More than one in five prisoners freed early in Greater Manchester last month are already back behind bars, the region's police chief has said. Sir Stephen Watson, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, told LBC on Tuesday 10 November that 22% of the people released early in October in his force area were already back inside.

"The fact of the matter is 22% of everybody that's been released [in October] are already back inside in Greater Manchester," Sir Stephen said. He added: "We're talking about highly recidivist people, so I'm not going to stand here and say this is an entirely good thing. This is, of course, a real problem for us."

Third wave leaves prison today

Sir Stephen spoke on the morning that about 650 more prisoners began walking out of jails in England and Wales under the third wave of the government's expanded early release scheme. The prisoners in this wave are serving sentences of more than 882 days, about two years and five months, and fewer than 1,163 days, roughly three years and two months.

Under the scheme, prisoners serving fixed-term sentences leave after serving a third of their sentence behind bars, rather than half. At least 1,350 offenders had already been released early in the first two waves since 1 October, and about 5,000 are due to be released in stages over the next year. That total is down from 6,000 after ministers intervened to exempt rapists and the most serious child sex offenders.

Rapists, the most serious child sex offenders, people convicted of manslaughter, terrorists and murderers serving life sentences are excluded from the scheme. The BBC reports that this batch includes people convicted of affray, burglary and fraud, and that some violent offenders convicted of wounding, grievous bodily harm with intent or lower-end firearms charges could also be eligible.

Tagging figures not due until January

Officials say there is a presumption that everyone freed early will be fitted with a GPS tag. But LBC reports that the Ministry of Justice will not have data on last month's electronic tagging rates until January 2027, and a Probation Inspectorate report in August warned that almost half of electronic tags were not being fitted on time.

Ben Cockburn, national chairman of Napo, the trade union for probation staff, told MPs on the Justice and Home Affairs Committee on Tuesday that the scheme was having a "devastating impact" on the probation service, describing the rollout as chaotic and poorly planned. He said staff were dealing with excessive workloads and hundreds of pages of guidance, some of it rewritten while political decisions were still being taken.

Victims' fears and the government's defence

Hetti Barkworth-Nanton, who chairs the domestic abuse charity Refuge, told LBC that some survivors had gone into refuges away from home "because of the fear that they feel as their perpetrator is released", and that one survivor felt she needed to move overseas.

Justice Secretary Alex Norris says Britain faces a "prison capacity crisis" and that the scheme has to go ahead. The government says that if it had failed to act, police would have been forced to halt arrests. Ministers have pledged 14,000 new prison places by 2031.

On Monday there were 86,982 people in jail in England and Wales, with room for 2,076 more, according to Ministry of Justice figures. The government has not yet published figures on how many of the early-release prisoners have been recalled for breaking their licence conditions.

Eleven prisoners on the early release scheme emerged from HMP Forest Bank in Salford on Tuesday morning, but none of them wanted to speak to reporters waiting outside the gates.