'To prevent a total breakdown in law and order, ministers have essentially decided to let more criminals live in the community'

have sparked fury among victims' families, who fear the Government is once again taking the side of criminals rather than protecting them.

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This was not a party fundraiser or a gathering of the well-to-do at Royal Ascot or Wimbledon - but the scene as thousands of prisoners were released early.

Few crises sum up the state of modern Britain better.

The sight of a convict jumping into a £200,000 Lamborghini outside Pentonville Prison in London became the symbol of Labour's disastrous early release scheme and repeated failures under the Conservatives.

After Dame Anne Owers' scathing report on Tuesday showed how close the prison system came to collapse, the Tories insisted they responded to demands for criminals to be locked up for longer.

Yet their plans to expand the prison estate did not keep up with their sentencing reforms and an increase in 20,000 police officers.

Labour claim only 500 additional jail places were introduced.

It is said that Downing Street's "default position was to do as little as possible as late as possible" as cells filled up. This led to emergency measures including inmates freed early and others held in police cells, as justice chiefs feared a breakdown in law and order with police unable to arrest suspects.

Dame Anne, former jails watchdog, said ministers and justice chiefs did the "minimum necessary" "avoid meltdown at the last possible moment".

To the crisis became so acute "the marker of success was "whether everyone got a bed last night".

Now Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is legislating for the early release of killers, rapists, drug dealers and burglars.

Labour believe the reforms are the only way to prevent a repeat of the past two years.

Ministers will introduce a "progression model" where prisoners are freed after a third of their term to spend another third under house arrest and will only then be put on licence and let into the community.

Convicts are essentially being rewarded for good behaviour behind bars.