Hundreds of prisoners are being freed early from jails in Oklahoma on Monday in what is being called the biggest one-day mass commutation in US history.

The state’s pardon and parole board voted unanimously on Friday to recommend the sentences of 527 state inmates be commuted – 75% of them male and 25% female.

About 460 of the prisoners will be able to walk out of prison on Monday. Many of those being released have been in jail for the past three years.

The decision was signed off by Governor Kevin Stitt, who praised the opportunity to give hundreds of Oklahomans “a second chance”.

The state reportedly has the highest incarceration rate in the country.

There are 1,079 people incarcerated per 100,000 of the population in Oklahoma, compared with a US average of 698, according to prisonpolicy.org.

In 2016, Oklahoma voters made simple drug possession a misdemeanour instead of a felony – as part of a push to prioritise treatment over imprisonment for those struggling with addiction.

Mr Stitt, who was elected governor in 2018, has backed reforming the criminal justice system in the state.

He signed a bill earlier this year that retroactively adjusted sentences for drug possession and low-level property crimes.

Steve Bickley, executive director of the parole board, said of its decision on Friday: “With this vote, we are fulfilling the will of Oklahomans.

“However, from day one, the goal of this project has been more than just the release of low-level, non-violent offenders, but the successful re-entry of these individuals back into society.”

If all inmates had completed their sentences, it would have cost Oklahoma almost $12m (£9.3m).

The governor is set to greet about 70 women whose sentences have been commuted outside the gates of Dr Eddie Warrior Correctional Centre, an all-women’s prison in Taft, Oklahoma.

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