The UK is dealing with a crisis in its prison system. The government is releasing thousands of prisoners. Some have served just 40 per cent of their sentence. UK leader Sir Keir Starmer said the mess in the prison service was because of a decade of neglect and underinvestment by the Conservative Party, which had been in power for 14 years. Inmates are being released early to accommodate newly-sentenced criminals.

UK justice secretary Shabana Mahmood warned of a "total breakdown in law and order" if prisons reached capacity. She said: "Prisons are on the point of collapse". She warned of "looters running amok…robbing shops and setting neighbourhoods alight". She blamed former prisons ministers for a "dereliction of duty" and for decimating the system. She called them: "The guilty men who put their political careers ahead of the safety…of our country."