Probation in Crisis Shock

As Dame Antonia Romeo is being considered for the top Civil Service job, thanks go to the contibutor for pointing us in the direction of yet another influential report confirming probation continues to be in crisis as a direct result of her previous outstanding work at the MoJ:-

  
Is this Plan A, or just a plan? The Bromley Briefings say it all

Each year, the Prison Reform Trust (PRT) publish the Bromley Briefings. These fact sheets on the criminal justice system are not named after pleasant parts of London, neither the one in Kent nor that in east London, but in memory of Keith Bromley who was a much-valued supporter of the PRT and a passionate advocate for change in our criminal justice system. The latest edition has just been released and can be found on the PRT website. These are always an invaluable source of information and presented in a user-friendly way.

The February 2026 document looks at the prison capacity crisis, and includes information that is vital to understand why we must gain maximum impact from the Sentencing Act 2026, just passed into law. It comes at a crucial time. As the Prisons Minister said just last week, implementing the Act is the only hope of stopping prisons being full once again by September this year. So, with thanks to the PRT for all this information, here is my assessment of where we are, along with some extracts from their excellent work.

The impact of the crisis

The prison capacity crisis in England and Wales is still impacting all aspects of prison performance, with indicators on safety, use of force, purposeful activity, and overcrowding all deteriorating significantly in the past two years. To put the numbers into perspective, the prison population has risen by 94 per cent since 1990, and currently stands at between 87,000 to 87,500. If nothing changes that will keep rising, and whilst the early release schemes of 2024 and 2025 led to 50,000 people leaving prison, the overall number inside jail, because of the numbers still coming in, did not fall significantly.

The resulting overcrowding means that key activities required for rehabilitation and preparation for life on release all too often do not take place. Pressures on staff mean people do not get taken to education and training. Even key health issues are not resolved, as appointments for doctors are cancelled, and there are stresses and tensions within the jails. Officers are disillusioned, and sickness levels rise. Violence is all too often threatened.

Here, from the Briefings, are the bare facts of the matter:

• In 2024–25, almost three quarters of prisons (72 per cent) in England and Wales were overcrowded – a nine percentage point increase on the previous year. Private prisons have seen a 17 per cent increase in their numbers of overcrowded prisoners in the past year. More than 21,600 people – a quarter of the prison population – are held in overcrowded accommodation.
• 49 per cent of prisons were judged to have concerning or seriously-concerning performance by HM Prisons and Probation Service (HMPPS), a notable increase from 42 per cent the previous year.
• Inspectors found that almost three in four inspected prisons (74 per cent) were poor or not sufficiently good at providing purposeful activity.
• Inspectors found that safety was not good enough in almost half (44 per cent) of the 31 men’s prisons inspected in 2024–25
• There were seven homicides in prison in 2024 alone, compared with nine in total over the preceding five years

The consequences of overcrowding are all too easily seen.

Will the Sentencing Act change this picture?

The Sentencing Act aims to reduce demand by an estimated 7,500 places through measures like increased use of deferred and suspended sentences, the bringing-forward of release points on standard determinate sentences, and reforms to recall. Alongside the act, the Government’s prison building program aims to deliver an additional 14,000 places by 2031.

It is hoped that, as the measures in the Act are introduced and more capacity comes on stream, it will create the space for the Prison Service to focus on much needed improvement. But even accounting for the impact of the provisions in the legislation, the prison population is still predicted to increase by an additional 2,000 people by 2029.

While many of the provisions of the Act are welcome, it fails to tackle sentence inflation at the serious end of offending as a primary cause of the growing prison population. A particular point of concern is the exclusion of prisoners serving an Extended Determinate Sentence from the Sentencing Act; this group now accounts for over one in seven of the sentenced prison population and is rapidly growing. Other groups are also excluded from the opportunities the Act aims to provide.

Furthermore, while the Act includes measures to increase opportunities for people serving IPP (Imprisonment for Public Protection) sentences in the community to have their licences terminated, it does nothing to address the injustice faced by just under 1,000 IPP prisoners who have never been released.

