Landmark reforms that will end the prison crisis have been announced by the Lord Chancellor, Shabana Mahmood.
The UK government has announced landmark reforms to end the prison crisis, which threatens the complete breakdown of law and order on Britain’s streets.
The review, published by former Justice Secretary David Gauke, recommends comprehensively overhauling sentencing to ensure jails never run out of space again and dangerous offenders can be kept off the streets.
The majority of the recommendations have been accepted in principle, with a Sentencing Bill due in the coming months.
The government confirmed plans last week to invest £4.7 billion more in prison building, putting the government on track to open 14,000 places by 2031.
This will be the largest prison expansion since the Victorian era, and 2,400 places have already been opened since July 2024.
However, the prison population is soaring, with projections showing the country’s jails will be bust within months and 9,500 places short by early 2028 without further action.
The Lord Chancellor made the case before Parliament today, stating that the prisons are running out of space and it is vital that the implications are understood.
If prisons collapse, courts are forced to suspend trials, the police must halt their arrests, crime goes unpunished, criminals run amok, and chaos reigns. The prison population is now rising by 3,000 each year and the government is heading back towards zero capacity.
Despite building as quickly as possible, demand for places will outstrip supply by 9,500 in early 2028. The government is taking decisive action to protect the public and never allow the country to face the breakdown of the justice system again.
The UK government has accepted reforms to put prisons on a sustainable footing while protecting the public from dangerous criminals. One key change is a new “earned progression model” that will see prisoners earn their way to release through good behaviour or face longer in jail.
There will be no automatic release for prisoners who misbehave. The changes mean that a prisoner’s release date will now be more dependent on their behaviour, to reduce violence in prison and make sure more prisoners engage with activities like education and employment that will reduce crime.
All offenders on standard determinate sentences will spend at least one-third of their sentence behind bars and have to earn their release at this point or face longer behind bars for bad behaviour.
There is no upper limit, and the very worst-behaved offenders could spend longer in prison.
The government has rejected the review’s recommendation to cut the minimum prison term for extended determinate sentences to 50%.
The serious violent and sexual offenders serving these sentences will have to serve at least two-thirds of their sentence and their release will continue to be down to the Parole Board.
To enforce this approach, the government will introduce a tougher adjudication regime so that bad behavior in prisons is properly punished.
When released, offenders will enter a new period of “intensive supervision,” seeing tens of thousands more offenders tagged and many more placed under home detention.
To support the Probation Service, the government will significantly increase its funding by around 45% by the final year of the spending review period.
This means the annual budget of around £1.6 billion today will rise by up to £700m by 2028/29.
Other major changes include:
- Earlier deportation of foreign national offenders who are blocking up jails;
- A presumption against custodial sentences of less than a year, expanding tough punishments outside to force offenders to pay back the victims and communities they have harmed.
- developing new ways in which offenders can undertake tough, unpaid work, expanding the use of’medicines which manage problematic sexual arousal’, often referred to as chemical suppressants, on sex offenders, and exploring making this mandatory.
The Lord Chancellor has also accepted recommendations to increase tagging for VAWG perpetrators, identify perpetrators of domestic abuse at sentencing, expand Specialist Domestic Abuse Courts, and strengthen transparency for victims at sentencing.
Currently, offenders can be given exclusion zones, preventing offenders from entering areas where their victims might be.
Going beyond the Review’s recommendations, the government will explore changes so some offenders are locked into specific ‘restriction zones’ monitored by GPS tags so victims can feel safe everywhere else.
