Inside England and Wales’s prisons crisis: What should the government do with these findings?

Widespread declines reflect systemic – but not insurmountable – problems

The crisis surrounding the prisons system in England and Wales is well publicised, and recently brought back into the headlines by David Gauke’s sentencing review, launched in October last year. Even still, it is striking just how widespread the decline in prison performance has been, affecting a large majority of prisons across a host of metrics. This suggests that, while particular prisons may be in more acute crisis, national deterioration reflects systemic problems more than widespread failures by individual prison governors or especially challenging prisoner cohorts. 

There is little to suggest prisoners in general have become harder to manage over the last 10 or 20 years. While the proportion of prisoners sentenced for violent offences has grown, this does not necessarily suggest that we would expect violence in prisons to rise, as the relationship between offence type and involvement in violence in prison is complex. ²⁸ McGuire J, Understanding prison violence: a rapid evidence assessment, HM Prison and Probation Service, 2018, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5b8e434540f0b67d970b92d5/understanding-prison-violence. pdf Indeed, the growing age of the prison population is likely to mean lower levels of violence and protesting behaviours than would have been the case previously. ²⁹ McGuire J, Understanding prison violence: a rapid evidence assessment, HM Prison and Probation Service, 2018, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5b8e434540f0b67d970b92d5/understanding-prison-violence. pdf That the reverse has happened is telling. 

At the same time, notable improvements in employment after release suggest prisoners are not increasingly unwilling nor unable to work and reintegrate into society. Rather, something is going on within the prison system itself that is causing severe and sustained declines in conditions. 

And yet while these declines are widespread, they are not universal. Some prisons continue to perform well, such as Stafford and Warren Hill, and these provide models the government and HMPPS should seek to build on elsewhere. The relationships between certain prison characteristics or regimes and performance also suggest areas the government should target to deliver rapid improvements. 

Recommendation 1: Establish a ‘minimum regime’ across prisons – adequately funded and with targets on purposeful activity 

A prison regime is the timetable of activities in a prison, including when prisoners’ cells are unlocked, meal and exercise times as well as work and education. There are currently very minimal requirements and no standard regime across prisons or within particular types of prison. In January 2024, a new national regime model was launched that set out ‘core expectations’, including a minimum of 60 minutes in the open air daily, subject to weather conditions and maintaining order, and a further 60 minutes out of cells, including for ‘domestics’ such as showering, laundry and so on. Each prison also has a target participation rate for purposeful activity, but this is typically fairly low and does not reflect a particular amount of purposeful activity delivered.

In the context of intense capacity pressure, rising levels of violence and protest and staff inexperience, it is unsurprising that purposeful activity has fallen by the wayside in many prisons. We have also heard that procurement challenges around prison education have worsened this effect. ³⁰ Institute for Government interviews, 2024. While the causal relationship between purposeful activity, violence and protest is unclear, there is a strong association between higher levels of purposeful activity and lower levels of violence and protest and so a return to more normal levels of purposeful activity could help lower violence and improve outcomes.

At the very least, restoring activity levels should help develop the evidence on what contributes to violence and unrest in prisons. Given the harm caused by prison violence and the high costs associated with staffing violent prisons, including higher staff resignation rates, understanding this is crucial both to achieve better outcomes and improve value for money.

Establishing a minimum regime with a required level of both participation and hours of purposeful activity per prisoner would increase focus on purposeful activity and send a clear message that it is part of the core business and purpose of prisons. A minimum regime for each prison category would be ideal to reinforce the different purposes of different categories and allow an appropriate floor to be established in each setting. The minimum expectations should distinguish between purposeful activity that provides prisoners with skills, employment, rehabilitation or education, including therapy and rehabilitation courses (‘tier 1’ activity), and ‘extra-curricular enrichment’ activity, such as hobbies, recreational exercise and in-cell activities (tier 2 activity). Published data at the prison level should also distinguish between these different types of activity, to allow effective scrutiny of performance.

