This week’s blog, written by Safiyya Hussein (Service Manager at HMP Thameside Offender Management Unit (OMU)) reflects on UK’s ongoing prison capacity crisis; looking behind at how we arrived at the crisis, and ahead at how we continue to tackle it.
As those working within or alongside the Criminal Justice System (CJS) will have experienced, 2024 was the year that the alarm sounding the prison population crisis reached full volume. The crisis became so severe that the prison system was “brought dangerously close to collapse”. As of the 2nd of December 2024, the government reported that the population of the adult prison estate was 85,688, and the future was not looking much brighter, with a projected annual increase of 3,000 over the coming years.
In tackling this, the sector experienced several policy and practice changes which certainly kept us busy! In April 2024 the use of Fixed Term Recalls (FTR) – rather than standard recalls – were (subject to certain conditions) mandated for offenders sentenced to less than 12 months of custody in a bid to open prison spaces. Operation Safeguard, a contingency plan involving the use of police stations as accommodation for prisoners, was once again triggered. We also saw the introduction of the Temporary Presumptive Recategorisation Scheme (TPRS12); an urgent measure designed to facilitate the presumptive recategorisation of prisoners from category C to category D to make the best use of the open prison estate. In July 2024 SDS40 was introduced, an emergency measure that meant offenders serving a standard determinate sentence would have their custodial release brought forward from 50%to 40% of their sentence, spending the rest on license in the community.
As the Head of Service of the HMP Thameside OMU, I acknowledge that the measures were certainly necessary for the safety of the prisons and the public alike. I can, however, attest to the additional pressures and challenges that such temporary schemes placed on already-stretched OMU and Probation services. Indeed, Catch22 have repeatedly argued that measures like the early release scheme, as tested last year, are unlikely to be a magic answer to the population crisis and called for a greater focus on the root causes of escalating prison numbers as a sustainable, long-term solution.
But what does it really mean to “fix the root causes”?
The Government proposes a complete reset in the way we sentence individuals; rethinking who should go to prison in the first place, and how we should manage those who would achieve better outcomes by serving time in the community. They hope that the Independent Sentencing Review, set up to inform a system-overhaul that will ensure “we never again find ourselves with more prisoners than space in prisons”, can lay the blueprint for such reform.
This review is being guided by three principles:
- Sentences must punish offenders and protect the public,
- Sentences must encourage offenders to turn their backs on a life of crime, cutting crime by reducing reoffending,
- An expansion in the use of community alternatives to prison.
A critical issue driving the population crisis is sentence inflation, leading to longer prison terms but without, in our experience, a corresponding increase in rehabilitative work. In other words, people are serving longer sentences without sufficient intervention to reduce the risk of re-offending and further harm to the public upon release. This underscores the importance of the review’s second principle: to make sentences more effective at reducing recidivism.
The review’s focus on expanding community alternatives to custody is particularly promising; we hope that this will reduce the number of short-term prison sentences handed, which disproportionately affect individuals convicted of non-violent offences (like theft or burglary), and are commonly linked to underlying problems such as homelessness, addiction or, particularly for women, domestic abuse. What’s more, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) found that people sentenced to short-term prison sentences with supervision on release were associated with higher reoffending rates than if they had received a community order instead. For many of the same reasons, those on short custodial sentences are at much heightened risk of recall back into custody; with the system experiencing a 44% increase in all recalls in April-June 2024 compared with the same quarter in 2023.
At Catch22 we see that community alternatives to prison, particularly for those on short sentences, allow for much better continuity of rehabilitation. People can maintain their protective factors such as housing, employment, family-ties and relationship with Probation whilst serving their sentence and engaging in rehabilitative work.
So, judging by the Independent Sentencing Review, there is certainly appetite to move away from short custodial sentences. Doing so, however, raises a key question: will the probation service, already facing a staffing crisis, be able to manage an increased caseload of community-based sentences?
This is where the voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) sector can play a pivotal role. VCSEs are well placed to support probation services by using their relational approach to rehabilitative support, knowledge of local communities, and high-quality rehabilitative interventions to meet the often-complex needs of service users and help them to navigate through the CJS; reducing reoffending and freeing up some of the system’s capacity.
As we move into 2025, we’re presented with a huge opportunity for meaningful reform. Collaborative efforts, including the involvement of the VCSEs, will be essential to transforming the justice system and creating long-lasting change – and we hope that, this year, what comes out of the Sentencing Review gets it right.