The men convicted over the death of Police Constable Andrew Harper are to be barred from the Government’s early release programme, according to reports, in a significant shift that will keep them behind bars until at least the latter half of their sentences.
Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole, two of three people found guilty in connection with the killing of the Thames Valley Police officer in 2019, had been due to walk free next year under the current rules. The pair would have served only half of their 13-year terms before being released back into the community — a prospect that provoked fury from police groups and a personal intervention from Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
The change, expected to be enacted through secondary legislation amending the Sentencing Act, will exclude offenders jailed for specific categories of manslaughter from qualifying for the early release scheme. Justice Secretary Alex Norris has been conducting a review since the row erupted, and his recommendations are due to be published when Parliament returns from its summer recess in September.
How the killing unfolded
Pc Harper, 28, died in August 2019 after his ankles became tangled in a strap trailing from the back of a car whose occupants had been attempting to steal a quad bike in Sulhamstead, Berkshire. The newlywed officer was dragged along a country road for more than a mile before falling free, suffering catastrophic injuries.
Bowers and Cole were passengers in the vehicle. They were convicted alongside Henry Long, who was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 16 years. The case sent shockwaves through policing and prompted sustained campaigning by Lissie Harper, the officer’s widow, who has become one of the most prominent voices on police safety in Britain.
The political row over early release
The Labour scheme, launched in September 2024 to ease chronic overcrowding in the prison estate, allows certain categories of prisoner to be released after serving 40 per cent of a fixed-term sentence rather than the customary 50 per cent. The 2026 Sentencing Act extended that principle further, lowering the threshold to a third of the sentence.
Burnham has already taken steps to exclude rapists and child sex offenders from eligibility. But until now, ministers had refused to confirm publicly that those convicted of so-called “unlawful act” manslaughter — a charge that includes cases where death was caused during the commission of a separate offence — would also be carved out.
When asked earlier this month, the Prime Minister dismissed the suggestion as “speculation”. That position now appears to have shifted, with police chiefs briefed that secondary legislation will follow.
A Government spokesperson said: “The death of Pc Andrew Harper was a horrific crime. Our thoughts are with his family and friends, and we share the anger from the police community that we are in this position.”
A long campaign, and a wider legacy
The spokesperson added: “The Prime Minister has asked the Justice Secretary to work through further options to keep a greater number of the most serious offenders in prison, including the killers of Pc Harper. Thanks to tireless campaigning by Andrew’s family, Harper’s Law means that anyone convicted of killing an emergency worker whilst committing a crime now gets a mandatory life sentence. This Government has gone further by introducing a presumption that anyone convicted of murdering a police, prison or probation officer is handed a whole-life order.”
For Lissie Harper, the development represents the latest — though not necessarily final — victory in a campaign that has already reshaped the law. Harper’s Law, which came into effect in 2022, means those who kill an emergency worker in the course of another crime now face a mandatory life term. Yet the early release question had continued to gnaw, given the original sentences handed to Bowers and Cole did not meet the threshold for a life order.
It was Mr Burnham himself who, in the days after taking office, promised to do “everything possible” to ensure the pair remained in custody. He subsequently wrote to Mr Norris asking him to “develop a plan to maximise public safety and minimise the early release of prisoners.” That work is now approaching its conclusion.
What the law says — and what changes
Unlawful act manslaughter is one of the more contested corners of English criminal law. It arises where a defendant causes the death of another while carrying out a separate criminal offence, even where there was no intention to kill or cause serious injury. The offence has long drawn criticism from judges and academics who argue its scope is unhelpfully broad, but it remains a routine feature of homicide prosecutions.
By excluding it from the early release regime, ministers would be drawing a sharper line between the various categories of manslaughter. Those serving terms for “unlawful act” killings, where the defendant was engaged in serious offending at the time, would join a growing list of exclusions built up since the scheme began.
Secondary legislation provides a faster route than a full parliamentary Bill, allowing ministers to amend sentencing thresholds without waiting for primary legislation to clear both Houses. It is a mechanism ministers have turned to repeatedly since the early release scheme was introduced, reflecting the politically combustible nature of who gets let out — and who stays in.
Why it Matters
For Lissie Harper and the wider police family, the exclusion of Bowers and Cole would close a loophole that has felt, to many, both legally perverse and morally indefensible. For the Government, the move underlines a calculated political bet: that the public appetite for reform on police safety now outweighs any embarrassment at a slow, iterative tightening of the release rules. And for the criminal justice system more broadly, it sets another marker in the Government’s stop-start effort to square an overcrowded prison estate with a public that has little tolerance for headline-grabbing releases. The Harper case has never really been about one officer, or one judgment — it has become a proxy for the kind of country Britain wants to be when a uniformed life is taken in the line of duty.