What's happening to the prison population?

Work with offenders investigates the biggest drop in prison numbers for a generation.

Something odd is happening in prisons. As readers will know, the prison population dropped considerably over the lockdown period for obvious reasons; lockdown meant less opportunity for many crimes and the courts weren’t sitting and so couldn’t sentence people to custody.

There were 83,654 people in prison at the end of February 2020 (just before the first lockdown) and that figure had dropped all the way to 77,738 14 months later in April 2021  – a drop of almost 6,000 people (5,916 to be exact).

The government introduced a whole raft of measures – extra “Nightingale Courts”, and increasing the number of days Crown Courts could sit being the chief ones – and initially it looked as if things were working. The prison population slowly started rising again; by the end of November last year it was back up to 79,580 (almost 2,000 more than the lowest level) but since then it has been stuck. The most recent official figure published last week (prison population figures are published every Friday by the Ministry of Justice) was 79,569 – eleven fewer prisoners than five months ago.

This seems peculiar to say the least. The Government has thrown a lot of money at the problem – £250 million to date and promises almost twice as much (£477m) investment in the criminal justice system over the next three years to help tackle backlogs in courts and tribunals. Just yesterday, the MoJ published a press release saying that there will again be no limit on the number of days the Crown Court can sit in the new financial year and boasting that nearly 17,000 more days were sat in the Crown Court last year after the existing cap was lifted.

So why isn’t all this money having an impact on the prison numbers? The government’s own predictions say that the prison population is expected to shoot up to 98,500 by March 2027, largely as a result of the recruitment of more police officers and the long term trend towards every increasing sentences. The number of outstanding Crown Court cases is horrendous (58,818 at the end of 2021) but even that is a reduction of over 2,000 from its peak last June.  

We know that a staggering one in six of the prison population is on remand (many kept beyond the legal limit when they should have been brought to trial). The figure is as high as 80% in some local prisons such as Wandsworth with institutions having to change practices to offer resettlement support to people still not convicted of any offence. Because of the time spent on remand, many people, even if convicted, are released directly from court because they have already spent more time in prison that the sentence they receive. In the real world, this means that people are often released without housing or access to benefits or other helping services designed to aid their reintegration into society.

The Lord Chancellor Dominic Raab says that getting the courts backlog down is a government priority but is curiously silent on the lack of impact on the prison population.

This government has consistently talked tough on crime, boasted about its prison building programme and is open about its ambition to put more people behind bars and keep them there longer. For example, there are several measures included in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill currently going through its final parliamentary stages (longer sentences for some crimes, less eligibility to parole for people convicted of some offences) which should result in a higher prison population.

Nevertheless, this government has presided over the biggest drop in prison numbers for a generation.