When will Russell Brand be Released?

“You will serve two thirds of that sentence then be released on licence,” Mr Justice Bennathan told Russell Brand on 9 November, sentencing him to ten and a half years for one rape and three sexual assaults against four women between 2004 and 2009.¹ Within hours the judge’s line was on the Reuters wire and in papers from Hawaii to Singapore. Some news outlets reported that he would be released in “around seven years”; others did the arithmetic and settled on November 2033. Both are about six months out. On the latest legislation and current prison service methodology, he will be released sooner: on Thursday 5 May 2033.

None of this touches the merits of the case, any appeal or what the women have been through. This is a more prosaic question, which used to have a simple answer: what does ten and a half years actually mean?

A judge must explain the effect of a sentence in ordinary language. For twenty years that usually meant saying “you will serve half in custody”. It no longer does. Different release fractions are not new, but since 1 October there has been an additional fraction of one third, together with a list (subject to successive alterations) of offences to which it does not apply. A pithy summary at the end of long sentencing remarks is now a trap.

The slip will not affect the actual release date.² The judge decides the overall length, statute fixes the release point for each term, and the prison service works out the release date. It is, however, an error which has gone around the world.

Different Counts, Different Fractions

This sentence had two parts: nine years for the rape, and eighteen months for the sexual assaults, to be served consecutively, one after the other. The three assault terms run concurrently with each other, so only the longest affects the overall sentence length.

The Sentencing Act 2026 moved most standard determinate sentences to release at one-third, and took certain serious violent and sexual offenders with thresholds of either four or seven years from two-thirds to a halfway release point. In August the incoming Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, carved out offences of rape, serious child sex offences and grooming from this reduction, and a few weeks later widened the exclusions, including unlawful killing. The regulations bringing the reforms into force list rape, but not sexual assault.³ So rape keeps its two-thirds release point, and sexual assaults go to one-third.

Where consecutive terms carry different fractions, the prison works them out in turn and adds them together, starting the second term on the day after the prisoner would notionally have been released on the first.⁴ Brand’s rape sentence reaches its two-thirds point on 8 November 2032. The eighteen months begin the next day, and one-third runs to 9 May 2033. Time already spent in custody counts, and Brand was remanded after the verdicts on 5 November, so four days come off.⁵

That arrives at Thursday 5 May 2033, which is about 62 per cent of the sentence. Brand will then be on licence until 4 May 2037: out of prison, but under conditions and liable to recall. He will be subject indefinitely to notification requirements known as the sex offenders’ register, and is not eligible to be released early on an electronic tag.⁶

Moving Targets

The judge’s figure applied the rape release fraction to the whole sentence. That is a natural shortcut, but one caught out by the new structure.

Had the Sentencing Act 2026 come in without Burnham’s exclusions, Brand’s release date would have been 6 November 2031, eighteen months before the actual date. Had the release reforms in the Act not been brought in at all, it would have been three months after it, on 4 August 2033.⁷

Brand was acquitted of an allegation from 2001, left to the jury as attempted indecent assault under the 1956 Act. Had the jury convicted, that count would have carried a different release fraction (one-half) from the sexual assaults committed after 1 May 2004 (one-third).

Even 5 May 2033 is not a certainty. Days added for disciplinary offences in prison can push release back. And ministers may change their minds again. On the day Brand was sentenced the adult male prison estate was at 98 per cent of capacity. Statutory instruments can change these rules rapidly. Increasing prison places takes years.

If a High Court judge, with the world watching and remarks prepared in advance, can indicate a figure six months out, it does not bode well for busy criminal practitioners up and down the country. Release dates are now the product of so many overlapping provisions that many no longer try to work them out. A sentence is pronounced in open court so that everyone can understand it: defendants, families, victims and the public. When release dates cannot be reliably worked out at the time sentence is passed, something has gone wrong with the law, not with those applying it.

Greg Unwin, Legal 500 Crime and Extradition Junior of the Year 2026, is developing Release Point, an advanced release-date calculator app for criminal practitioners, expected by Christmas 2026. For updates, see releasepoint.uk.

¹ R v Brand, sentencing remarks, 9 November 2026, para 18  (judiciary.uk).
² See Attorney General’s Reference (R v Rose) [2021] EWCA Crim 155, paras 30-36.
³ Sentencing Act 2026, s 23; SI 2026/953, reg 5 and Sch paras 10 and 33. The rape term falls within CJA 2003 s 244ZA(4).
⁴ CJA 2003 s 264(2B) and (6); HMPPS Annex A paras 6.23-6.24 and MoJ calculator.
⁵ CJA 2003 s 240ZA; remarks para 18. Nine years from 9 November 2026 is 3,287 days, and two-thirds is 2,192. Eighteen months from 9 November 2032 is 546 days, and one-third is 182. That is 2,374, less four, which gives 2,370.
⁶ CJA 2003 ss 264(3C), 246(1)(a) and 246(4)(e); SOA 2003, ss 80 and 82 and Sch 3, with review after 15 years under s 91A.
⁷ Without the exclusions, same method and the same four days’ credit: the rape would have been one-half release and the eighteen months one-third release. Under the rules in force until 30 September 2026: the rape was two-thirds and the assaults one-half, because the SDS 40% scheme did not apply to Sexual Offences Act 2003 offences (SI 2024/844, art 3(6)(a) and Sch para 12).