About 700 eligible offenders will leave jails in England and Wales on the morning of 1 October and some 2,550 will have been released by the end of the year, the government's revised early prison release plan shows.

The new plan, signed into law and published online, shows Andy Burnham's government kept the promised original schedule of how and when offenders will leave jail, aside from delaying the start date by a month and excluding specific offences from the programme.

Under the original plan, offenders serving sentences of up to 19 months would have been eligible from 2 September to walk out of jail after serving a third of that time.

In the Commons on Wednesday, Burnham said he understood the "anguish" of victims and "listened to what they were saying".

"I came in and asked for changes to the early release scheme, and we excluded rape, grooming, and child sex offences," the prime minister added.

Prisoners will now qualify for their earlier release from 1 October and officials estimate that around 700 will walk out of the prison gates that day.

From 13 October, governors will release a second tranche of 650 prisoners who have been serving sentences of between 19 months and two years and five months.

Prisons in England and Wales are running at 97% capacity, with the latest Ministry of Justice figures showing the number of available spaces across the male prison estate at its lowest this year, with about 1,500 free spaces.

Under the original plan, prisons and probation services had almost six weeks to prepare this second group following the first releases, but they now have less than a fortnight.

The rest of the estimated 4,500 releases will then be phased in following the dates below. Some 1,400 more offenders were due to be released under the original plans before revisions made after certain offences were excluded.

The estimated numbers are Ministry of Justice calculations:

From 10 November, 650 offenders serving up to three years and two months

From 8 December, 550 offenders serving up to four years and three months

From 12 January 2027, 600 offenders serving up to five years and nine months

From 9 February, 500 offenders serving up to seven years and six months

From 9 March, 200 offenders serving up to nine years

From 13 April, 200 offenders serving up to 10 years

From 11 May, 250 offenders serving up to 12 years

From 9 June, 250 offenders serving more than 12 years.

The offenders serving the longer sentences, which do not become part of the scheme until next year, include more dangerous criminals who would have previously expected to spend two-thirds of their sentence behind bars.

Under the new rules this group will instead leave jail at the halfway point.

The ministerial order lists all of the 71 crimes that are exempt from the earlier release scheme, including manslaughter, rape, and sexual and grooming offences.

Prisoners on a special form of extended sentence and those on life terms are excluded from the scheme.

On Tuesday, the government explained it was creating more cells in existing prisons in England and Wales as part of its plans to tackle overcrowding.

An investment of ยฃ110m, which is set to come from existing budgets, will be used to convert unused office space, laundry rooms and storage space into cells, the Ministry of Justice said.

Justice Secretary Alex Norris told the BBC being released did not mean "freedom" and victims would have a say in restrictions placed on those criminals.

Norris also said he suspected the number of extra prison spaces created from freeing up existing space within prisons would be "landing somewhere in the middle" of 200 and 900.

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