Early Release of Prisoners

John Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

The Scottish Government famously take no lessons from anyone, but perhaps in sentencing we might learn something from them, because they are in the grip of soft-touch-justice fever. There is a warning from Scotland about rapists and sex offenders, because rapists there will be set free more than two years early under the latest expansion of that soft-touch-justice approach, as the Scottish Government fail to grip the prison places crisis. The average jail time served by people who are guilty of rape will be reduced by more than two years and four months as a result of Scottish National party proposals to automatically release long-term prisoners after only two thirds of their sentence.

Rape Crisis Scotland chief executive Alev Taylor said:

“Organisations like ours have fought hard to maintain the exemption of rape and sexual offenders from early release schemes, both to ensure the safety of survivors and to maintain overall confidence in the justice system.”

What a searing indictment, from someone who has seen the aftermath of one of the most awful crimes that can be committed: the violation of a person’s body, which leaves physical scars and lifelong mental scars.

I have visited HMP Dumfries, where the SNP’s former chief executive Peter Murrell, estranged husband of ex-First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, is beginning a five-year-and-three-month sentence for embezzling £400,000 from his party and, it is suspected, from the public purse. I do not envy him, despite headlines about the jail being “cushy”. The staff there struggle with a lack of resources in a Victorian-era prison ill-suited to the modern world. Governor Andrew Hunstone made it clear to me that the loss of liberty is a genuine and serious punishment in itself, and that is the core point of justice. Loss of liberty is what serious criminals rightly face. The public know that simple truth, and legislators should not be lily-livered about it.

Politicians salami-slicing sentences is a betrayal. It is a betrayal first and foremost of victims. It is a signal of, “Yes, you have suffered, but we politicians are awfully fixated on prison numbers.” It is a betrayal of the police who work so diligently and so hard to bring criminals to justice. It is a betrayal of the courts themselves, as it ties the hands of those who pass sentences, effectively neutering them. It is also a betrayal of the public, because justice delayed is justice denied, but so too is justice watered down.

Today we televise sentencing hearings while simultaneously pulling the wool over the public’s eyes, because what may sound like a hefty sentence is automatically subject to a craven rolling back or to early release. I am all for rehabilitation, and I am all for helping people who have served prison time getting back into society, but we must all be about the victims. Our constituents want custodial sentences to be real, not illusions. The public know that custodial sentences are about punishment, not revenge. They also know the deterrent effect. Legislators who are too queasy to accept that should get out of the way. A well-regulated and just society must have prisons, no matter how many so-called progressive politicians would will them away. Prison works. We should use it, and sentences should be served in full.