PM urged not to change scheme to stop PC Andrew Harper killers’ early release

Andy Burnham has been warned that changing the terms of the prisoners’ early release scheme so PC Andrew Harper’s killers are kept behind bars would force another spate of early releases before the next general election.

Prison Service officials have told No 10 that adding an exemption so that those convicted of manslaughter, such as Jessie Cole and Albert 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.

On Monday, Downing Street said the prime minister had “pushed hard on what more we could do” but it was not possible to exempt “one or two offenders” from early release, as manslaughter of an emergency worker was not a stand-alone offence. Instead, if they wanted to block the release of Cole and Bowers then every offender with a manslaughter conviction would be affected.

The government plans to release 5,000 prisoners early over a period of 10 months from October to free up places. Harper’s killers are due to be released in January.

Burnham is facing demands to exclude Cole and Bowers from the early release scheme. A petition demanding an intervention has nearly 900,000 signatures.

Despite the concerns from the Prison Service and a lack of obvious options, a No 10 source said the prime minister was “still pushing” for a way of keeping Andrew Harper’s killers behind bars.

The prime minister said last week he had “pushed to the very limits of what is possible to do” by exempting 1,000 rapists, child sexual abuse offenders and groomers from early release, which reduced the number of spaces to be freed up in the next 10 months from 6,000.

Blocking the early release of Cole and Bowers could mean delaying the release of at least 500 other offenders also convicted of manslaughter, a Whitehall source said. “People in the Prison Service are terrified by the prospect of another exemption,” they said. “They have told the PM that if they carve out manslaughter cases there will have to be another early release scheme before the general election.”

Tom Wheatley, the president of the Prison Governors’ Association, said ministers have been warned that delays to the early release scheme mean some prisoners could be released at the wrong time.

“We have expressed concerns to Ministry of Justice (MoJ) officials about increased ‘releases in error’ and ‘unlawful detention’ risk because of the government’s last-minute changes to the Sentencing Act’s implementation. Officials have assured us that ministers have been briefed on the increased risk environment,” he said.

Each prison will be expected to re-evaluate the sentences of every prisoner affected by Burnham’s changes. This could mean recalculating many thousands of prison sentences in a short period of time when staff are on holiday, Wheatley said.

“These late changes come at a time when many staff who specialise in calculating sentences and met the original deadline are off work, on a well-earned break. Because this is a time-pressured and manual process, involving paper files that can be inches thick, it carries an increased risk of error,” he said.

Ministers have been advised that they are at risk of a legal challenge if they try to carve out exclusions for Cole and Bowers but not others convicted of manslaughter. Nick Hardwick, who was the chief inspector of prisons for six years until 2016, said he felt “uneasy” at the suggestion the government could draw up exemptions from the scheme to satisfy a public outcry.

“I am appalled by what happened to PC Harper,” he said. “But we have to be careful about the principle here. We should be uneasy about politicians deciding what happens to particular offenders. It is something that needs careful debate. It should not be up to politicians to choose how long individuals spend in prison.

“If the government did change the legal framework to exclude these two men from early release, it could well be an example of ‘hard cases making bad law’.”

MoJ officials said prisons could run out of places in November if the scheme was abandoned.

Asked on Monday whether ministers were accepting the situation as it stood, Burnham’s spokesperson said: “I think you’ve seen from the prime minister’s words that he’s far from accepting the situation and, as he wrote last week, he wants to go even further. He’s pushed hard on what more we could do and his focus now is on fixing the prison system long-term to avoid a repeat of this prison crisis so that it never happens again.”

Pressed on whether the prime minister was admitting there was nothing more he could do, the official said: “He understands the public wants him to go further, and he wanted to go further, but on the wider issue … prisons would have run out of space, police would stop making arrests, it would be impossible to lock up convicted offenders and that would put public safety at untold risk.”

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.