Are you ready for SDS40? You might need to be if you’re unlucky enough to live in a high crime area. This is the anodyne descriptor for the government’s emergency release of an estimated 5,000 offenders this month and next, having served only 40 per cent of their sentence in prison custody. This is the result of a hospital pass from the outgoing Conservative government who passed laws to lock more people up for longer without any coherent thought about where they would be banged up.

The statutory instrument to allow this release in two tranches comes into effect on 10 September. About 2,000 prisoners are set to be released then into community supervision by the probation service. We have been assured by the Ministry of Justice that these are low-risk prisoners and there are robust arrangements in place to keep communities safe, including their return to custody if they breach licence conditions.

The profile of these offenders is that the majority of them will commit further offences

We are told that these arrangements are unfortunate but necessary to guarantee space for serious offenders and to avert gridlock. But as is frequently the case with this department, risk management and message management are strange bedfellows. In July, Shabanna Mahmood, newly in post as Lord Chancellor, imagined a scenario where looters roamed the streets if action........

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