Action being taken to ensure domestic abuse prisoners not among those released early tomorrow, minister says

Published

1 year ago

September 10, 2024

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Prisoners set to be released early tomorrow have been trawled through in an attempt to not let domestic abusers go, the policing minister has said.

Tuesday will see about 1,700 prisoners released early to alleviate overcrowding in prisons in England and Wales.

The government said serious violent criminals, terrorists and domestic abuse perpetrators will not be released as part of the scheme.

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However, the domestic abuse commissioner Nicole Jacobs told The Times victims of domestic abuse are having “sleepless nights” over the release as they fear those who have been convicted of crimes such as common assault towards a partner will not be flagged as domestic abusers.

Policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said the government has been trying to ensure that does not happen.

She told Sky News: “There’s been a real trawl through to try and identify where their primary offence isn’t domestic abuse, we know there’s a history, and that’s where the steps have been put in to protect as best we can.

“Because we know, unfortunately, domestic abuse is so prevalent amongst the offending community.”

Sir Keir Starmer has blamed the previous Conservative government for not building enough prisons, saying he has been “forced into” releasing prisoners early.

Dame Diana said about 1,700 prisoners will be released tomorrow. A total of about 5,500 prisoners in England and Wales are expected to be released earlier than planned in September and October as part of the temporary scheme.

The prisoners will serve the rest of their sentences under the “strictest licensing conditions” and will be tagged, the government has said.

But Martin Jones, Chief Inspector of Probation, said there are “no risk-free options available”.

He said the eight weeks the government has given the probation service to plan for the scheme has given it “at least a fighting chance of getting this right”.

However, he warned the number of offenders being released means some could reoffend when they should have been in jail.

He told The Times in August: “I think it’s inevitable, being realistic about it, that things will go wrong. I wish we could live in a perfect world where that doesn’t happen.

“What I think you should start to see, at least, is that if people have to focus on those, that they start to identify where things go wrong, and they draw lessons from that quite quickly.

“I also think there’s a little bit of a numbers game to some extent, you’re rolling the dice all the time in relation to serious further offences.

“You know, ultimately, if you release thousands of people, a number of those cases will ultimately, sadly, there will be things that will go wrong.”

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A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “The new government inherited a justice system in crisis and has been forced into taking difficult but necessary action to ensure we can keep locking up dangerous criminals and protect the public.

“Anyone released into Home Detention Curfew is risk-assessed, faces the strictest licensing conditions and must be tagged.”

Politics

Prediction markets bet on Coinbase-linked Hassett as top Fed pick

Published

3 hours ago

December 1, 2025

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Prediction markets bet on Coinbase-linked Hassett as top Fed pick

Prediction markets Polymarket and Kalshi view Kevin Hassett, US President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council director, as the favorite to replace Jerome Powell as the next Federal Reserve chair.

The odds of Hassett filling the seat have spiked to 66% on Polymarket and 74% on Kalshi at the time of writing. Hassett is widely viewed as crypto‑friendly thanks to his past role on Coinbase’s advisory council, a disclosed seven‑figure stake in the exchange and his leadership of the White House digital asset working group.

Founder and CEO of Wyoming-based Custodia Bank, and a prominent advocate for crypto-friendly regulations, Caitlin Long, commented on X:

“If this comes true & Hassett does become Fed chairman, anti-#crypto people at the Fed who still hold positions of power will finally be out (well, most of them anyway). BIG changes will be coming to the Fed.”

Kevin Hassett’s crypto credentials

Hassett is a long-time Republican policy economist who returned to Washington as Trump’s top economic adviser and has now emerged as the market-implied frontrunner to lead the Fed.

His financial disclosure reveals at least a seven‑figure Coinbase stake and compensation for serving on the exchange’s Academic and Regulatory Advisory Council, placing him unusually close to the crypto industry for a potential Fed chair.

Still, crypto has been burned before by reading too much into “crypto‑literate” resumes. Gary Gensler arrived at the Securities and Exchange Commission with MIT blockchain courses under his belt, but went on to preside over a wave of high‑profile enforcement actions, some of which critics branded as “Operation Chokepoint 2.0.”

A Hassett-led Fed might be more open to experimentation and less reflexively hostile to bank‑crypto activity. Still, the institution’s mandate on financial stability means markets should not assume a one‑way bet on deregulation.

Supervision pushback inside the Fed

The Hassett odds have jumped just as the Fed’s own approach to bank supervision has received pushback from veterans like Fed Governor Michael Barr, who earned his reputation as one of Operation Chokepoint 2.0’s key architects.

According to Caitlin Long, while he Barr “was Vice Chairman of Supervision & Regulation he did Warren’s bidding,” and he “has made it clear he will oppose changes made by Trump & his appointees.”

On Nov. 18, the Fed released new Supervisory Operating Principles that shift examiners toward a “risk‑first” framework, directing staff to focus on material safety‑and‑soundness risks rather than procedural or documentation issues.

In a speech the same day, Barr warned that narrowing oversight, weakening ratings frameworks and making it harder to issue enforcement actions or matters requiring attention could leave supervisors slower to act on emerging risks, arguing that gutting those tools may repeat pre‑crisis mistakes.

Days later, in Consumer Affairs Letter 25‑1, the Fed clarified that the new Supervisory Operating Principles do not apply to its Consumer Affairs supervision program (an area under Barr’s committee as a governor).

If prediction markets are right and a crypto‑friendly Hassett inherits this landscape, his Fed would not be writing on a blank slate but stepping into an institution already mid‑pivot on how hard (and where) it leans on banks.