Orla Slattery, Lecturer NTU https://www.ntu.ac.uk/staff-profiles/law/orla-slattery
In 1993, the then Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard insisted ‘prison works.’ Thirty years later, at the end of another long term of Conservative government the prison population in the UK has reached a crisis point. Since Howard made his declaration in the early 1990s, the prison population has more than doubled, increasing from around 41,000 to over 88,000.
Successive governments have followed Howard’s mantra, with politicians frequently referring to longer sentences as ‘deterrents’ and increasing sentences, by legislating for longer sentences and for a greater period of some sentences to be spent in custody. The last Labour government introduced the now widely derided IPP sentence (Indefinite Sentence for Public Protection) which in December 2022 saw 2,857 prisoners in custody past the end of their original sentence tariff. The IPP sentence was introduced in 2005 and abolished in 2012, it allowed courts to sentence those convicted of specified violent and sexual offences to a specified minimum period of imprisonment, after which they would only be released subject to approval by the Parole Board. It also meant that on release, offenders are subject to licence and thus can be recalled for relatively minor infractions. The sentence was overused and many offenders were caught in prisons as they were unable to access the appropriate courses to demonstrate to the Parole Board that their risk has reduced.
The British prison population also faced a sharp increase between 2021 and 2023, climbing by 13.4%. This was partly driven by a return to courts functioning after the COVID pandemic shut down. It may also have been partly due to the government’s decision to double Magistrates’ sentencing powers in 2022, a decision it had to quickly reverse a year later in 2023 as prisons neared capacity. As the prison population climbed, the prison sector received nearly 5% less funding between 2021-2023 than it had in previous years. This cut in funding was on top of existing austerity measures that had cut prisons budgets and prison officers (the numbers of prison officers fell by 7,000 between 2010 and 2017), with experienced officers leaving in droves, meaning that in 2023 50% of prison staff had less than 5 years’ experience, compared with 23% in 2009/10.
The probation service, who are responsible for monitoring community sentences and supervising recently released prisoners also saw disastrous changes under the tenure of Chris Grayling as Justice Secretary, who partly privatised the service in 2014, only for it to be taken back into public control in 2021.
The service continued to face similar budgetary shortfalls and increasing workloads. In October 2023 the then Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk, was aware of the prospect of prisons reaching capacity. In an attempt to avert this, he announced an intention to introduce a presumption against ‘short sentences’ and an ‘early release scheme’ for non-violent, non-sexual offenders, allowing certain prisoners to be released up to 18 days early. Prior to this in November 2022, in a similar effort, the government had launched ‘operation safeguard’ requisitioning police holding cells as prison space to ease prison overcrowding.
These efforts had limited impact, and in June 2024 the Prisons Governors Association (PGA) wrote an open letter to party leaders warning that prison estate was nearing capacity and would be full ‘within days’. The PGA are clear that this situation is a direct result of a political will to increase sentences combined with an austerity programme that has at the same time reduced function and capacity in the prison estate. They estimate a functioning estate should maintain a population of around 10,000 less than are currently in custody, and they have therefore urged any new government to legislate to release prisoners earlier in their sentences.
It is perhaps not surprising that the system is in crisis. Despite no doubt being aware of the overwhelming crisis affecting the prison sector, our departing Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak was pledging ‘tougher sentences’ as recently as July 2024.
Whilst the prison sector is in crisis, the assumption that politicians have relied on for decades has not held up to scrutiny. There is copious evidence that prison does not in fact ‘work’ at least for shorter sentences. Periods of custody can have a profoundly destabilising effect on offenders and their families and do not provide time for focused rehabilitation work to be done. They also risk simply exposing people to more criminal contacts within the prison population. Whilst there are undoubtedly dangerous individuals that require detention for public safety, simply locking up anyone who commits an offence is not the answer. In fact, requiring greater use of custodial sentences without investing in rehabilitation and prison estate have led us to a point where it is likely that dangerous individuals will be released, or not be detained in the first place.
It remains to be seen whether the new government can tackle the crisis. There are some positive signs; Sir Keir Stamer spent his working life within the Criminal Justice System as a barrister and head of the CPS. He has appointed James Timpson OBE, of Timpson Group and former Chair of the Prison Reform Trust, as Minister for Prisons. We also have Shabana Mahmood MP as Justice Secretary, another barrister albeit not one with a criminal justice background. They need to take radical and decisive action to tackle this growing crisis. Timpson is on record stating that we are ‘addicted to sentencing’ and that are too many people in prison, perhaps giving us reason to hope for change.
The release of convicted offenders is never going to be a popular move with voters, but it might be the only thing that we can do at this juncture to prevent an even deeper crisis. It is of course, not the only thing we can and should do. There needs to be a greater focus on prevention of crime and diversion from crime, before people enter the criminal justice system, something to which the PM has recently alluded. There also needs to be space inside prisons for rehabilitation, and outside prison for the probation service to work with people on community sentences and to ensure that they transition back into the community after time in prison. These changes will require courage, and they carry political risk if and when something does go wrong. They will also require vastly increasing spending on prevention and rehabilitation.
Despite these impediments to reform, given the current crisis, I hope that this new government is brave enough to admit that prison doesn’t work.
Further Reading:
Georgina Eaton and Aiden Mews ‘The Impact of Short Custodial Sentences, Community Orders, and Suspended Sentence Orders on Reoffending ’ (Ministry of Justice 2019)
Dr Melissa Hamilton, The Sentencing Academy ‘The Effectiveness of Sentencing Options’
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