Rioters were betting on the broken prisons system, Sir Keir Starmer said, as he claimed those behind the recent unrest following the fatal Southport stabbings “exploited” the capacity crisis.
In July this year, the Labour government set out legislation to reduce the amount of time inmates must spend in jail before they are automatically released, from 50 per cent of their sentence to 40 per cent, in a bid to manage overcrowding.
The UK prime minister has now claimed the early release scheme was an essential part of the British government’s response to the riots and its ability to prosecute perpetrators of the violence.
Mr Starmer added that the decision to release prisoners early was difficult and “goes against the grain of everything I’ve ever done”, referring to his former role as chief prosecutor.
In a speech from Downing Street’s rose garden on Tuesday, he said: “Every day of that disorder, literally every day, we had to check the precise number of prison places and where those places were to make sure we could arrest, charge and prosecute people quickly.
“Not having enough prison places is about as fundamental a failure as you can get and those people throwing rocks, torching cars, making threats, they didn’t just know the system was broken, they were betting on it, gaming it.
“They thought: ‘Ah, they’ll never arrest me and if they do, I won’t be prosecuted, and if I am, I won’t get much of a sentence.’
“They saw the cracks in our society after 14 years of failure and they exploited them. That’s what we’ve inherited. Not just an economic black hole, a societal black hole, and that’s why we have to take action and do things differently.”
The legislation – which does not apply to those convicted of sex offences, terrorism, domestic abuse or some violent offences – is expected to result in 5,500 offenders being released in September and October.
On the risks of the early release scheme, Mr Starmer said: “We put in place a framework to ensure that we don’t release those who create the greatest risk, that’s a basic safeguard that we’ve had to put in.
“And I’m not pretending for one minute that this is a decision I want to make. I spent five years prosecuting people and putting them in prison. The idea of releasing people who should be in prison because the prisons are too full and we don’t have the places goes against everything I’ve worked for for years.
“But we’ve got to face facts – (the last government) haven’t built the prisons, they’ve pretended you can have longer and longer sentences, send more people to prison and at the same time you could veto or choose not to have a prison built near you.
“They were false choices, and here we are without the prison places that we need.”
Two months ago, I stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised you a government of public service.
Today, I will set out the hard work we need to do in the months ahead to fix the foundations of our country.
Watch my speech live here, from 10am.— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) August 27, 2024
Mr Starmer said that in 2011 he did not doubt that the courts could respond to the riots as needed, but added: “This time, to be honest with you, I genuinely didn’t know.”
He continued: “I didn’t want to release prisoners early, I was chief prosecutor for five years, it goes against the grain of everything I’ve ever done.
“But to be blunt, if we hadn’t taken that difficult decision immediately, we wouldn’t have been able to respond to the riots as we did.
“And if we don’t take tough action across the board, we won’t be able to fix the foundations of the country as we need.”
Mr Starmer said one of the main ways to respond to the recent riots was to ensure those involved faced the consequences “within days”, adding: “I had to create the conditions for that.”
He added he had been sitting in a Cabinet Office briefing room “with a list of prison places across the country on a day-by-day basis, trying to work out how we deal with disorder”.
