Does the plan to address prison overcrowding in England and Wales cut short sentences for sexual offenses? No, that's not true: Under current law many inmates typically serve 50% of their sentence in prison, followed by a probation period. A new plan would reduce that to 40% but with exceptions for certain convictions like sexual or violent offenses. Offenders with convictions for sexual or violent crimes in addition to other ones would still need to serve out the time for the sexual/violent offenses as before although they could see a reduction for the other charges.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X, formerly Twitter, on September 4, 2024. The post's caption said:
BREAKING: Britain will begin to release s*x offenders early to make more prison cells available.
Meanwhile they are sending people who post offensive words online to long prison sentences.
Soviet Britain.
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Sep 5 15:24:18 2024 UTC)
The post provided nothing to support its implication that the emergency release program, set to start September 2024, will cut short sentences for sexual offenses and release sexual offenders early.
SDS40
Under British and Welsh law, SDS stands for a Standard Determinate Sentence, a sentence with a fixed end date. It includes a period in prison and a period in a community on probation. Typically, an inmate serves 50 percent of their sentence before being released under probationary supervision, or, as it's known in the United Kingdom, "on licence."
In July 2024, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood laid out a set of emergency measures to reduce prison overcrowding. Because the plan reduces the time served for many crimes to 40 percent, the program became known as SDS40.
This is how the BBC described the measures in an article published on July 11, 2024:
The main measure will be automatically releasing prisoners on 'standard determinate sentences' after they have served 40% of their sentence, government sources confirmed.
Currently, they are released after serving 50% of their sentence.
There will be exemptions for sexual and serious violent offenders.
SDS40 applies to prisoners serving sentences of five years or less who have completed at least 40 percent of their sentences and also excludes those convicted of domestic abuse, terrorism and certain violent offenses.
An impact assessment (archived here) of the plan was filed under the Criminal Justice Act of 2003 on July 17, 2024. Page 5 of the 16-page document lists the offenses excluded from the 40 percent release provision. They include:
a. an offence in the Sexual Offences Act 1956;
b. an offence in the Sexual Offences Act 2003;
c. a sexual offence listed in Schedule 15 to the Criminal Justice Act 2003
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