Dame Anne Owers’ review of prison capacity has said the crisis is “systemic” and called for the creation of an independent advisory body for the sector to look at strategies and challenges to remedy the situation.
Former chief inspector of prisons Owers said the nation’s prison system almost hit full capacity on three occasions over an 18-month period between 2023 and 2024 – with “last-minute” early-release schemes for inmates employed to reduce the pressure.
Owers’ review noted that the prison population had grown from an average of 66,300 in 2001 to 87,276 in June last year. She said that the crunch of 2023-24 was not the first time there had been a capacity crisis in the prison system, but described it as “the most acute and long-lasting crisis”.
“The problem is not yet solved, which suggests it is systemic,” she added.
Owers said measures taken by the new Labour government over the past 12 months, including the early release of some categories of offender after they have served just 40% of their sentence, had “provided a breathing space, but not a solution”.
She said plans to cap the projected rise in prison numbers at around 95,000 would still be a challenge for the Prison Service, while early-release measures would put “significant additional pressure” on the Probation Service and other community services.
Owers’ review follows a review of sentencing conducted by former justice secretary David Gauke, which was published in May, and Sir Brian Leveson’s review of the criminal courts, the first part of which was published last month.
Owers said the 2023-24 crisis had its roots in “some specific circumstances” but was also “a symptom of a systemic and long-running problem: the apparently irresistible pressure for more and longer prison sentences coming up against the immovable object of the difficulty, expense and overall effectiveness of building and running more prisons.”
Over the past year, multiple sources have identified a reluctance on the part of the Sunak administration to react to the crisis in a timely manner in the run-up to July 2024’s general election – among them the National Police Chiefs' Council.
“Structures and oversight mechanisms – internal departmental processes, parliamentary select committees and independent inspectorates – could not have been clearer in signalling the scale, likelihood, risks and consequences of the most recent capacity crisis,” Owers said. “However, the response to these signals has been last-minute short-term fixes rather than long-term solutions to the underlying problems.”
She said that senior officials had been “so concerned about a potential breakdown in the criminal justice system that an audit was kept of all decision-making and documents, in case there was a public or parliamentary inquiry”.
Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood commissioned the report from Owers. She said the report laid bare the “disgraceful way” the last Conservative administration had run the nation’s prisons.
“They added less than 500 cells to the prison estate over 14 years, released over 10,000 prisoners early under a veil of secrecy, and brought our jails close to total collapse on countless occasions,” she said.
Among her recommendations, Owers calls for the creation of an independent body to provide “advice and external validation of the capacity strategies and challenges in both prisons and probation”. The body would also be tasked with looking at the impact of proposed changes across the broader criminal-justice system, including funding and organisational implications.
“It should provide independent advice and commentary on prison and probation capacity strategies and relevant policies,” Owers said. “It should draw on the findings of the independent inspectorates of prisons and probation in order to provide a reality check. This process would take these discussions out of the shadows of inter-departmental or intra-governmental tugs of war, and move towards a preventative, rather than a crisis management, approach.”
Owers also noted that there had been “tensions” between policies and funding in different parts of the criminal justice system since the Ministry of Justice was “detached” from the Home Office in 2007.
She said the tensions had “led to blame-shifting, not problem-solving" at times, although she acknowledged that there were also examples of constructive work.
Among her recommendations, Owers said the chief inspector of probation and the voluntary sector should be involved in discussing the design, resourcing and delivery of community services for offenders, such as addiction, health, housing, and employment services.
The MoJ said it would respond to Owers’ report “in due course”.