The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, has admitted that the proportion of people released early from prison who are being recalled is "very high", as the government prepares to free more inmates to relieve an overcrowding crisis.
Mahmood said figures would not yet be available for the number of prisoners who had been returned after the first wave of prison releases in September, but said it was likely they would also be high.
In the second tranche of releases in England and Wales yesterday, 1,100 criminals serving sentences of five years or more were released from prison early to ease the crisis.
Mahmood said she was determined that this would be the last emergency release.
The justice secretary said she did not think the return rate would be as high as 50%, the figure put to her by the BBC, but said: "The rates of recall are very high, and that is true. And the issue here is people are released on licence, they have strict licence conditions that they have to abide by. If they break those licence conditions, it is right that they are recalled to prison.
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