Government action to avert summer prison disaster
The prison system would have collapsed entirely by summer if not for the Government’s decisive action to keep the public safe, new analysis has revealed.
- Government action finally puts jails on a sustainable footing, projections show
- Jails would have fully run out of space by June if Government had not acted to keep public safe.
- Prison crisis will be ended through sentencing reforms and largest prison expansion since Victorian era.
Published today (29 January), new projections show that without the Government’s Sentencing Act – which received Royal Assent last week – the country would have completely run out of prison places as early as June this year.
This Government’s decisive action has safeguarded the police, courts, and wider criminal justice system, and avoided a potentially catastrophic breakdown of law and border.
Under the last Government, prisons were regularly run red-hot at 99% capacity, with police chiefs warning that they would need to pause “non-priority” arrests.
Without action, the police would have been unable to make arrests, and courts would have been unable to send dangerous offenders to jails.
The last government added only 500 places to the prison estate in 14 years, but this Government will never accept putting public safety at risk.
That is why alongside sentencing reforms, it is pressing ahead with the biggest jail expansion programme since the Victorian era – delivering 14,000 extra prison places by 2031 with 2,900 already built.
Deputy Prime Minister, David Lammy, said:
These figures are a stark reminder of the ticking time-bomb we inherited in our prison system, brought on by a legacy of neglect, with only 500 places added to the estate in 14 years.Now, projections set out in the Government’s Annual Prison Capacity statement published today, show that without further action the situation would again become critical by March with demand for prison places fully exceeding supply within six months. This is despite the rapid rate at which jail spaces are currently being built.
We have moved at speed to fix this and make our streets safer, as part of our Plan for Change. We’re overhauling sentencing and building thousands of prison places fast to protect the public and make sure there is always a cell for dangerous criminals.
The prison estate has operated at over 95% occupancy for more than twelve years. At one point in 2024, fewer than 100 spaces remained in the adult male estate.
The Sentencing Act will grip this crisis, making sure future governments always have the prison places needed to keep people safe. This will keep dangerous criminals locked up, while bringing in tough new punishments that cut crime. To keep the public safe, more criminals will be tagged than ever before, and the probation service will be backed with £700 million extra funding.
The Act will also make changes to the recall system, with offenders who breach the conditions of their licence returned to prison for a set 56 days. This will cut the number of prisoners waiting for a Parole Board decision after being returned to custody for often minor infractions and give the Probation Service more time to prepare for a release. The most serious and violent offenders will be excluded from this change, who will only be released after they are considered by the Parole Board.
The prison population is expected to rise significantly throughout this Parliament, at around 3,000 a year without intervention, due to continued growth in police charging and prosecutions, increased court activity and longer sentence lengths.
The combination of changes to sentencing, which will slow the projected rise in the prison population by 7,500 by 2028, with £7 billion investment adding thousands of extra prison places over the next five years, will put an end to the chronic crises of the last 15 years and enable our prisons to be managed effectively with public safety the top priority.
The Government is committed to greater transparency around how prison places are managed, publishing the first Prison Capacity Annual Statement in 2024. The Sentencing Act now makes this an annual statutory requirement, setting the standard for future governments.
Background
The Government has committed up to £7 billion over the next five years to deliver 14,000 new prison places by 2031. Since July 2024, 2,900 places have been delivered, including the new HMP Millsike in Yorkshire.
There are also more than 5000 places currently under construction. Meanwhile, around 500 more prison places are undergoing maintenance work compared to this time last year.
The full annual statement is available at Annual Statement on Prison Capacity: 2025 - GOV.UK
Rejoice indeed. This is narrative management at its finest.
ReplyDeleteStrip away the victory laps and what this press release actually says is this: the system was driven to the edge of collapse, and the “solution” is to move the problem somewhere quieter. Prison capacity is stabilised not by fixing demand, prevention or sentencing culture, but by exporting pressure, risk and failure into the community and calling it reform.
Apparently the Sentencing Act now “grips the crisis”. It does, provided you accept that probation is an infinite sponge. Early release. Fixed-term recalls. Expanded tagging. “Tougher” community penalties. All of it only works if probation absorbs more people, more volatility, more scrutiny and more blame, without any meaningful expansion in staffing, pay, autonomy or infrastructure.
We’re told probation is being “backed with £700 million”. Again. As if repetition makes it real. That money isn’t going to retention, workloads or professional judgement. It’s going to tags, contracts, surveillance and tech — things that look reassuring in a press release and don’t argue back. Practitioners remain the cheapest, most expendable component of the system.
The 56-day recall cap is sold as relief. In reality it turns recall into a population-management device rather than a public protection decision. Probation still manages the destabilisation, the rapid re-releases, the risk escalation and the inevitable fallout, while ministers point at the spreadsheet and declare the crisis “under control”.
