Emma Webber, whose son Barnaby was killed in the Nottingham attacks of June 2023, has cautiously welcomed a significant revision to the government's early prisoner release scheme. The modification means that those convicted of manslaughter will no longer be eligible for early discharge, a change that directly affects Valdo Calocane, the man convicted of killing her son.
The government had initially designed the early release programme to reduce pressure on an overcrowded prison system in England and Wales, which operates at more than 97% capacity. However, following sustained public opposition led by families of victims, Justice Secretary Andy Burnham announced on Saturday that offenders convicted of manslaughter would be excluded from the scheme.
Barnaby Webber was one of three people fatally stabbed by paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane in 2023. Calocane was subsequently convicted of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility rather than murder, a decision that proved deeply controversial with the bereaved families.
While Ms Webber acknowledged the policy shift represented
the right thing, she emphasised the emotional toll her family and others had endured to achieve it.
I'll tell you what wasn't the right thing, the trauma of victims, who have been through so much already, have had to go through to fight for this, she said.
How did families force this change?
The reversal came after more than 30 families affected by serious crimes, including the Webbers, signed a letter to Justice Secretary Alex Norris in early August expressing their view that victims were
being asked to bear the consequences of the prison capacity crisis. The families organised petitions, gave media interviews, and publicly campaigned against the scheme despite the emotional cost of repeatedly discussing their losses.
Opposition to the early release scheme had initially centred on the case of PC Andrew Harper, a police officer dragged to his death in 2019. Two of the three men convicted in that case would have been eligible for early release under the original plan, prompting his family to mount a high-profile campaign against the policy.
Ms Webber described the campaign as exhausting but necessary.
I try not to be always confrontational and always fighting but as much as I try not to, it seems to be the only way that things are getting done, she said.
Everything we have done as families in the Nottingham attacks has come at such great cost and yes we are getting results but we shouldn't have had to do any of it at all.
What wider issues does this reveal?
Ms Webber used the controversy to highlight systemic problems within the justice system.
The fact that we were even having to consider releasing people who had taken lives and destroyed families and communities early from their sentences is abhorrent, she stated.
I stand by what I said yesterday - it is morally bankrupt.
She argued that the crisis reflected chronic underfunding across the justice sector, forcing policymakers to choose between releasing serious offenders or managing an unsustainable prison population. According to Ministry of Justice data, there were 1,015 people in prison in England and Wales for manslaughter at the end of June 2026, including 950 men and 65 women.
What triggered the scheme's review?
The early-release programme was originally scheduled to begin on 2 September 2026 but was paused on 23 July 2026 pending review, with the government pledging that no eligible offenders would be freed until safeguards were reconsidered. The pause followed weeks of mounting pressure from victims' families and public concern about which categories of prisoner would qualify.
On 4 August 2026, the government tightened the scheme further by excluding rape, serious child sexual offences and grooming offences, reducing the eligible prisoner pool to approximately 5,000 from an earlier estimate of 6,000. Calocane, detained at a high-security hospital rather than a conventional prison, was sentenced to what the judge indicated would likely be indefinite detention.
The manslaughter conviction itself remained a source of frustration for the Webber family and other bereaved relatives, who had campaigned for murder charges. The decision to convict on manslaughter grounds, citing diminished responsibility due to Calocane's mental illness, meant he avoided a mandatory life sentence with a specified minimum term.
What happens next?
Ms Webber confirmed that following her earlier request to meet with ministers, the families have now received an invitation to meet with Justice Secretary Alex Norris to raise their concerns directly. Ministers were expected to decide within a fortnight after 8 August 2026 on whether to expand the exemption to cover all manslaughter convictions or restrict it only to killings of emergency workers. If the broader exemption is adopted, legal changes to the release scheme would then be tabled for implementation.
The case of Henry Long, the third man jailed over PC Andrew Harper's death, illustrates the complexity of the issue. Long received a 16-year sentence and was not eligible for early release under any version of the scheme, highlighting how sentencing length and offence category interact to determine eligibility.