The Government has accepted it must turn towards the community rather than solely building prisons. Measures in the Act to increase the update of effective community alternatives should mean few people are sent to prison to serve short sentences, which have among the highest reoffending rates.

There is a major problem

But a significant challenge lies in ensuring the Probation Service is adequately resourced for the additional numbers under community supervision. After a decade of struggles to cope with endless reorganisations, the service delivers poor performance, with staff shortages, and escalating caseloads. The Chief Inspector of Probation, the Justice Select Committee, and now the Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) have all highlighted the crisis. Prisons and Probation Minister Lord Timpson said just last week that while the prisons are in crisis, probation is “sicker”.

The number of recalls has risen sharply, reaching over 40,000 in the year to June 2025 – a 32 per cent rise on the previous year. While recalls can be necessary, they are often the result of support failures or risk-averse reactions from an under-resourced system.

The Government has committed to recruiting an extra 1,300 probation officers and an additional investment of £700 million in the service by 2028, as well as funding for increased IT and AI support for the staff.

However, that recent report by the influential PAC highlighted that the Probation Service at present fails to meet the majority of its targets, and doubts that simply recruiting brand new staff and pushing them through training will succeed. Indeed the MPs worry about this creating more difficulty, and fear there will be strong and negative public reaction should many of those out of prison earlier, or indeed on community sentences, commit additional crimes.

The Committee also fears that the morale of probation officers will suffer from the public, and political, fallout of any headline cases, as has happened on many previous occasions.

Furthermore, now the Government has admitted that across the prison estate education classes are being cut by between 20 and 25 per cent, it is feared that rehabilitation opportunities will be reduced dramatically. Teachers are losing their jobs, and once classes are closed, they will never reopen. Instead of walking out of the prison gates with increased confidence in their ability to learn and adapt to life outside, people will leave with the same life struggles as they had before. For instance, the cancellation of the Sycamore Tree course has taken away opportunities for those in prison to benefit from Restorative Justice, and it has not been replaced.

Therefore the enhanced element of enhanced progression is cut back, and those who have investigated the ability of the Probation Service to deliver have concluded that the system, with the best will in the world from those working within it, is struggling to cope now, let alone in the future. The tagging system also has failings, and the PAC questions if the provider of the service will cope with the huge extra demand.

Pia Sinha, chief executive of the PRT, sums it up: “This briefing highlights a worrying decline in performance across the board and underlines the urgent need for measures to reduce demand on our critically-overburdened prisons. The Sentencing Act goes some way to meeting this challenge. Provisions to limit the use of short sentences and increase the uptake of effective community alternatives are welcome but must be backed by sufficient resource and support for probation.

“However, the Act will not fix all the manifold problems in our prison and probation system, and it dodges the crucial task of turning the tide on runaway sentence inflation, which has been the chief cause of rising prison numbers. But with sustained political will and investment, it could be the start of a journey towards a more effective and humane justice system.”

The Government must be bold

This is the only hope to solve this crisis once and for all. For the Sentencing Act to deliver at all it will take a change of approach from across Government, with the involvement of the voluntary sector – including those passionate people with lived experience of our jails who want to support others newly-incarcerated, and also to assist those newly-released.

The cuts in education and training must be reversed, all classrooms opened, and capital at present allocated to build more and more prisons switched to improving the ones we have, with revenue to ensure that the services within them give an opportunity for rehabilitation. More resources need switching to guarantee homes for those walking out of the prison, and pressure put on employers to offer work.

Where prisons are being built, why not make them open prisons with independent living accommodation? Expand Release on Temporary Licence to get people used to freedom, and, above all, when something goes wrong there must not be a panicky reaction to negative Press headlines.

This may be the last hope, and is certainly at present the only hope. It can work. If everyone joins in and the Ministry of Justice have imagination, it will work. There is no Plan B, and I find that concerning. But at least we have a reasonable Plan A, and the Bromley Briefings lay out exactly why that is so desperately needed.

Raymond Smith - Writer and former resident of HMPS