The government must focus on public protection when it comes to prison releases

Once again, a new prime minister faces the imminent prospect of running out of prison spaces. Andy Burnham has months, rather than the weeks Keir Starmer had on taking office in 2024 – but he also has even fewer options. The measures taken by the previous government freed up some breathing room, but were not enough to get the prison population on a stable trajectory long term. Having paused the planned early releases in September, the new prime minister must now choose among bad options. In doing so he should make public protection his first priority.

Previous governments made promises they couldn’t keep on sentencing

Prisons are not quite at breaking point, as they were before Labour’s first wave of early releases in September 2024. But they are close: men’s prisons are 97% full. The prison population is projected to keep rising, as more people are being prosecuted and many are held in custody for long periods waiting for trial. Prison capacity is also expected to grow, as new prisons are built and existing ones expanded – but if planned reforms are scrapped or significantly watered down, it will not be enough to keep up.

The fundamental cause of this problem was a failure to match prison places with demand, particularly in the early 2020s. In 2020, the Johnson government increased time in prison for certain serious offences by a third. In 2022, the Sunak government did the same for a much wider group of offences, attracting a sentence of four years or more. But in doing so, they were making promises they couldn’t keep. It was already clear in 2020 that there wasn’t enough capacity in prisons to absorb this increase, and by 2022 the problem was becoming acute. It was always extremely unlikely that the prison building programme would be able to keep up. It is now victims who pay the price when it is impossible to honour those sentences.

Early releases are the only credible solution – the question is who, how and when

Releasing people early is unfortunately the only alternative to running out of spaces to imprison people newly arrested or convicted. We cannot build enough spaces quickly enough to meet demand. Using army barracks, barges or similar simply would not provide enough spaces, even if they could be made secure and safe, and prisons are already at their limit for doubling or tripling up cells. However undesirable, early releases are generally safer for the public and victims than not being able to imprison people offending now.  

The only question then is who gets released, how and when. Labour’s first early release scheme means less serious offenders are already being released after 40% of their sentence, rather than 50%. The new measures would lower that further to 33%. But sentence lengths have grown substantially over time, which means that a large proportion of prisoners are serving long sentences: 70% of sentenced prisoners are serving at least four years, and around half are serving at least seven – up from 40% in 2016. Freeing up enough space in prisons means either further reducing how much time short sentence prisoners spend in custody – perhaps as low as 15–20% of their sentence – or tackling sentences for more serious offenders.

Those serving the most serious sentences, who are deemed ‘dangerous’ or ‘of particular concern’ for terror or sexual offences, are already excluded from the planned reforms. There may be additional options around allowing carve-outs for prison governors to intervene to stop someone they think is immediately dangerous from being released. But these would be logistically difficult and open to legal challenge. Ensuring close communication with the probation service so that such offenders are effectively supervised on release is likely to be more workable as a means of keeping the public safe.

High-quality supervision after release will do more to keep the public safe than longer in prison

Almost all prisoners will eventually be released, and there is little to suggest that longer sentences make people less likely to reoffend on release. The most important way to protect victims and the public is to have effective, high-quality supervision by the probation service once someone leaves prison. That includes both necessary support on things like housing, and effective risk assessment processes to safeguard victims and the public.

That is not currently happening. The chief inspector of probation is so concerned about the quality of risk assessment in probation that he has paused their regular inspection work to focus exclusively on public protection.  ⁷ HM Inspectorate of Probation, ‘Chief Inspector announces dynamic inspection of public protection’, 6 October 2025, retrieved 24 July 2026, https://hmiprobation.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/news/chief-inspector-announces-dynamic-inspection-of-public-protection/  Over 2024 and 2025, two thirds of probation units inspected were rated ‘inadequate’ across all areas of service delivery, meaning that fewer than half of cases met the required standard.  ⁸ HM Inspectorate of Probation, ‘Chief Inspector announces dynamic inspection of public protection’, 6 October 2025, retrieved 24 July 2026, https://hmiprobation.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/news/chief-inspector-announces-dynamic-inspection-of-public-protection/

In this context, ensuring victim and public safety should be the new justice secretary’s first priority. That means increasing the resources available to probation, such as through commissioned third sector services. It means pressing on with policy changes to target supervision and support where it is most needed. But it also means prioritising safeguarding over punishment. That includes not imposing home detention on prison leavers unless there has been an adequate domestic abuse risk assessment carried out. And it includes making sure there are spaces available in prison for those who pose an immediate risk.

There are no easy answers here. But the only way to avoid a return to this position and letting more victims down in future is to grasp a long-term solution to the capacity crisis.