February 19, 2025 - 1:00pm
We’re heading for bust again in our teeming, disordered and unstable prison system. Figures just out show that despite several bursts of emergency releases we are nearly back to square one, with only 1,000 male adult places left. Something needs to be done and the independent review of sentencing led by former Tory Lord Chancellor David Gauke has been tasked to tell us what.
The interim report has used December’s prison figures to illustrate how parlous the lack of cell space is. We’re only in the middle of February and already the population is nearly 1,500 higher than it was at the end of last year. A welter of data was deployed to make the case that we are imprisoning more people for longer in awful conditions due to what Gauke calls “penal populism”. This means that there are too many criminals in the UK’s prisons because generations of politicians have wanted to seem tougher than the last on crime. This arms race of “toughness” is “incoherent” and lacks a strategic dimension, says Gauke.
In fact, average sentence lengths across all crimes have remained broadly static for the last four years. Sentence lengths for less serious crimes dealt with in the Magistrates courts have actually decreased. Where there has been a substantial increase in time handed down by a judge, it is generally led by the most serious crimes such as murder, sexual violence and robbery. These are crimes that have a huge impact on public trust in the criminal justice system, which is already under fire. The rather condescending reduction of those concerns to “populism” might play well in progressive criminology but it’s unlikely to persuade voters to opt for Labour next time round.
There’s also a rather lazy favourable comparison between recidivism rates for those on community sentences and those in prison custody. This is in support of the not-unreasonable argument that cheaper punishment outside the prison walls trumps incarceration. But as other commentators have pointed out these aren’t like-for-like measurements. One of the obvious reasons for the UK’s worrying reoffending rates in adult males released from short custodial sentences is because they are there because they are serial offenders. This is how they operate and breaking that cycle is extremely difficult. This wasteful circularity does need addressing but tinkering with sentencing guidelines is unlikely to achieve the desired outcome.
Nor is neglecting the role of severity in its value to victims or wider society. Retribution isn’t mentioned once in the report. “Punishment” is of course, but the more personal dimension of revenge by the state on behalf of someone harmed is every bit as important to a cohesive society as rehabilitation and deterrence. Even short sentences, eventually given to those who have often repeatedly failed community punishments, can give tortured communities respite. They aren’t useless tools of crime control as the report suggests.
Only a fool would argue that our present penal policy is working and it is right that Labour is trying to get to the bottom of what is wrong. No doubt the final report in the spring will have important findings and recommendations on ways to reduce prison populations without compromising public safety.
But the focus on “fiscal discipline” feels too much like an accounting exercise with a pre-written conclusion: “A large prison population is bad because it’s expensive”. If people deserve to be in prison, then that’s where they should be — regardless of how many cells are available. The public wants bad people locked up and for a long time. A report will not give Labour political cover for reducing sentences and appearing soft on criminals.
Ian Acheson is a former prison governor and author of Screwed: Britain’s Prison Crisis and How To Escape it.
NotThatBigIan
Everyone ‘knows’ how to solve the prison and recidivism issue, just like everyone ‘knows’ how to solve every other problem in our public services. The problem is that everyone suggests simple solutions when, in fact, the issues are extraordinarily complex and most need a sustained period of change rather than quick political fixes. Having said this, I do believe there is one single factor that would make a massive difference in the delivery of all our public services, the nature of community relations and individual behaviour: a complete sea change from the philosophy of ‘rights’ to one of ‘responsibilities’. Please note, I wrote “single”, not simple!
For many decades we have had political leaders who have understood leadership only in political and economic terms. Now is the time to find a leader who is willing to lead the nation and every individual in a moral and philosophical revolution. There are moral absolutes; there are such things as right and wrong; there are personal responsibilities.
UK population 2010: 62.7m
UK prison places 2010: 89.7k
UK population 2024: 69.1m
UK prison places 2024: 90.2k
A huge explosion in population due to arrivals from parts of the world with far higher rates of serious crime, thousands of foreign born criminals in prison but who should have been deported, and a prison system that’s not been expanded.
