners can reduce the time they serve in jail by earning credit for good behaviour. They also win points by participating in courses aimed at tackling the underlying causes of offending.

Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood plans to visit the US state later this year to see how Britain could emulate its success in reducing its high prison population and rate of reoffending.

Prisons minister Lord Timpson is also understood to be looking at whether schemes could be implemented in England and Wales, where prisoners’ release dates are determined in part by the risk they pose to the public.

The prison population hit a record high of 88,521 earlier this month before the government’s emergency early release measures came into effect. They were introduced to ease an overcrowding crisis that at one point over the summer left just 83 places available in prisons.

In 2007, Texas faced a prisons crisis similar to conditions in Britain today, with jails at capacity but the state was projecting it would need an additional 17,000 beds over the next five years, costing $2billion to build and operate.

Instead of building new prisons, Republican governor Rick Perry launched a cross-party committee to find a way of sending fewer people to prison and to cut the reoffending rate.

It led to hundreds of millions of dollars being invested in the drug treatment, education and vocational programmes that prisoners underwent to earn time off their sentences.

It significantly improved the quality of the courses and boosted participation rates and their effect on reoffending.

The state also invested a significant amount into diversionary schemes aimed at preventing individuals falling into criminal behaviour in the first place and alternative punishments to custodial sentences.

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It comes after around 37 offenders who were prosecuted using old harassment law have been released in error as part of the Government’s early release scheme.

Mahmood cut temporarily the proportion of sentences which inmates must serve behind bars from 50 per cent to 40 per cent during the summer.

This exempted some offenders from the scheme if their crimes were linked with stalking, controlling or coercive behaviours in an intimate or family relationship, non-fatal strangulation and suffocation, and breach of restraining order.

However, the technical glitch affected breach of a restraining order cases prosecuted using the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, after its replacement, the Sentencing Act, was passed in 2020.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said: “Clearly public safety is always the Government’s first priority. When the Government came into office we were facing a paralysis of the criminal justice system and the Government had to take action. There were exemptions and safeguards put in place in relation to blocking the earlier release of offenders.

“We’re working with the police urgently to return the people that you refer to who were sentenced using outdated legislation. They’ve all been monitored since their release so they will be brought back into prison.”

Liberal Democrat justice spokesman Josh Babarinde described the mistake as “deeply shocking news” adding “the public deserves immediate action so that all those who were mistakenly released from prison are swiftly returned, and to prevent this from happening again.

“The Conservatives have neglected our criminal justice system, and now the chaos of their actions is showing.”

Reform MP for South Basildon and East Thurrock James McMurdock said: “I wrote to the Home Secretary before the release, urging her to protect our streets, and our taxpayer, by deporting the 10,000 foreign criminals in prison. Instead, we have seen dangerous criminals wrongly released onto our streets with some already re-offending.

“It’s blindingly obvious that Labour are already failing to keep our streets safe. The Tories created this mess and Labour have just exacerbated it. Only one party is serious about enforcing law and order on our streets and deporting the foreign criminals in our prisons and that’s Reform.”