There should be adequate funding provided to make delivery of the minimum regime feasible. Crucially, this should include ensuring open prisons have sufficient purposeful activity available to provide for increasing prisoner numbers, including activity within the prison for those who are not yet eligible for day release. Much of the success of open prisons appears related to their high levels of purposeful activity, so it is vital that this is maintained.

Recommendation 2: Explore options for expanding access to open prisons 

Open prisons consistently outperform other categories of prison on a range of measures – they are the only type of prison that clearly stands out. They are also cheaper on a per-prisoner basis, with men’s open prisons averaging £45,130 per prisoner in 2022/23 compared to £51,108 across all prisons, despite some of the lowest rates of overcrowding in the whole estate. ³¹ Ministry of Justice, ‘Costs per place and costs per prisoner by individual prison’, HM Prison & Probation Service Annual Report and Accounts 2022-23, 2024. Some of their strong performance is likely to be due to the selection of prisoners incarcerated in these types of prisons, and not every prisoner will be suitable for open conditions.

However, the ongoing temporary presumptive recategorisation scheme provides a valuable opportunity to assess the impact and feasibility of expanding access to open prisons. Under this scheme, most category C prisoners are presumed eligible for a transfer to an open prison if they have less than a year left on their sentence,* unless they present a “wholly unacceptable risk”. ³² Timpson J, Letter from Lord Timpson, Minister of State for Justice, to the Chair of the Independent Monitoring Board for HMP/YOI Hollesley Bay, 18 October 2024, retrieved 23 December 2024, https://cloud-platform-e218f50a4812967ba1215eaecede923f. s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/sites/13/2024/10/Response-to-2023-HMP-Hollesley-Bay-IMB-annual-report.pdf ³³ Dearden L, ‘Violent offenders moved to open jails in ‘safety risk’ to public’, The i Paper, 3 December 2024, https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/violent-offenders-moved-open-jails-safety-risk-public-3412681?srsltid=AfmBOoq6EB80Pw5CmmPMuAFIFRVyi5AwxuBUH2_PAA-8x…- The government should evaluate the impact this scheme has had on the number and type of prisoners in open prisons, violence levels and purposeful activity in these prisons and (over time) reoffending rates, to see whether the scheme could be made permanent or even expanded further.

Similarly, the ongoing sentencing review should consider relaxing restrictions on how long and how much of their sentence prisoners serving determinate (fixed length) sentences can spend in open prisons. This has been capped at three years, but recently some prisoners are being transferred to open conditions with longer left on their sentence. ³⁴ Institute for Government interviews, 2025. The government may not want prisoners to serve their whole sentence in an open prison, but facilitating more and earlier access to open prisons could ease pressure on other parts of the system and improve conditions and outcomes while lowering costs. This could also reduce the demand pressure and cost of increasingly long sentences. ³⁵ Rowland C, The crisis in prisons, Institute for Government, 2024, www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/crisis-prisons

Recommendation 3: Identify elements of the open prison model that could be applied to other prisons

Existing open prisons may lack the capacity to take on large numbers of new prisoners, just as large numbers of prisoners may not be suitable for open prisons. But there may be elements of open prisons that can be applied to other types of prison. Higher levels of purposeful activity – which our findings show are significantly associated with lower levels of violence and protesting behaviour – and more responsibility around the prison could be implemented in a closed environment, for example. So could more opportunities for prisoners to earn privileges and progress towards recategorisation. Release on temporary licence for employment in the community is now generally restricted to open prisons, but has previously been available in category C training prisons as well. ³⁶ Institute for Government interviews, 2024. Understanding what it is that makes open prisons safer and leads to better outcomes would help identify potential improvements for other types of prison.

Recommendation 4: Build on recent successes targeting employment after release

The improvements to employment after release suggest recent efforts targeting this have been successful. HMPPS should conduct an evaluation of the programme to identify if particular activities or approaches have been most effective, and then expand on these to maximise impact. Given the positive impact of employment on reducing reoffending, as well as other beneficial outcomes, this is likely to be a cost-effective initiative and would deliver on the government’s aim to adopt a more preventative approach to crime.

_{* Prisoners serving more than four years for a violent offence, convicted of a sexual or terrorist offence, or facing deportation at the end of their sentence are ineligible.}