Yet again the numbers tell the story, and it is a very simple one.
Population growth is no doubt contributory, but rationally, you need to show us the demographic details of the prison population to support your claim.
Why?
if x% of the population commit crimes then a bigger population will commit more crimes… you don’t need an ethnic breakdown to work that out.
Of course! But immigration may or may not account for the increased prison population. The only way to tell whether immigration is the cause is to analyse the prison population so that this can be compared with the other data.
The man’s a bureaucrat. “Demographic details” are worshipped in their churches.
It’s easily Googled. The predominant age group for criminality is male aged 16 to 64. This demographic has increased from 20.1m to 23.3m in the period.
From the ONS, about 70% of population growth since 2010 has been due to immigration.
Unless the UK has been importing saints from heaven, the number of criminals and those predisposed to criminality has increased dramatically. Yet the prison system has not been expanded.
It’s the same story as for all the UK’s other societal infrastructure: low income, government-dependent population growth not yielding the tax surplus necessary to fund the extra public services needed to maintain the same level of social development.
Let us hope ideology does not stand in the way of the Commission making this very easy analysis of the reason we have insufficient prison places. If we have imported more criminals and not imported a balancing number of high tax paying individuals to pay for more prisons (indeed Rachel Reeves has done her best to export those we already have) then we need to think of ways to achieve the same punitive effect more cheaply. Mat M has suggested cramming more in each cell. No doubt there are regulations that need to be changed to allow this, which highlights the nature of the problem.
Prison requires expensively constructed secure accommodation coupled with a high proportion of staff to prison occupant. We need to look at alternatives. Apparently a Syrian convicted of sexually assaulting a young woman is arguing that it would breach his human rights to be imprisoned as he suffers from PTSD as a result of being tortured in Syria under the previous regime. Surely it is now time for him to be deported back to Syria rather than accommodated here. The same must apply to other foreign born criminals who can face culturally appropriate punishment in their country or origin.
Minor criminals might simply be shackled and electronically tagged so that they could continue to earn a living out of prison but would lack the ability move quickly to shoplift or burgle effectively and would be easily apprehended if they attempted criminality. This would be much cheaper than incarceration. At present the philosophy of incarceration relies too much on the deprivation of liberty being the punishment coupled with dubiously effective reformatory efforts. It is clearly not a sufficient deterrent.
There should be a three-day conference in some nice spot to study the numbers and have a report prepared for consideration by a panel at some point down the road.
You could easily increase capacity by simply putting an extra camp bed in every cell. If there is currently one inmate in a cell, add another. If there are two currently, make it three. And so on.
It isn’t mean’t to be a holiday camp.
“And so on”
What are you on ?
There are people who need to be sent to prison for a very long time. But if your sentence allowed for your release after less than 12 months, then you were obviously not bad enough to have been sent to prison at all, to spend 23 hours of the day either in front of the television or asleep. At an average annual cost to the public purse of £46,696, which is £127.93 per day, what good purpose does that serve? There is absolutely none.
The system has been overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
The walls of the prison might as well be extended to encompass the whole of society. House arrest was used in the Covid episode.
Bring back transportation.
There are many low risk offenders in prison that would be much lower cost doing community sentences and reabilitation work.
What about the prisoners relased on licence recalls to prison that are often for minor reasons and probabtion issues. That would be a place to look at.
European countires manage this with much lower prison poputations, for expample Holland, so I would first explore their models for new strategies and what works.
Plainly Britain has a crime problem, not a prison problem – except to say that there aren’t enough of them.
Like every public sesrvice in the UK, the prison service has not been expanded in relation to the huge population increase.
Thank you: Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak and Starmer. You have failed utterly.
“No doubt the final report in the spring will have important findings and recommendations on ways to reduce prison populations without compromising public safety.”
Riiiiiiight.
Why not start by ceasing to arrest citizens for thoughtcrime and mean tweets. That should free up some beds for actual physically violent offenders. Nah, that’s ridiculous. Never mind…
Knife crimes should mean an automatic 25-year prison sentence.