The prison population in England and Wales has fallen by more than 2,000 people in just one week, after the start of a government plan to reduce overcrowding.

Last Friday, the prison population was 88,521 – just short of the system’s maximum operational capacity of 89,619.

Today the figure has fallen by 2,188, to 86,333.

It comes after a temporary early release scheme came into effect on Tuesday, with around 1,750 prisoners freed after serving 40 per cent of their sentence, rather than the usual 50 per cent.

The cohort of early leavers were those with jail terms of less than five years.

The second phase of the plan will apply to those with sentences of five years or more – but the government insists it won’t apply to most serious offenders such as killers, rapists and terrorists.

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Released prisoners speak to Sky News

The release scheme intends to create space in the country’s overcrowded prisons.

Ministers blame the legacy they inherited from the previous Conservative government, saying to do nothing was “unthinkable” and would have led to a “total collapse of the criminal justice system”.

However, concerns have been raised about safety and whether prisoners are sufficiently rehabilitated to be back on the streets.

Charlie Taylor, the chief inspector of prisons, said earlier this week that the country’s jails are in danger of becoming a “revolving door” because prisoners are not “doing the work they need to do in order to go out and be successful when they leave prison”.

He told Sky News that normally 1,000 prisoners come out a week so this, on top of the early release scheme, “puts some risks into local communities and greater strain on already stretched probation services”.

The mass release coincides with a damning report from the chief inspector which describes a “devastating picture” of life behind bars with “a surge in illicit drug use, self-harm and violence”.

Out of 32 inspected prisons, 30 were “poor or insufficiently good” in providing purposeful activity and 60% were overcrowded.

The report found that planned releases were often underfunded.

At Bedford Prison, 30% of those leaving jail had nowhere to live.

Justifying the decision, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “We inherited a prison system on the point of collapse. This is not a change we wanted to make – it was the only option left on the table because the alternative would have seen a total collapse of the criminal justice system.

“We would have seen the breakdown of law and order because courts would not have been able to conduct trials, and the police would not have been able to make arrests.”