Another 1,100 criminals are being freed from prison this week after serving just 40% of their sentences rather than the typical—and already too lenient—50%.
Around 2,000 inmates—including serious sexual offenders—were released in just one day in September as part of Labour prime minister Keir Starmer’s drive to free up prison spaces. Many were photographed grinning, or even popping champagne, as they walked out the gates long before they should have.
Drug dealers and fraudsters will be among this second batch to be released on Tuesday, according to The Times, whose reporters have “been told” that the impact of new sentencing measures will not reduce the demand for prison spaces until at least spring 2026.
It hasn’t helped that at the same time as it has released sexual offenders, drug pushers, and con men, the British state has also been handing lengthy prison sentences to individuals who lashed out online in the wake of the Southport stabbing, which left three young girls dead and others seriously injured, and the subsequent riots.
Lucy Connolly, a 41-year-old childminder, was last week sentenced to nearly two-and-a-half years in prison after she posted the following message on social media.
Mass deportation now … set fire to all the f*****g hotels full of the b******s for all I care.
In August, a 53-year-old woman was also handed a 15-month jail sentence after calling on Facebook for a mosque to “be blown up with the adults inside.”
Spiked columnist Tim Black said the fact “that these individuals have expressed vile sentiments is not in doubt,” but while “the locking up of these individuals for their cretinous social-media activity will make Labour’s authoritarians feel virtuous … ever more punitive censorship will not solve anything.”
The only way to tackle the actual hatreds festering at the margins of society is through more free speech, not less.
That may be true. But it is the opposite of the view held by Starmer’s censorious government.
