Andy Burnham has told the justice secretary to find a way to exclude PC Andrew Harper’s killers from the early release scheme aimed at easing prison overcrowding.
The prime minister is said to be “determined” to find a solution amid increasing pressure from Harper’s family and police not to allow Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, who were sentenced to 13 years for manslaughter, to be freed in January under the existing plans.
On Monday, Downing Street said it was “not possible” to exempt “one or two offenders” convicted of manslaughter from the early release scheme, and it is not clear how the government could prevent Cole and Bowers from being treated the same as other prisoners with similar sentences.
But later it said the justice secretary, Alex Norris, would look at other possibilities.
A government spokesperson said: “The prime minister has asked the justice secretary to work through further options to keep a greater number of the most serious offenders in prison, including the killers of PC Harper.”
Harper, 28, was fatally injured when he got caught in a strap attached to the back of a car and was dragged down a country road as the killers fled the scene of a quad-bike theft in Sulhamstead, Berkshire, in 2019.
Cole and Bowers, two of three men sentenced over the police officer’s death, are due to be released halfway through their 13-year sentences, having been convicted of manslaughter in 2020. A petition demanding an intervention has nearly 900,000 signatures.
The communities secretary, Angela Rayner, said:“The prime minister is determined to ensure that there is a solution to this and I think he’s made that really clear. He’s tasked the justice secretary to come to parliament in September with that solution.”
About 5,000 people are expected to be released early under sentencing changes, down from 6,000 after some exemptions were announced as part of an urgent review of the scheme to tackle prison overcrowding. Exemptions were made for those convicted of rape, serious child sex offences and grooming offences.
Prison Service officials have warned Burnham that changing the terms of the prisoners’ early release scheme so that those convicted of manslaughter, such as Cole and Bowers, remain in jail would mean further early releases would be needed within 18 months.
Governors told the Guardian the prime minister’s decision last week to exempt rapists and serious child sex offenders would force thousands of sentences to be recalculated in haste and could lead to the mistaken early release of some prisoners.
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Rayner told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that potential options to stop prisons reaching capacity could include speeding up the deportation of foreign criminals, reviewing indefinite sentences, and looking at female prisoners’ jail terms. “So there is a lot of work that’s going on,” she said.
“And the prime minister has made it clear he will not just accept that the system says no. He understands the anger and the trauma that PC Harper’s family are going through, and other victims who are seeing this prison crisis unfold and they feel that they’re not getting the justice and it’s reopening the trauma that they have been through.”
The early release changes were part of the Sentencing Act passed earlier this year that cut the minimum amount of time many offenders would have to spend in prison.
The third man jailed for the manslaughter of Harper – the vehicle driver, Henry Long – was given a longer jail term of 16 years. Because he received what is called an extended determinate sentence, he cannot be considered for this early release scheme.
