Around 80 people have been released from prisons in Hampshire under the ‘early-release’ scheme, the police and crime commissioner revealed.

The government’s early-release scheme for some prisoners in England and Wales began on September 10. A second tranche was due to start today, Tuesday October 22.

The scheme was an emergency measure to tackle prison overcrowding.

Eligible prisoners serving less than five years were released on licence after 40 per cent of their sentence, rather than the usual 50 per cent, and will be monitored by the Probation Service.

That means about 1,700 prisoners were freed on the first day, and the scheme is expected to create about 5,500 extra prison places in the coming months.

At a Hampshire County Council meeting (October 18), the Police and Crime Commissioner, Donna Jones, revealed that from the 1,700 released on September 10, around 80 were released in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Although “no issues” were reported to the force as a result, the commissioner said that the plan has put more pressure on the teams that manage the multi-agency public protection team, those who manage “high-risk offenders in the community”.

The Conservative commissioner said: “Those teams are made up of police officers and probation officers, and the probation officers are particularly the ones who manage those people’s caseloads.”

Mrs Jones explained that the existing officers have a heavier workload and more cases, and those out on licence are not supervised. One case in particular is in the region.

“At the moment, the existing probation officers have just got more workload and more cases to manage. Because of that, if you’re out on licence for the second half of your sentence, for a lot of people who are out on licence, there is no real supervision now because it’s just not the capacity.

“What they have had to do is to focus their capacity on the highest risk people that are in communities.

“I think we’ve had one event particularly committed, but it has been really well managed by our probation colleagues and also with some reference support from the police as well.”

Regarding the recruitment process, the PCC said that the 1,000 new probation officers to be recruited on March 31, 2025, will not be on full duty until over 12 months, putting even more pressure on the existing officers.

“Recruiting people is one thing, but training up probation officers takes a good two years […] Ultimately, it’s clearly a good thing we’re going to have more, but I don’t think we’ll see the positive impact for probably over 12 months.”