Like so many of the British state’s dysfunctions, the prisons crisis is not new. Overcrowding has been such a perennial issue that David Blunkett was apparently almost talked into setting a cap of 80,000 inmates, and he was home secretary two decades ago.

Early on in Keir Starmer’s term, the Government decided to release over 1,000 prisoners who had served only 40% of their sentence, with the intention of relieving the strain placed on the prison estate. The emergency plan aimed to free up around 5,500 spaces in British jails, and was followed by scenes of criminals popping champagne on their release and proclaiming: “Big up Keir Starmer”.

The latest reports that the Government is on the brink of embarking on another round of early releases are extremely dangerous for Labour. This is not just because the public tends to have a short memory and — understandably — focuses its anger at the politicians actually doing a bad thing, rather than examining the long-term structural causes.

No, the particular danger for the Prime Minister is that a continual drip-feed of stories ends up toxifying what was at first a high point of his premiership: the strict crackdown following last year’s riots, and the stiff sentences that attended it.

Consider Lucy Connolly, whose case has recently become something of a cause célèbre for a section of the Right-wing press. On the day of the Southport attack, she posted on Facebook: “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the fucking hotels full of the bastards for all I care, while you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them. I feel physically sick knowing what these families will now have to endure. If that makes me racist so be it.”

Connolly was charged under the Public Order Act 1986, a Thatcher-era law now leaned on heavily by the Left, receiving a two-and-a-half-year sentence (31 months). She has also been denied Release on Temporary Licence, which allows inmates to spend a couple of nights at home every month, despite there being no sign that she is a flight risk or a danger to others.

Much of the criticism of cases such as this misses the mark: for all that parts of the Right like to imagine the stout English yeomanry defending their ancient liberties, Britain is today by instinct a deeply authoritarian country.

Starmer’s crackdown was popular: last August, his net approval on the issue was +27. And why should this surprise us? It showed that the state could, when it stirred itself, mete out justice sternly and — rarer still these days — swiftly.

But therein lies the problem. However popular such measures were in the moment, they have shown what the Government and the justice system are capable of, and what it fails to achieve the rest of the time. We are now a year on from the riots; before long, people like Connolly will have served 40% of their sentences. The public might have supported locking them up at a time of civil unrest when no one knew how bad the riots might get, but will it equally support keeping them in prison while violent offenders walk free? What about when some of those inevitably reoffend, as others released early have already done?

No matter the broken prison estate it has inherited, Labour is responsible for the safety of the public now. Starmer must be very careful in how he goes about releasing yet more criminals. Particular harshness toward those who were deemed to be stirring up hatred on social media will only hammer home the perception many have built up of “two-tier Keir”.

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