Last month alone, 530 inmates were released including 33 murderers, 47 rapists and two paedophiles after a new law came into force which puts killers and twisted sex offenders back on the streets far sooner than a judge ordered.
The scheme was ordered by the ECHR in Romania to ease an overcrowding crisis in the cash-strapped country’s “inhumane and degrading” prison system.
The law allows six days to be shaved off every inmate’s sentence for every 30 days they spend behind bars.
A further 3,500 prisoners are eligible for parole this month because of reductions in their sentences and an estimated total of 8,000 are expected to benefit from the new law in the first year alone.
Romania has increasingly close ties to Britain. In 2006 there were 17,000 Romanians living in the UK – by 2016 that figure had risen to 310,000, according to estimates from the Office for National Statistics.
The scheme has sparked fears that some freed convicts may pose a risk to the public. All inmates are eligible for early release regardless of the severity of their crimes or subsequent sentences.
According to local reports, a man who was released a year early from a 10-year rape sentence robbed and sexually assaulted a woman in Bucharest just four days after walking free.
Earlier this year the European Court of Human Rights criticised Romania’s prison conditions after four inmates lodged complaints about overcrowding, unsanitary facilities, poor food and the infestation of rats.
In April the court, which is not an EU body but part of the 56-state Council of Europe, told Romania it needed to provide a plan to improve its prisons.
A spokesman for the Council of Europe said: “There have been a series of judgments from the European Court of Human Rights concerning inadequate prison conditions in Romania going back several years.
“The Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers is working with the Romanian authorities to address these issues.”
Romanian justice minister Tudorel Toader admitted he was shocked by the number of inmates who benefited from the new measure, saying he did not expect “the impact to be so great.”
There are also fears the new measures could be used to release officials jailed for corruption.
So-called “VIP inmates” are said to live in better conditions to general prisoners who are packed 18 to 20 in each cell.
Sorin Dumitrascu, president of the federation of prison service trade unions, said: “Nobody believes that they implemented these measures for the regular prisoners, most Romanians believe it was done for the politicians.”