Labour has until Easter to stop prisons running out of space

There are just over a thousand men’s prison places left in the UK out of a total of 88,618 total. Where does the government go from here? Are our prisons about to run out of space? If they do, will we see even earlier releases?

To put these figures from the start of the week in context, in August 2024 there were only around 700 spaces available. In the aftermath of the Summer riots there were concerns that courts might have to stop jailing people. Disaster was only averted by the government’s early release scheme, SDS40, under which thousands of additional prisoners were released in September and October. Meanwhile, David Gauke’s Sentencing Review has been underway since October, and has described our prisons as ‘on the brink of collapse’.

Available spaces are dropping by around 200 per week. If nothing else changed this would mean no more capacity by the time the clocks go forward.