Prime Minister Andy Burnham has ordered Justice Secretary Alex Norris to find a way to prevent the early release of grooming gang offenders and the killers of PC Andrew Harper, as ministers face mounting pressure over a loophole in the government’s new prison release rules.
Burnham is reportedly “increasingly confident” that a solution can be found and has demanded that options be presented to Parliament when it returns next month, despite officials warning that blocking the release of Harper’s killers could prove legally difficult.
Around 5,000 prisoners in England and Wales are expected to be released early from October to ease severe prison overcrowding. The government reduced the number from about 6,000 after excluding rapists, serious child sex offenders and those convicted of grooming offences from the new sentencing arrangements.
However, the exclusions are largely based on the specific offences recorded in convictions, creating a potential loophole for offenders involved in historical child sexual exploitation cases.
Some abuse took place before sexual offences legislation was strengthened in 2003, meaning perpetrators were prosecuted under older laws such as indecent assault. Such convictions may not fall within the categories excluded from early release, despite the underlying crimes involving the sexual abuse of children.
The government is urgently reviewing potentially affected cases, including five men jailed in 2005 for abusing a teenage girl in Bradford. Others include Ajaz Karim, jailed for 21 months in 2024 for abusing a 13-year-old girl, and Shahid Hussain, sentenced to eight years for assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Rotherham.
Burnham had previously been presented with two options that would have prevented the release: excluding prisoners sentenced to more than 10 years or applying a seven-year threshold. However, both approaches could also have kept other prisoners, including some sex offenders with shorter sentences, in jail.
Instead, the government chose an offence-based model, meaning Harper’s killers remained eligible.
Burnham has now asked officials to explore an exemption for killers of emergency workers, although Downing Street has acknowledged this could face a legal challenge because there is no specific offence of manslaughter against an emergency worker. The only straightforward way to prevent their release could be to exclude all prisoners convicted of manslaughter.
Officials are also examining wider measures, including repurposing prison capacity, accelerating deportations of foreign offenders and electronically monitoring some prisoners.
