Early release prisoners given £2m

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Justice Secretary Jack Straw said the cash was shared between nearly 24,000 inmates freed during the period.

Conservatives said the hand-outs "added insult to injury" because not only were offenders being freed early, they were being "paid for the privilege".

The Tories calculated the sum amounted to £82 per prisoner, on top of the standard £47 discharge grant received by all offenders on leaving jail.

Mr Straw said in a written answer to MPs: "A total of £1,953,854 in subsistence payments is recorded as having been paid to prisoners released on end of custody licence between June 29 2007 and March 31 2008.

"During this period a total of 23,716 prisoners were released on ECL.

"Subsistence payments are made because prisoners on an ECL are released under temporary licence from prison... and... are statutorily ineligible to receive benefits payments."

Shadow justice secretary Nick Herbert said: "The human cost of this discredited scheme is clear in hundreds of unnecessary victims of crime.

"Now we learn the financial cost to the taxpayer is more than £2 million.

"The Government is adding insult to injury by not only releasing prisoners early but actually paying them for the privilege."