The Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report, published today, addresses the prison cell crisis in the UK, highlighting huge government and organisational failures in managing prison capacity. We may be wary of the term, but it is yet another description of a system in crisis, with many prisoners stuffed into ‘inhumane conditions’, looked after by a battered and overwhelmed front line of officers, many of whom leave before they have finished their probation. This latest devastating critique focuses on a four-way car crash of broken promises, wild miscalculations, reactive mismanagement and the absence of solid planning.
The PAC is the group of cross-party MPs who scrutinise government spending. They predict that, despite hurried and risky mass prisoner releases brought in by the new Labour government last year, the system will be gridlocked again in 2026. Why?
The government’s promise to create 20,000 new prison places by the mid-2020s, initially announced in 2019, marks the beginning of this policy and operations debacle. In 2016, the Prison Estate Transformation Programme aimed for 10,000 new places by 2020. By January 2020, only 206 were created. This was largely due to an assumption that planning permission for new jails would take weeks, not years, to be granted. Considering that it’s hard to build a henhouse in this country without a public inquiry, this forecasting was nuts. But undeterred by mere reality, an additional commitment by politicians in August 2019 added another 10,000 places to the wish list, now totalling 20,000. The report notes, with an admirable lack of sarcasm, that at the time of writing, only about 5,900 of these places are operational, with the rest delayed by perhaps five years and costs ballooning to £4.2 billion – 80 per cent over the original budget. This delay and cost overrun emphasise an elementary failure to deliver on promises that has wrecked prison conditions, staff retention and public safety.
During this period of magical thinking on new prisons, the jail population continued to grow regardless, with staffing and experience decimated. The number of offenders has doubled over 30 years, reaching 87,000 by mid-2024, with some projections set to hit 100,000 by the end of 2027. Too many prisoners are in for too long for any good we can do them. Retribution is important, but so too, for future victims, is purposeful custody. However, operational capacity, as of last Monday, is 87,416. Any headroom is relentlessly squeezed at the rate of about 100 prisoners a week.
The shorthand conclusion – ‘prison bad, let more offenders out’ – appears to have been written in advance
Despite all the sticking plasters, we have about twelve months of wiggle room left if nothing changes. And as the surge in prisoners after last summer’s riots proves, everything always does. We are still winging it on prisons not falling over, day to day. It’s only an unholy combination of gridlocked courts and the widespread availability of drugs that keeps significant disorder at bay. At their last outing to the Justice Select Committee, the otherwise invisible boss class of His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS) were forced to admit that a programme for emergency refurbishment of existing cell space to boost places was effectively stalled because the private contractor managing most of the project had gone bust. That’s about 1,700 cells out of use every day that should be in use. ‘We’re trying to keep the show on the road,’ explained Antonia Romero, the Permanent Secretary – with no wheels.
This hand-to-mouth approach described in the report also wrecks rehabilitation efforts. The 5,500 prisoners released early enter a probation system already awash with high workloads and stressed staff. This has meant a reported sharp increase in ‘recalls’ to prison for those released who were clearly still too risky to be back on the streets. The overall recall population of prisoners who break their licence conditions and are returned to custody is staggeringly high – about 15 per cent of the total, increasing year on year. Exhausted probation officers will be far more likely to be risk-averse.
The report criticises the lack of a clear, long-term strategy, with the government juggling multiple initiatives without prioritisation. ‘Besieged’ jails, courts and probation services can’t deliver justice for victims, offenders, staff, taxpayers or society. The Ministry of Justice is panned as facing giant risks across services, with no clear sense of direction. You couldn’t get a worse description of organisational failure, so there’s a perverse Whitehall logic in the MoJ’s permanent secretary getting a promotion to the Home Office the day before the report lands.
Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, appears to have put all her hopes on the sentencing review she ordered, which is due to deliver its final report shortly. The shorthand conclusion – ‘prison bad, let more offenders out’ – appears to have been written in advance. The abstract faith in community sentences to the rescue, to manage people who would otherwise be locked up, will have to pass the sniff test with the voting public. They are concerned at increasing levels of criminal impunity in relation to shoplifting, knife crime and robbery – all on the rise even as other crime types fall. Squaring that circle will, however, be the least of her problems. In our violent, disordered jails, the numbers – and the temperature – inexorably rise.
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