"The UK is turning into a police state," Elon Musk said. "Keyboard warriors" are facing specific scrutiny from the judiciary, with one man facing jail time for posts said to have "instigated" riots. A 53-year-old woman who posted "burn the mosque down" and is the only caretaker for her disabled husband was sentenced to 15 months in prison. 12-year-old boys are also among those convicted.
The prisoner release plan, called Operation Early Dawn, was "triggered for a week in March," The Times reports, and it requires police to release suspects on bail if confinement space is lacking. In this case, the plan will be enacted in the North East and Yorkshire, Cumbria and Lancashire, and Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire regions.
The riots are being blamed for the expansion of these measures and it's believed, per a senior government source cited by The Times, that "the large numbers of people imprisoned for their role in the riots will probably lead to emergency early release measures staying in place for longer than expected." 567 new prison cells have been opened ahead of schedule to cope with the demand.
"From September 10, thousands of prisoners will start being released 40 percent of the way through their sentence as part of the emergency measures announced last month," The Times reports.
Those ministers calling for use of the plan claim that no one who poses a threat to public safety would be released. Speaking to the BBC, chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association Mark Fairhurst said "we will guarantee a prison cell. We will make sure that those people who need to be in prison will be in prison. Not necessarily in the area in which they live, they might be two, three hundred miles from home, but we will guarantee a prison cell."
When asked how he could make that guarantee due to the tight quarters, the official said "they are tight and that's why we've initiated Operation Early Dawn. So basically, the easiest way to describe it is 'one in one out.' So as people get released, we can then pick up people from police department cells and take them to court and we will triage that three times a day."
Fairhurst said "This is all a result of the rioters. Last week we had the biggest influx of new receptions I’ve seen for quite some time. We had 397 new receptions. As of Friday we only had 340 spaces left in the adult closed male estate, which is feeling the most pressure."
"I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point [on Monday morning] the Ministry of Justice would announce that Operation Early Dawn kicks into play at some point next week, probably Tuesday onwards," Fairhurst continued.
"You’re now clogging up police cells, so they haven’t got the power to arrest people and put them away in a police cell," he said. "It has a massive knock-on effect on the entire criminal justice system."
