Criminals will commit around 400,000 additional offences if the softest sentencing reforms in a generation come into force, police chiefs have warned.
Officers are preparing for a surge in crime of up to 6% if convicts are let out of jail even earlier and short prison sentences of up to a year are scrapped.
The extra strain on policing will cost £300 million to £400 million, but it is currently “an unfunded consequence”.
National Police Chiefs’ Council chair Gavin Stephens admitted: “There is no doubt in the short term that there will be an increase (in crime).”
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp: “This shocking disclosure by the police makes clear that Labour’s weak and reckless plans to release more prisoners early and abolish prison sentences under a year will lead to more criminals on our streets and more crime.
“Labour’s choices will make us less safe and will mean more robberies, thefts and assaults.
“The police have exposed the consequences of Labour’s appalling decisions, and we will all be at higher risk of crime on our streets as a result.
“This will be a crime wave made in Downing Street. The justice system is falling apart under Labour.”
In the year to June 2025, police in England and Wales recorded 6.6 million offences.
A rise of 6% would therefore equal around 396,000 additional recorded crimes in one year.
Dr Kieran Mullan MP, Shadow Justice Minister, said: “This is exactly what we’ve been warning about from day one. When even the police are warning that Labour’s Sentencing Bill will trigger thousands more crimes, it tells you everything.
“The Government has been warned, yet it’s ploughing ahead with policies that will most criminals out early, including thousands of serious violent and sexual offenders including rapists and paedophiles, with many only having to serve a third of their sentence.
“Every early release is a risk to the public. Every shorter sentence tells victims their suffering doesn’t matter. Labour are putting communities at risk.”
But under Labour’s plans to reduce the pressure on prison capacity, killers and rapists will be let out early, while 43,000 criminals will avoid jail altogether.
Most convicts will be tagged and electronically monitored as ministers try to avoid a repeat of the overcrowding crisis.
The majority of criminals will be let out after just a third of their sentence.
They will spend another third under house arrest and will only then be put on licence and let into the community.
Criminals sentenced to more than four years behind bars will be let out after serving just half of their jail term, while punishments of less than 12 months will be abolished in most cases.
Only the most extreme offenders will be refused the right to leave prison at the halfway point
Criminals will, for the first time, be tagged before they leave prison in a bid to prevent them wreaking havoc in communities.
Police chiefs said they are supportive of the plans to reduce the use of short prison terms, as reoffending rates for prison sentences under less than 12 months currently stand at around 50%.
Assistant Chief Constable Jason Devonport, who spent 18 months on secondment as a prison governor at HMP Berwyn, said forces are planning for an increase in all types of offences.
The probation service is trying to recruit 1,500 officers a year for the next three years to manage demand if the sentences reforms are made.
Mr Devonport said: “We are expecting that while the programmes in the community are being ramped up by the probation service as part of their implementation plan to support offenders to rehabilitate, we expect, certainly in the short term, there will be an increase of offending in the community.”
He said that the rise in police recorded crime in one year is expected to be between 4-6%.
Chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Gavin Stephens said: “We’ve all been in policing long enough to know that some of the things that help people stop offending or desist from offending are not going to be resolved by short sentences in particular.
“So that’s a fundamental reason why we’re supportive of this.
“Our issue is in the short-term period of the implementation, there is a shift of demand on to policing, and we want that shift of demand onto us to be properly recognised and properly modelled … so we can have the right and appropriate resource in there to mitigate the risk to communities.”
