World
British prison reform will release convicts after serving 40% of term to combat overcrowding: reports
The United Kingdom’s new Labour government announced that prisoners who have served 40% of their sentence could be released as a way to combat overcrowding in facilities across the country.
“The guilty men in the last government left our prisons on the brink of collapse,” British Secretary of State for Justice Shabana Mahmood wrote on social media platform X. “They put their political interests before the country, & left us facing a total breakdown of law and order.”
“Today, I set out emergency measures that will grip the prisons crisis,” she insisted.
Mahmoud laid out in a press release that “only hundreds of places” remain in adult male prisons and that U.K. prisons have operated at “over 99% capacity since the start of 2023,” with space expected to be fully occupied within weeks.
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To combat the problem, Mahmoud has authorized a change to early release measures, reducing custodial sentences served in prison from 50% to 40% but stressing that the policy would include “important safeguards and exemptions” to keep the public safe.
HMP Wandsworth prison in London, England. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
The policy will go into effect in September and will include “regular publications of releases under the changes to standard determinate sentences.”
The U.K. will often release criminals for certain types of offenses “on license” – the equivalent of releasing a prisoner on probation – with conditions that include regular contact with a supervising officer, reporting all addresses and movements to the court, receive approval for any jobs and a ban on travel outside of the United Kingdom.
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The Ministry of Justice in the press release claimed that the new policy would lead to over 10,000 offenders being released early, which would be around 11% of all beds: The New York Times cited a figure of just under 89,000 total population before the U.K. prisons hit their maximum “operational capacity.”
ABC News reported that the total prison population under old policies could hit around 99,000 by the end of next year without changes. Mahmood has warned that overflow would force local police stations to use their prison cells, leading to a ripple effect that she claims would cause collapse of the justice system.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood during a visit to HMP Bedford in Harpur, Bedfordshire, as she announces plans to address prison overcrowding amid fears that jails will run out of space within weeks. (Joe Giddens/PA Images via Getty Images)
The new policy will not apply to any convicts of sex offenses or domestic abuse-connected crimes, including stalking offenses, controlling or coercive behaviors in an intimate or family relationship, non-fatal strangulation and suffocation and any convicts who have breached restraining orders and abuse protection orders.
Previous policy has held that anyone given a life sentence and released on license must remain on those parole conditions for the remainder of their lives.
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Families of victims have already expressed outrage at the plan and raised concerns that if the already-existing prisons can’t handle such a population, then the external supervision structures likewise will be overwhelmed with an influx of new parolees to handle.
“If the system cannot deal with those people being released into the community, then those people are not going to be supervised adequately,” Farah Naz, aunt of murder victim Zara Aleena, told BBC Breakfast, citing issues with underfunding in the probation service.
Ms Mahmood is expected to set emergency measures that could include reducing the time before some prisoners are automatically released. (Joe Giddens/PA Images via Getty Images)
“When people, perpetrators, even thieves are not supervised adequately, crime can escalate. It doesn’t always escalate, but it can,” Naz added.
The murderer of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel in 2022 was a man who had been released from prison on license, according to the Independent.
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Anyone convicted of murder automatically receives a life sentence but for license purposes will have a determinate sentence of on average 20 years for manslaughter, for example, according to Sentencing Council. However, the new scheme would look to extend those terms, thus making it harder for violent crime offenders to achieve release on license.
Anyone released through the new scheme will be monitored through measures that can include electronic tagging and curfews, indicating an effort to take tougher measures on those who do qualify for early release.
The former H Block Maze prison at Long Kesh near Lisburn, Northern Ireland. Picture date: Monday June 24, 2024. The potential of the former Maze prison site must be matched by political action to kick-start its full redevelopment, the First Minister Michelle O’Neill has said. (Niall Carson/PA Images via Getty Images)
“There is now only one way to avert disaster,” Mahmoud argued. “I do not choose to do this because I want to . . . but we are taking every protection that is available to us . . . let me be clear, this is an emergency measure.”
Mahmoud added that the policy is temporary and underscored her “unapologetic” belief that “criminals must be punished.”
The Ministry of Justice will look to add 1,000 additional trainee probation officers by March 2025 and has committed to greater transparency with the public on sentencing issues.
The new prisons secretary James Timpson, CEO of key cutters and shoe repair service Timpsons, has urged for prison reform, which would aim to reduce imprisonment and refocus development on rehabilitation programs that include training, education or therapy, the BBC reported.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday rejected Virginia’s bid to restore a congressional map that would have given Democrats a chance to pick up four seats in the closely divided House of Representatives.
The court’s order, issued without any noted dissent, is the latest twist in the nation’s mid-decade redistricting competition. It was kicked off last year by President Donald Trump urging Republican-controlled states to redraw their lines and was supercharged by a recent Supreme Court ruling severely weakening the Voting Rights Act that opened up even more winnable seats for the GOP.
