Hello,
“Train… train… coming down the track!”
That’s what it has felt like for a while as we have awaited the early release express.
Well, it has certainly thundered into the station. Despite press reports of prisoners leaving HMP and thanking Andy Burnham, we are seeing a much more complex picture emerging.
The much-discussed tagging system has been presented as cutting-edge technology, offering a sophisticated new way to monitor people in the community. The reality we see at LandWorks is rather different. The tags run out of power, are heavy and cumbersome, and several of our guys have to wear two: one for GPS monitoring and another for alcohol monitoring.
But perhaps the starkest contrast between the claims and the reality is visible on people’s legs. The supposed cutting-edge technology can leave cuts and open sores where the plastic straps bite into the skin.
The release train is overcrowded, and perhaps unusually, it feels as though it has arrived too early.
Accommodation is already a fundamental problem, and the scarcity is only made worse by the immediate demands of early release. Desperate probation staff are trying to find accommodation, there is often very little in place before someone leaves prison.
Some extraordinary anomalies are emerging. We are hearing of people expected to make train journeys across the country to hostels in areas they have never visited, and in some cases have never even heard of.
This is compounded by risk-management decisions that can seem difficult to reconcile. We know of distressed individuals, with few belongings and clutching a train ticket, being expected to travel long distances unaccompanied on crowded trains, while yet their perceived risk is considered too high for a member of staff to drive them in a vehicle, even to the station!
And so, the early release express is running, but the infrastructure needed to support the people on board is struggling to keep up.
50 years ago, this week the Punk Rock train set off and if he was still alive Joe Strummer would have almost certainly been playing ‘Clampdown’… the song challenges systems that demand conformity and obedience, rather than thinking critically about the people affected by them.
Chris
29th October 2026