What’s missing is louder than what’s said. No acknowledgement that probation was already stretched beyond credibility. No mention of record recall rates. No reference to staff safety, attrition or the haemorrhaging of experience. No explanation of how “tougher community punishments” are delivered by a service paid below comparable roles and increasingly designed to function without professional memory.
This isn’t reform. It’s displacement.
The prison crisis has been averted by redefining where the crisis lives and then congratulating yourselves for it. Probation isn’t being backed. It’s being used.
Cynical slow hand 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏. This Government has saved the day from the mess left by the last lot of incompetents. Have you seen the content of the sentencing bill? No set amount of supervision complete a hour UPW get 90 mins allocated. This is not justice it is further watering down of the CJS. This week has led to the penny to finally drop...I want no further part of it. The Probation service no longer matches my values. Last one out turn the light off!
ReplyDelete*Cough*bullshit.
ReplyDeleteAlways read the small print:
ReplyDelete"a number of measures to continue to rebuild the Probation Service and ensure sufficient capacity have been announced"
"The Our Future Probation Service (OFPS) programme will be the central delivery vehicle"
"this involves significant investment in the service – with
up to £700 million extra funding for probation and community services"
"By 30 September 2027, Probation Officer staffing levels are expected to rise to approximately 6,500 FTE"
"More than 30 digital, data and AI initiatives are underway... Better use of digital and data is planned at every step of the probation journey."
"This annex sets out the assumptions and methodology underpinning the prison population projections... The underlying demand projections are based on the population projections... For these projections, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) have agreed scenarios reflecting potential upstream demand for prison places."
"The estimates in this annual statement include the package of sentencing reforms proposed within
the Sentencing Act 2026. These reforms were not included in the Accredited Official Statistics"
"These projections are highly uncertain and subject to change."
"Delivery timescales for planned expansion projects are based on the latest information but are subject to revision...future prison supply depends on funding from future Spending Review settlements"
_______________________________________________________
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2006-06-08/debates/06060813000113/ProbationService
interesting info re-officer:caseload ratios
_______________________________________________________
https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/sites/default/files/Probation%20Resources%2C%20Staffing%20and%20Workloads%202001-2008%20revised%20edition.pdf
(hopefully this table won't be too wonky when published)
Table 6 : Parliamentary answer on probation staffing - Hansard 2 July 2009 : Column 414W
Full-time equivalents
Year POs(1) & Trainee POs
2002 5,966 & 1,566
2003 6,271 & 1,818
2004 6,585 & 1,774
2005 6,894 & 1,386
2006 7,209 & 1,134
2007 7,119 & 1,138
(1) - includes all qualified POs, SPOs, Sen.Pracs & PDAs
"In 2008-09, the probation case load was 197,000 on community orders and 46,200 ex-prisoners under supervision. To supervise them are 7,200 qualified and senior probation officers, 6,100 probation service officers + 6,950 managers and administrative staff" - Lord Ramsbotham, HoL, Thursday 21 January 2010.
DeleteIn Dec 2025 moj/hmpps are happy to tell us there are 5,500 POs "rounded to the nearest 100 FTE"
What the Sentencing Act changes on Unpaid Work
ReplyDeleteThe Sentencing Act introduces a new power allowing the names and photographs of people subject to an Unpaid Work (Community Payback) requirement to be published. Probation practitioners will be given legal authority to take and publish photographs unless an individual meets specific exemption criteria. Refusal to comply may be treated as non-compliance and enforced through the courts. The stated aim is to increase visibility and public confidence in community sentences.
This change allows probation to name and photograph people on unpaid work and publish that information publicly. Whatever the intention, the practical reality is obvious: probation will be the ones explaining this, enforcing it, and managing the fallout.
Public shaming doesn’t build compliance. It inflames resentment, increases hostility and raises risk to staff. There is no clarity on where images will be published, for how long, or how misuse will be controlled once they are public. Practitioners will be expected to make risk judgements, but will carry the consequences when things escalate.
Once again, this is a policy designed for optics and pushed downstream. If it goes wrong, probation will absorb the anger, the disengagement and the danger.
Naming and shaming has been dropped.
Deletehttps://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jan/16/uk-government-drops-plans-publish-photos-names-offenders-community-orders
I had thought that, but it's still in the sentencing bill?
DeleteIf something has been dropped in practice, it needs to be dropped everywhere not just in the headlines. Keeping it in the Bill factsheet without explanation looks like sloppy drafting at best, or political messaging at worst, and it doesn’t help anyone understand what the law will actually say when this passes.
DeleteThat should say * now that it's passed!
DeleteGreat blogging JB you are hopefully enjoying the resurgence. It's been really good reading last week upto now keep contributing to this blog it is a poster centre for what's going on. Love it.
ReplyDelete