The Express today repeating their ‘SNP soft touch’ story (left) and their July report helpfully giving us the total (right). ‘Helpfully?’ Read on.

For England and Wales, official figures show 79,274 prisoners released early under these emergency measures between September 2024 and June 2026.^{1, 2}

The equivalent figure for Scotland is 1 641.^{3, 4}

All things being equally bad, you might expect the the figure for England and Wales to be between 11 and 12 times higher. I’ll give them the benefit of just 12 so that’d be around 19 700, a quarter of the rate in England & Wales at 79 274.

Once more I find something and think ‘can it be that stark a contrast so I’ve rechecked the data. Still the same.

Not only, that, England and Wales are not equipped to deal with prisoner releases. See:

Prisoner recalls in England & Wales running at 15 to 25 the rate in Scotland in part due to higher background crime and half as many probation officers

Sources:

1. MoJ’s Standard Determinate Sentence (SDS40) release data transparency statistics: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/standard-determinate-sentence-sds40-release-data-april-2025-to-june-2026
2. https://nation.cymru/news/record-high-prison-recalls-after-criminals-freed-early-to-cut-jail-overcrowding/
3. Scottish Prison Service (SPS) – Emergency Early Release data: https://www.sps.gov.uk/about-us/transparency/data-research-and-evidence/emergency-early-release-data
4. https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/soft-touch-snp-government-lets-37495431