Public services will be “bracing themselves for a deluge” of newly released prisoners next month as part of the government’s plans to tackle prison overcrowding, an expert has warned.

Last month, the government announced plans to release prisoners early to alleviate overcrowding.

This will include releasing prisoners after serving just 40 per cent of their sentence, although there will be exceptions for violent or sexual offenders who have been sentenced to prison for four years or more.

Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood said failing to act now risked a “total breakdown of law and order”.

But Chris Parsons, the head of Dartington-based offenders rehabilitation charity Landworks, warned that the sudden increase in the number of newly-released prisoners could overwhelm the system when the changes come into force in September.

“All the services are kind of bracing themselves for what sounds like a deluge of people leaving prison. They're talking about 1,000 more probation officers but there's no way those will be trained in time,” he said.

“And without any accommodation in place (for prisoners) it seems a dangerous thing to do. Very foolhardy,” he added.

According to a government report released last month, the prison population in England and Wales is expected to rise beyond available capacity.

The report revealed that as of March this year, there were 87,900 people in prison – up by six per cent compared to March 2019.

Mr Parsons agreed that there was a need to take “fairly drastic action” to prevent the collapse of the prison system but added: “We haven't got the capability to deal with people at the moment and it's fairly unlikely it’s going to change within six weeks.”

The previous Conservative administration addressed the long-standing problem by introducing an early-release scheme that saw more than 10,000 prisoners walk free, but Mr Parsons said that policy was also beset with problems.

“It didn't really give the probation service in the community appropriate time to get much in place in the way of support accommodation for people coming out (of prison),” he said.

He cited cases of high-end offenders who were released early and sent to hostels, but who were in such a drunken an abusive state that they were quickly returned to prison.