𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

It was the ultimate cruelty. Just a week ago our new caring, sharing PM Andy Burnham allowed PC Andrew Harper’s devastated family to believe that his brutal killers might not be let out of jail having served just a piddling six-and-a-half years of their 13-year sentence.

In what looked like a hugely compassionate move, Burnham paused the early release of scumbags Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole – part of the trio that killed PC Harper by dragging him at speed along a country road. His body was so badly mutilated that the person who found him thought he was a deer carcass.

His family have had to live every day since with the cruel and hellish way Andrew died. But at least there was some comfort knowing his killers would be behind bars for a very long time. But thanks to the government’s grotesque early release scheme, his wife Lissie and mum Debbie were told, having served just six years, they were going to be freed. When they rightly made a public fuss, knee-jerk Burnham, desperately trying to look like a compassionate man of the people, paused their release to “review” the situation.

Well, a whole week later he has and the upshot is these cretins, who laughed as they were being sent down, are STILL being released early. So why did Burnham bother getting involved if this was always going to be the outcome? Why did he give Andrew’s family false hope? Because that’s what he did and he did it in order to make himself look good, like he was going to do something – when he wasn’t

So, was his intervention just for show? Was it to enhance his “human” credentials. I’d like to believe it wasn’t. But that’s what it’s looking like. “I have pushed to the very limits of what it is possible to do,” said Burnham this week when it was announced PC Harper’s killers would be released.

No, you haven’t matey. You can’t “push the limits” in just a week. And YOU absolutely COULD have kept these two toerags inside. It’s just two prison places. These thugs were cop killers for God’s sake and that used to carry a more severe sentence than any other killing because these men and women put their lives on the line every day.

But not any more. This early release makes it clear that Andy Burnham’s government doesn’t think dead cops matter. That they are expendable. And THAT’S a disgrace.

All Burnham did in his so-called “ review” was have a few conversations with civil servants and people from the probation service who said: “It can’t be done.”

He probably even had a chat with Martin Jones, Chief Inspector of the Probation Service, who has claimed publicly that delaying the early release of prisoners would put the public at risk. How for God’s sake. On what planet does that make sense? If they’re kept in prison where they belong, they can’t possibly be a danger to the public. With this kind of logic at the top of the Probation Service, it’s no wonder it’s on its knees.

“I know now I can look people in the eye and say there’s nothing more I could have asked for without risking the prison system reaching capacity and collapsing within months,” insisted the PM.

You keep telling yourself that, Andy. But it’s not true. There’s lots more you could have done. You could have thrown up a few Nightingale-style prisons. The first NHS Nightingale Hospital took just nine days to build while those on other sites across the UK took just three weeks.

And into those Nightingale prisons could go the low-risk prisoners – the women, the shoplifters, the druggies, the burglars. And you free up spaces for the hard-core – the killers, the rapists, the robbers and the paedos – in the secure jails. It really isn’t rocket science. But I suppose just telling us it can’t be done is a damn sight easier isn’t it?

It’s beyond obscene that any killer should be released from jail having just served half of his or her sentence. Taking a life – especially in the horrific way PC Harper’s was taken – deserves life in prison. And not a day less. It’s an affront to Justice to free these no-marks – not because they’re reformed characters, but for the ridiculous reason that this idiot government doesn’t have anywhere to put them.

That’s not about justice. It’s about bad planning. The early release scheme is, and always has been, an affront to justice and a gross insult to the victims of crime. Yes, Burnham has said he’ll keep the rapists, the grooming gang thugs and serious child sex offenders behind bars, but how can he possibly differentiate between a killer and a rapist?

Both wreck lives. Both devastate entire families. Both deserve to be in jail for the entirety of their sentence – not thrown back onto the streets because of a space issue. The fact is punishment no longer fits the crime – it’s all dependent on how many cells are available that week.

The other thing Burnham could have done is order that all foreign criminals in our jails – all 14,000 of them – be immediately deported. No appeals, no human slavery pleas, no “I’m gay so I can’t be sent back” appeals. Just get rid of them.

And never mind the guff about how we don’t have returns agreements with some of the countries they’re from because that’s easy to sort. Just tell those countries who refuse to take back their scum that all foreign aid will be suspended immediately and they won’t get another penny from the UK until they take back their human detritus.

But has Burnham and his incompetent government attempted to do any of the above? Have they attempted to do anything other than sit around a table and talk saying how terrible it all is. No. They just fall back on the tired old arguments about returns agreements and ECHR rules which means they don’t have to DO anything apart from let criminals go.

And sod these criminals’ being allowed to stay because of their right to a family life. The ECHR says they’re entitled to that, but they shouldn’t be entitled to say which country they get to enjoy it in. So, if a criminal is deported his family can go with him. And if they don’t, that’s the Crim’s fault not the State’s. He didn’t care about his family enough NOT to commit the crime.

Of course, Burnham tried to soften the blow of letting killers out early claiming they’ll all be tagged, will face tougher supervision and be tracked. Yeah? By whom? The whole system is in chaos so who’s going to follow these lags around to see if they’re doing anything wrong?

Labour has pledged to create 14,000 new prison spaces (exactly the amount they’d have if they deported the jailed foreign criminals) with three new prisons. What they’ve failed to say is these prisons won’t be ready till 2031. That’s FIVE years away. Why so long? Developers can knock up a tower block in six months for God’s sake. And how many more killers, paedos and rapists will be back out on the streets by then? How many more victims will have been hurt or killed?