The crisis in the criminal justice system will be the defining domestic policy issue of Andy Burnham’s government. The warning lights are flashing across the dashboard: England’s prisons are full, courts swamped and police forces riven by a mix of bureaucratic zealotry and incompetence. Public confidence in the system is wavering as it becomes evident that the state is struggling to fulfil certain basic functions in upholding law and order.
The lack of prison capacity in the country is the most emblematic of these failures. It is very difficult to convince people that the best way out of the prison crisis is to release convicted felons. Despite the government’s best attempts to target the release of prisoners convicted of arguably ‘lesser’ crimes, it turns out that the public’s entirely reasonable view is that it does not want sexual predators, domestic abusers or people convicted of the manslaughter of a police officer walking the streets.
It is onto this blazing fire that the government is now dumping gallons of gasoline
Unfortunately for the public, and for Burnham’s favourability in the polls, this crisis isn’t going away. The entire model for the government’s prison management programme – which does include the construction of new prisons – is predicated on the changes passed in the Sentencing Act 2026. This baked in the policy of earlier release for various categories of custodial sentence, including reductions for prisoners convicted of violent or sexual offences.
The government is not presiding over a ‘one-time’ emergency release but the introduction of a new system that lets more people out of prison so that they may spend a greater amount of time serving the remainder of their sentence within the community. But while a lot of attention has been devoted to prison capacity and imminent releases, there has been remarkably little discussion about the health of the system that is due to supervise offenders within the community on licence: the probation service.
The situation is dire. Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has found that probation staff are only adequately assessing the risk of harm in 28 per cent of cases, compared to 60 per cent of cases back in 2018-19. The number of offenders out on community sentences charged with a serious further offence increased by 55 per cent in 2023-24 compared to 2021-22.
The idea that Britain has a functioning probation system is something of a myth. Last year there was a 21 per cent vacancy rate for probation officer jobs. The prison and probation service serially underestimates the number of staff it will need to effectively monitor offenders within the community.
It is onto this blazing fire that the government is now dumping gallons of gasoline. The changes made under the Sentencing Act mean that a greater number of offenders will serve a larger share of their sentence under community supervision, with the effect that there will be more people to supervise at any given point.
Giving a struggling probation service responsibility over a greater number of offenders is going to make things worse. Especially when the service is already having to compromise to manage its current caseload, by introducing changes to licence conditions.
Under the new arrangement, active probation supervision ceases at the two-thirds point through a sentence. There are exemptions for some groups, but a greater number of offenders still serving sentences will enjoy a longer period without supervision.
While they might be required to comply with licence conditions such as wearing a tag (the utility of which is dubious) or not visiting a certain area, nobody will be actively enforcing these conditions. And since the punishment for a breach of licence is a potential recall to prison, the enforcement incentive is much weaker, because the prisons are full.
In 2022, law student Zara Aleena was sexually assaulted and murdered while walking home after a night out in East London. Her murderer, Jordan McSweeney, had been released on licence only nine days before committing the attack. His licence had been revoked after failing to show up to probation appointments, but he was not recalled to prison. Several other such harrowing cases exist. The need to manage a greater number of offenders on licence will make the situation worse.
After a supposedly popular first few weeks in office, Burnham is being forced to confront the realities of a policy that is allowing violent and dangerous felons to roam the streets. While prevaricating over whether to change the law to ensure that the killers of PC Andrew Harper remain in prison, the Prime Minister has still endorsed the continuation of the much-hated early releases. What he’s barely begun to appreciate is that the probation system that is supposed to supervise these released offenders is on the brink of collapse itself.
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