THOUSANDS of prisoners will be released early in an attempt to ease prison overcrowding, under plans approved by Charles Clarke.

Criminals sentenced to four years in prison could be freed after just 18 months, The Times has learnt. A two-year sentence would mean spending only six months in jail.

The early release, under a curfew and electronic tag, will be in addition to the automatic release halfway through all sentences of less of than four years.

Half the 70,000 prisoners sentenced each year to less than four years in jail for offences such as burglary, fraud and theft are estimated to be eligible for the scheme. Sex and violent offenders and fine-defaulters are not eligible.

The Home Office plan was condemned last night for undermining the sentencing powers of courts and public confidence in the criminal justice system. Mark Oaten, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said: “What kind of message does this send to the courts and the public when sentences are simply going to be overruled by the Government?”

Mr Clarke must persuade the Prime Minister of the need to change the early-release scheme so that prisoners can be freed on a tag up to six months early, compared with the present four and a half months. His proposal risks conflict with 10 Downing Street because it contrasts with Tony Blair’s tough rhetoric on law and order.

The Times understands that the move is being forced on the Home Office because the soaring number of men and women being sent to jail has brought the system to bursting point.

The latest figures show that the service is less than 1,000 spaces away from being full and prison staff have estimated that there are only 700 useable cells available for offenders sent to jail by the courts. A record 77,599 people were in jail yesterday morning, an increase of 119 overnight and a rise of 226 since last Friday.

Mr Oaten said that the crisis was a result of years of posturing on law and order by the Government. “Extending tagging yet again is typical of Blair’s knee-jerk approach to policy. It is not a long-term solution,” he said. “Prisoners should be tagged if it is in the best interests of rehabilitation, not because there is an overcrowding problem.”

The crisis is so grave that 174 prisoners were locked out of jails in London and the west Midlands this week because there were no spaces in local prisons. They were held overnight in police cells while prison service staff searched for cells around the country.

Charles Bushell, the general secretary of the Prison Governors Association, said last night that Mr Clarke’s plan would help to ease the current crisis but only in the short term. “In the last six months we have seen our prison population increase by over one thousand,” he said. “One third of that in-crease has occurred in the last month.

“We understand that something needs to be done and done quickly and an extension of home detention curfew will help, but we have to realise that we cannot build our way out of this situation. Some sort of initiative must be taken, and taken quickly, to ease the rise in people being sent to jail.”

Mr Clarke is receiving weekly reports on the prison population and the available spaces in the 139 jails in England and Wales but his prison ministers are at a loss to know how to deal with the crisis. In the past few weeks he has been told that the number of juveniles and women in custody has started to rise again.

There are no new prisons being planned or constructed, although the Prison Service has been given cash to identify sites for three new 1,500-jail complexes.

It is estimated, however, that it would take up to three years for them to start taking prisoners.

Under the electronic tagging scheme, officially known as home detention curfew, prisoners serving between twelve months and four years for non-violent offences are eligible to have their sentence cut by four and a half months in addition to automatic release at the halfway stage. At present 3,264 are out of jail under the scheme and extending it could increase the number by an estimated 1,000 offenders.

Since the scheme came into force in 1999, 90,000 prisoners have been released on home detention curfew and 8 per cent have reoffended, committing a total of 3,600 crimes.

A Home Office spokesman said that the courts had been provided with tough alternatives to custodial sentences. “In the meantime, we continue to investigate options to further manage the population level and to expand capacity and we are keeping the situation under review.”

HOW IT WORKS

SENTENCE: Four years
Automatic release at halfway stage: two years
Clarke plan: six months
Time behind bars: 18 months

SENTENCE: Three years
Automatic release at halfway stage: 18 months
Clarke plan: Six months
Time behind bars: One year

ELIGIBLE
Burglars, thieves, drug offenders, fraudsters, vandals given less than four years

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