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The UK is dealing with a serious crisis in its prison system. The new Labour government has decided to release thousands of prisoners before they have finished serving their sentence. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the mess in Britain's prisons 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 felons. Some have served just 40 per cent of their time. Mr Starmer said the problem was "pretty unforgivable".
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". If space runs out, there will be nowhere to put anyone arrested. Mahmood said there would be "looters running amok, smashing windows, robbing shops and setting neighbourhoods alight". She blamed the UK's former leader and prisons ministers for their "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."
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