Britain’s prisons are full. The solution has sparked outrage

London — For weeks, British media has thrummed with warnings from almost every group connected with the country’s criminal justice system. Probation officers are threatening strike action. Victims’ rights groups worry that victims aren’t adequately protected.

Prison governors warn of prisons acting as a “revolving door.” Beset by persistent prison overcrowding, the criminal justice system in England and Wales is in the throes of a years-long crisis. And it has been thrust into the spotlight by a controversial measure starting Thursday which will see thousands of prisoners released early, simultaneously underscoring the urgency of the problem and the political minefield constraining any attempts to alleviate it. “You’re running the whole system hot, and that means there is no room for error,” said Pia Sinha, a former prison governor who now leads the Prison Reform Trust, a UK charity.

“It’s kind of the equivalent of knowing you don’t have any hospital spaces and you’ve got an epidemic looming,” she told CNN, pointing out that any major event or riots would place near-unbearable pressure on prisons. For newly installed Prime Minister Andy Burnham, the public backlash to the policy represented his first real political test as he sought to balance criticism from grieving families with the realities on the ground. Pia Sinha, director of the Prison Reform Trust, is a former prison governor.

Geoff Pugh/Shutterstock Current government figures estimate that prisons, which hovered somewhere between 97% and 98% capacity last month, will fill up by November without urgent action. The reforms were passed by the UK’s previous prime minister Keir Starmer who aimed to give the system some headroom. As part of this, most of those serving a standard prison sentence will be released earlier than initially planned.

Adults convicted of less serious offences will be freed after a third of their sentence (rather than 40% or halfway through); others will be released after serving half of their sentence (instead of two thirds). Prisoners will be released “on license,” equivalent to being on parole, and those convicted of the most serious crimes are excluded from the reforms. “We’ve heard from victims who’ve become very unwell as a result of hearing that news,” said Claire Waxman, the independent Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, a government-appointed post which represen…