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Early Releases

Accelerated release scheme

In response to the changed circumstances of the Loyalist and Republican cease-fires the Government introduced legislation in 1995 - the Northern Ireland (Remission of Sentences) Act - to allow release on licence for prisoners convicted of serious scheduled (terrorism-related) offences after they have served half their sentence.

Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act was introduced in July 1998. Prisoners convicted of scheduled offences (terrorism-related) and attracting a sentence of five years or more became eligible to apply for early release from the Independent Sentence Review Commissioners. The first releases under this scheme came when 7 prisoners were released on 11 September 1998.

The releases to date are as follows:

Twenty Two persons have had their licences suspended who were believed to have breached the terms of their licence. Of these 18 were life sentence prisoners and 4 were determinate sentence prisoners. Ten of the 22 (4 determinates and 6 lifers) were for alleged involvement in terrorist offending behaviour and 12 for alleged involvement in non-terrorist offending behaviour.

We are not in a position to advise how many of these people were convicted of terrorist offences or whether any person released early has subsequently been convicted of non-terrorist offences. The PSNI may have this type of information.

+ A monthly breakdown of the releases under the Sentences Act can be found in the section titled Early Release Figures (see link at top of this page).