Our prisons are full.
Last Monday there were 86,495 people locked up in England and Wales, which is roughly 97% of the usable capacity.
Figures released in October show that 13% of the prison population is made-up of those awaiting trial on remand due, in part, to intractable Crown Court delays.
What the Sentencing Act 2026 means for early release
To mitigate the burgeoning prison population, which is projected to rise to over 100,000 by 2030 if nothing is done, the Sentencing Act 2026 became law in January.
Amongst other measures, are changes to the release arrangements for those on determinate sentences.
For those eligible, what this means is that rather than them being released at the halfway or 40% point of their sentence, they will be released after serving a third.
Within days of the Prime Minister coming into office he ordered that rape, serious child sex and grooming offences would be excluded from these changes but made no such exception for other high impact crimes such as manslaughter.
How PC Andrew Harper was killed
Seven years ago this week, PC Andrew Harper and another officer responded to the report of a burglary in Berkshire.
Eleven minutes after the call they passed a vehicle towing the quad-bike reported stolen and a person running towards it.
PC Harper got out of the police car and ran towards the suspect in an attempt to catch him before he could get away. In doing so he became entangled in a strap that had been used to tow the stolen quad-bike and the suspects drove off dragging PC Harper behind them.
His colleague lost sight of the fleeing car but horrifyingly saw Andrew’s stab vest lying in the road. A mile further on, having been dragged all that distance along the tarmac road surface PC Harper became disentangled from the rope and was abandoned where he lay.
Twenty-eight minutes after that burglary call, he was pronounced dead by paramedics.
Two of the three men convicted of PC Harper’s killing – Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers – were sentenced in 2020 to thirteen years’ imprisonment for manslaughter.
What is Harper’s Law?
Following Andrew Harper’s death his wife, Lissie, successfully campaigned for Harper’s Law, which introduced mandatory life sentences for the manslaughter of emergency workers.
Under the government’s new early-release arrangements, Cole and Bowers are now eligible for release earlier than expected as they fall outside the Prime Minister’s exclusions.
The manner of PC Harper’s death was unimaginably horrific and the fact that he was just twenty-eight years old when it happened and he and Lissie had only married 4 weeks previously makes his brutal and senseless death even harder to comprehend.
But the fact that what was viewed by many, presumably including lawmakers, as ridiculously lenient sentences resulted in a law change to mandate stricter sentences was some small legacy for his senseless loss of life.
It is a terrible irony therefore that because the law is not retrospective the Sentencing Act cannot apply to Cole and Bowers and therefore despite the intentions of the law created in his memory, that leniency will become derisory.
Had Harper’s Law been in place when Cole and Bowers were convicted, they would have received life sentences and their release would only be possible once they had served their tariff [the minimum term] and only then if the parole board determined they were no longer a risk to the public.
I would dare anyone to suggest that after a paltry six years in custody these thugs have turned their lives around so much that they are fit for release yet because of this blanket early release scheme, which obviously has its place for certain crimes, soon these killers will be released back into the community, free to harm again.
Why releasing PC Harper’s killers early is wrong
The groundswell of rage against this proposition is growing and growing with a petition approaching a million signatures and both the Police Federation and the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police considering legal action, yet the government remains tone deaf.
Sentencing Minister Jake Richards says it is wrong to pick out individual cases, so deems it right that Cole and Bowers remain eligible for early release.
The government have got the power to change the law and make exceptions. They need to listen to the public, see common sense, protect the protectors and keep Cole and Bowers where they belong for as long as humanely possible.
You can sign the petition to stop the early release from jail of PC Andrew Harper’s killers here.
I originally wrote this for my weekly column in The Argus, published on Monday, 10 August 2026.
