Prisoners have thanked Prime Minister Andy Burnham as they celebrated walking free from jail early.
The first wave of releases began on Thursday, with 700 criminals expected to be freed across the country.
One prisoner, dressed in shorts, a T-shirt and trainers and holding his belongings in a bin bag, said to the press as he left HMP Durham in north-east England: “Justice system, what justice system? Thank you Andy Burnham.”
Prisoners were also seen celebrating as they left HMP Birmingham, HMP Forest Bank in Salford, HMP Leeds, HMP Wandsworth and HMP Wormwood Scrubs in London, HMP Durham and HMP Bristol.
A man leaving HMP Cardiff, who was asked if he had a message for the Prime Minister, said: “Thank you very much and don’t get me back here again, bro.”
A prisoner called Dean who emerged from HMP Forest Bank said he was “buzzing” to be out early, despite only having another week or so to serve.
He told the Press Association: “There’s big people in there, they’ve got, like, years off.”
“I’ve had to explain… people don’t even know who Andy Burnham was. I think he’s a really good prime minister. He’s getting things done. He doesn’t just give it all the talk. He gets things done,” he added.
The inmates are among thousands the Government says it has been forced to let out to free up space in overcrowded jails and stop the justice system from collapsing.
Former prime minister Sir Keir Starmer and previous Tory administrations had presided over similar plans.
Some 5,000 prisoners are scheduled to be released in stages over the next year, down from 6,000 after ministers intervened to exclude rapists and the most serious child sex offenders following criticism of the policy over the summer.
Prisoners guilty of manslaughter will also be excluded, meaning the killers of Pc Andrew Harper, who died in the line of duty in 2019, will not be eligible.
The number of people behind bars has jumped by more than 1,700 in the past three months.
The prison population in England and Wales was 87,499 on Monday, according to Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data.
This is up from 85,761 on June 29 – a rise of 1,738, or 2%.
A prisoner being released from HMP Cardiff admitted he will “probably be back in the next month or two”.
Tom, 32, who was jailed for burglary, told reporters: “I think it’s shit, to be honest with you.
“I’d happily spend my time in there, I mean, I’ve been doing it for 17 years. I’ll probably be back in the next month or two.
“I got nothing better to do with myself, I’m homeless, so what else am I going to do? You can’t be homeless and sober at the same time.”
Reform UK’s candidate for mayor of London said if she was Mr Burnham she would “hang my head in shame”.
Laila Cunningham told reporters outside HMP Wandsworth: “He (the Prime Minister) should go speak to every domestic abuse victim who is fleeing her home and look them in the eye and say how’s he going to help them, what’s he going to do for them?”
The MoJ said released offenders will be monitored under the “toughest supervision in British history”.
Conservative shadow justice secretary Nick Timothy said the public would “pay the price” for the decision and the policy was an “insult to victims”.
Victims commissioner Claire Waxman warned the Government’s confidence in the plan “is not yet matched by the reality on the ground”.
Catherine Atkinson, Labour MP for Derby North and chairwoman of the Commons Justice Committee, said the releases were “regretfully a matter of necessity after more than a decade of policy failure to manage the estate’s long-running capacity issues”.
The safety of victims and the public “must be paramount”, she said, adding: “Serious questions remain over the pressures on probation and prison staff, the effectiveness of electronic monitoring, as well as the system’s readiness to manage the return of offenders back into communities in the coming months.”
Former safeguarding minister Jess Phillips said she expects large numbers of domestic abusers to be recalled to prison having been released early.
She told Times Radio: “I would be lying if I said that I was completely confident today that everything that I think should be in place, and many of us have fought for to be in place, will actually be there.
“I expect there will be huge recalls to prison of domestic abusers. In a real tendency to breach their orders, breach their licences, get in touch with their victims, their children.”
Justice Secretary Alex Norris said: “We understand the anxiety victims face ahead of offenders’ release dates, but the greatest danger to victims would be prisons running out of cells for dangerous criminals, which was the crisis this Government inherited.
“Our plan will make sure this never happens again by building 14,000 prison places while subjecting offenders to the toughest-ever controls, leaving them nowhere to hide and under no doubt that we are watching them.”
The first releases coincided with the Justice Secretary being sworn in as Lord Chancellor at a ceremony at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London on the first day of the new legal year, where he vowed to the most senior judges in England and Wales that he would be “ambitious” in his bid to cut the backlog of court cases.
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