Inside Labour's Texas-style prison plan to let out well-behaved criminals early

The Labour Party is considering introducing a Texas-style prison policy that would see well-behaved inmates let out early. The move has been tabled in order to find a solution to Britain's prison overcrowding crisis.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Prisons Minister Lord Timpson want the government's sentencing review to include the "creative" measure to alleviate the burden on many of the country's biggest prisons.

In Texas, prisoners can get a first parole review after only serving a quarter of their sentence by earning "good conduct time".

If the move goes ahead, it would constitute the most radical prison reform in a generation.

As it stands, UK prisoners are automatically let out after 40 or 50 percent of their sentences. For more serious crimes, inmates have to convince a parole board they no longer pose a threat to the public.

However, despite already letting prisoners out before they've served their full sentence, and besides the government's temporary early release scheme that saw 1,750 prisoners let out this summer, Britain's prisons are chronically over-crowded.

Official data suggests that Britain's prison capacity will be exceeded again in just nine months on its current trajectory.

The prison population currently stands at 89,000 but by 2027, it is projected to be 115,000.

Yesterday, Ms Mahmood said the Government will "rebuild" community sentences to ensure they have public confidence and cut reoffending.

In an interview with the PA news agency, the Justice Secretary said it was "in everyone’s collective interest" to focus on rehabilitation while 80 percent of offenders are re-offenders, but stressed that public safety was "non-negotiable".

She said: "Punishment and rehabilitation, in my view, go hand-in-hand. They are part of the same picture.

"You can’t have one without the other, and that is the justice system we are going to be repairing and then rebuilding over the course of this Parliament."