In recent days, the justices have sided with Republicans in Alabama and Louisiana who hope to redo their congressional maps to produce more GOP-leaning seats following the court’s voting rights decision.
But the Virginia situation was different, stemming from a 4-3 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court that struck down a constitutional amendment that voters narrowly passed just last month.
The state court found that the Democratic-controlled legislature improperly began the process of placing the amendment on the ballot after early voting had begun in Virginia’s general election last fall.
The Supreme Court typically doesn’t intervene in state court proceedings unless they present an issue of federal law. Virginia Democrats had hoped to persuade the justices that the Virginia court misread federal law and Supreme Court precedent that hold that, even if early voting is underway, an election does not happen until Election Day itself.
Virginia’s amendment had been intended as a response to Republican gains in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina and Ohio, and to blunt a new map in Florida that just became law. Once the Virginia amendment passed, it briefly turned the nationwide redistricting scramble into a draw between the two parties.
That was unraveled by the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision.
The state’s attorney general, Democrat Jay Jones, slammed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, saying it was another example of what he described as a national attack on voting rights and the rule of law.
“Let’s be clear about what is happening. Donald Trump, Republican state legislatures, and conservative courts are systematically and unabashedly tilting power away from the people for Trump’s political gain,” Jones said in a statement issued late Friday night.
The state’s top Democrats had disagreed about whether it was even too late for help from the Supreme Court. “Time grows short, but it is not yet too late,” lawyers for the Democratic leaders of the legislature as well as the state told the justices in a brief filed Friday.
A day earlier, the office of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger already had confirmed that the state will hold this year’s elections under the current districts established in 2021. Last month, Virginia Commissioner of Elections Steve Koski said a court order was needed by this past Tuesday to set the district lines for primary elections on Aug. 4.
Spanberger reacted to Friday’s decision by saying both courts had nullified the votes of the more than 3 million Virginians who cast ballots in the April 21 special election.
“These Virginians made their voices heard — casting their ballots in good faith to push back against a President who said he’s ‘entitled’ to more seats in Congress before voters go to the polls,” she posted on her X account.
The leader of the state Republican Party said the justices made the right call.
“Wisely, the Supreme Court of the United States has confirmed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Virginia,” state party chairman Jeff Ryer said. “This should once and for all put to rest the Democrats’ effort to disenfranchise half of Virginia.
___
Associated Press writer Safiyah Riddle in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed to this report.
World
Trump says Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, killed in US-Nigerian operation
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President Donald Trump announced late Friday that U.S. and Nigerian forces carried out an operation that killed a global ISIS leader.
Trump identified the terrorist as Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, whom he described as ISIS’s second-in-command globally.
“Tonight, at my direction, brave American forces and the Armed Forces of Nigeria flawlessly executed a meticulously planned and very complex mission to eliminate the most active terrorist in the world from the battlefield,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
“Abu-Bilal al-Minuki, second in command of ISIS globally, thought he could hide in Africa, but little did he know we had sources who kept us informed on what he was doing,” Trump continued. “He will no longer terrorize the people of Africa, or help plan operations to target Americans.”
100 US TROOPS LAND IN NIGERIA AS ISLAMIC MILITANTS THREATEN WEST AFRICA REGIONAL SECURITY
President Donald Trump sits at a table monitoring military operations during Operation Epic Fury against Iran at the White House in Washington, D.C., on March 2. (The White House via X Account/Anadolu/Getty Images)
Trump also thanked the Nigerian government for its cooperation in the mission.
“With his removal, ISIS’s global operation is greatly diminished,” he added.
Additional details surrounding the mission were not immediately available.
Fox News Digital has reached out to the White House for comment.
US MILITARY IN SYRIA CARRIES OUT 10 STRIKES ON MORE THAN 30 ISIS TARGETS: PHOTOS
The announcement comes after U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it carried out multiple strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria in February as part of a joint military effort to “sustain relentless military pressure on remnants from the terrorist network.”
CENTCOM said U.S. forces struck ISIS infrastructure and weapons-storage targets using fixed-wing, rotary-wing and unmanned aircraft.
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The U.S. military carried out ten strikes against more than 30 ISIS targets in Syria following a December ambush that killed U.S. troops. (CENTCOM)
Trump told reporters on Jan. 27 that he had a “great conversation” with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“All of the things having to do with Syria in that area are working out very, very well,” he said at the time. “So, we are very happy about it.”
CENTCOM announced in February that more than 50 ISIS terrorists had been killed or captured and more than 100 ISIS infrastructure targets struck during two months of targeted operations in Syria.
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The U.S. launched Operation Hawkeye Strike in response to an ISIS ambush that killed two U.S. service members and an American interpreter Dec. 13, 2025, in Palmyra, Syria.
Fox News Digital’s Ashley J. DiMella contributed to this report.
Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said Israeli attacks have killed 2,951 people since March 2 with at least 8,988 wounded.
Published On 16 May 2026
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