Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood has bowed to the inevitable: acknowledging that ‘our prisons are on the point of collapse’, Mahmood has announced that, from September, most prisoners serving sentences of less than four years will be released 40 per cent of the way through their sentences instead of the halfway point, which is currently the case. It’s a policy that will ease the pressure on prisons, but could end up backfiring badly.
The plan will ease the pressure on prisons but could end up backfiring
The Prison Governors’ Association advocated for this early release policy during the election campaign, and while it may seem that the government has no other choice, it will create serious risks. The problem is that the prison system is part of a wider justice system which is broken. Although the government is clear that prisoners serving life sentences or extended determinate sentences will not be eligible for early release, letting prisoners out early – even with the exemptions for those serving sentences longer than four years, sex offenders and domestic abusers – will mean thousands more offenders being supervised by a probation system which is already suffering a staffing crisis.
The job of probation officers is to supervise people who have been released from prison, with the aim that they don’t reoffend or return to jail. However, the Probation Service is overseeing soaring recalls, which have reached record highs. Mahmood promised that a thousand new trainee probation officers will be in place by next March. Yet even if this is achieved, there will be significantly greater pressure on probation staff, and likely further recalls and more reoffending. As Charlie Taylor, Chief Inspector of Prisons, has said: ‘this latest measure will inevitably lead to the early release of some risky offenders, and will add to the workload of already stretched prison OMUs [Offender Management Units] and probation services’.
In addition to creating more victims, reoffending will put further pressure on the courts, increasing the backlog. Mahmood acknowledged that ‘only by driving down reoffending will we ever find a sustainable solution to the prisons crisis’. She is right, of course. The current system does very little good – and much harm. Over 42 per cent of male prisoners spend at least 22 hours a day in their cells during the week, rising to over 60 per cent at weekends. Lying on their bunks with nothing purposeful or rehabilitative to do, many develop addictions which will haunt them after release, and often lead to further offending.
We know what works: prisoners who are released with a job, stable accommodation and a positive, supportive social or family network are far less likely to reoffend. ‘How these men are prepared for release and how prisons and probation are supported in managing them will be vital,’ Charlie Taylor has said. He’s right. But our understaffed, disorderly and unsafe closed prisons are, in the main, entirely unfit to support these goals. Properly improving prisons will take time which the government doesn’t have.
Category D or Open prisons are an exception. In these jails, prisoners are able to leave the jail each day to study or work. In such jails, change and rehabilitation is possible, as I saw for myself while a prisoner at Hollesley Bay, in Suffolk, in 2021. There, men worked and paid taxes, or studied for meaningful qualifications at local colleges or universities. Open prisons are not a soft option; getting up every day to work or study is, after all, more demanding than lying on a bunk bed. And inmates are better prepared for the day they are released.
If open prisons work, we know what doesn’t: keeping people locked up in prisons where they have not received proper help. If we suddenly let these inmates out, it will ease the situation in our dangerously overcrowded prisons. But the wider problems will not away.
In fairness to Mahmood, she recognises that these measures ‘are not a silver bullet’ but believes they will provide ‘the time we need to address the prisons crisis’. The proposed acceleration of the prison building programme, using ministerial powers to speed planning approval, is a good idea. But if the government wants to fix the system it needs to act now.
Urgent further funding for the courts, Criminal Bar and Probation Service will make them better able to cope. Ministers should also expand the Open Prison system, in order to offer a real path to rehabilitation for inmates and a positive path for both those in our jails and their current and future victims. The current mess isn’t the government’s fault, but if they mishandle it over the next year, then voters are unlikely to forgive them the higher crime and disorder which will follow.
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