The radical reforms could revolutionise the prison sentence (Image: Getty)
will no longer be eligible for automatic release after a set period of time and will be forced to work under radical new plans.
Justice Secretary is considering the shake up which would see earn “good behaviour credits” as part of an incentive-based prison system.
Also under consideration is a plan to force inmates to work full-time to secure early release in order to ensure that their period behind bars is used productively.
Currently, around 70% of prisoners in jail in England and spend only 40-66% of their time incarcerated, with the remainder of their sentence being served on license, regardless of behaviour.
That could be set for change in one of the biggest prison reforms in more than 30 years, with vowing to ensure that human rights legislation does not needlessly provide an “obstacle” to the plan.
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The Justice Secretary recently visited Texas as part of a fact-finding mission (Image: Getty)
Automatic release was introduced in 1991 in England and for sentences of 4 years or less but was expanded to more serious crimes in 2003.
Some argue that the existence of automatic release provides scant incentive to use the time wisely in the knowledge that they will be released regardless of behaviour.
Last year, former British Airways captain Robert Brown, who bludgeoned to death his wife Joanna Simpson in 2010, saw his eligibility for early release blocked.
Brown had been set for release after serving half of his 26 year sentence for manslaughter and was described as having “persistently refused to engage in the rehabilitative elements of his sentence”.
said she wanted a “carrot and stick” approach to the prison system to incentivise offenders to use their time productively by undertaking employment, education and rehabilitative courses.
The justice secretary recently travelled to on a fact-finding trip with former Conservative justice secretary , who is leading a review into sentencing.
Over the last 20 years, the American state has seen its rates of crime and reoffending plummet after moving to an incentive based prison statement with a series of reforms., with good behaviour the only way in which prisoners can reduce their time in jail.
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Texas has introduced radical reforms that have been wildly successful over the last 20 years (Image: Getty)
Speaking from the US, said it was important to be open to “all potential future constructions of sentences.”
She said: “If you’re going to think about incentivised behaviour, obviously it’s a carrot and a stick, isn’t it? So you can’t then leave unchanged the rest of your current sentencing framework on automatic releases.
““If you’re going to go down the road of incentivisation, actually that might mean some things no longer become automatic. But we would have to consider carefully how you would take the best learning from the law and read across to our system because our arrangements are different. Although that’s the benefit of having a review, which means we can.”
The independent review of sentencing was launched last year after the capacity pressures on the prison system brought it dangerously close to total collapse.
Led by , it was tasked with “a comprehensive re-evaluation of our sentencing framework… to ensure we are never again in a position where the country has more prisoners than prison places, and the government is forced to rely on the emergency release of prisoners.”
The results are expected to be released in Spring 2025.