The government sets out new scheme to reduce prison overcrowding by 2031, yet prison unions warns it will fall short.
The government has released plans to minimise Britain’s prison population, setting tougher punishments to cut crime back and fund £700 million towards the probation services.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) has forecast that the prison population will rise by 3,000 per year due to ‘police charging and prosecutions, increased court activity and longer sentence lengths. ‘ Their aim is to cut roughly 8,000 prisoners by 2028 and implement a modern prison expansion, providing 14,000 more places.
However, the national chair of the Prison Officers Association (POA), Mark Fairhurst, has criticised previous and present governments for not acting fast enough on the overcrowding phenomenon.
“It won’t be resolved by the Labour government building in more prisons because if you have more prisons, that means you’re going to need more staff.”
The POA is the largest UK’s prison union, they are established to help prison staff with their health and wellbeing, employment and financial implications.
Mark Fairhurst is determined to see better working conditions for his representative members, with an improved recruitment system and shortening sentences to reduce population.
“What we need to do is reduce the prison population so we’re not overcrowded.”
Mark Fairhurst
The national chair told me prison overcrowding is partly due to convicted criminals being locked up for minor crimes. An example he gave is the tedious TV licensing fine, if a person fails to pay their court fine, they can be sent to prison: “In 1992, we were locking up 40,000 prisoners. We’re now locking up 87,000 prisoners. We’re locking up more people because sentences are getting longer.”
The Institute for Government (IfG) found in 2023 that an average custodial sentence at crown court “was more than 25% longer than in 2012,” while a robbery sentence was 13 months longer over the same period.
Now under the Sentencing Act 2026 for England and Wales, court procedures will change, deciding whether if they find a prison sentence “necessary and proportionate.“
Early release
In September 2024, the Government implemented a scheme to help tackle prison overcrowding by releasing inmates who had served at least 40% of their sentence, excluding sex offenders. Since then, roughly 40,000 prisoners have been released and have been monitored by probation officers.
Cassia Rowland, a senior researcher on criminal justice and prisons for the IfG, believes the government acted quickly in trying to tackle the prison population.
“So they implemented prisoner releases, they did that in quite a sensible way, I know that there’s obviously been a lot of coverage around releases and error’s gone after those kinds of things. I think that was in end to be going to happen.”
The Justice Secretary at the time, David Lammy, told the BBC in December last year, that 12 prisoners had been released by accident at the start of the scheme, and he blamed the causes on human error for using a paper-based system rather than a digital system.
The Government found 262 cases between 2024-2025 of prisoners who were wrongly discharged. IfG blames the error of early releases on staff inexperience and miscalculations of prisoner’s release dates.
Although early release seemed to solve the short term issue, it additionally created another. 11,041 prisoners were recalled to prison between April and June 2025 for breaking their conditions, the BBC reported.
The national chair of POA is concerned with the lack of resources within communities to supervise prisoner releases. He believes that with no additional help for probation officers, it will encourage former prisoners to reoffend and fill up more spaces in prisons.
“You need to reduce the prison population. Scrap the new-build prisons and build more secure mental health institutions in our communities that we can rid our prisons of those who have problems and put them somewhere where they should be,” Fairhurst told us.
“Reduce the female population and put them into our communities to support them, and stop locking up people who are serving 12 months or less because we can’t do nothing with them. You also need to fund probation.”
Women prisoners
According to the Women in Prison, more than half of women prisoners have committed non-violent offences. They found women entering the criminal justice system are often victims of domestic abuse and 82% of them suffer with mental health problems compared to men.
“Many women in prison have been victims of much more serious offences than the ones they are accused of, with a growing body of research indicating that women’s exposure to physical, emotional and sexual abuse, including coercive control, is for some a driver of their offending,” they reported.
Dr Alice Jill Edwards, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, also found women and girls were being imprisoned globally faster than men.
Women are more judged for their moral crimes and receive less rehabilitation whilst in prison. There is also less consideration for the safety and hygiene of mothers or pregnant women.
Pregnant women are at a higher risk for stillbirths in an prison environment. The Prison Reform Trust (PRT) recognised that mothers being separated from their children can inflict mental health issues and poverty onto their offspring.
“Many women prisoners are victims of horrific domestic and sexual violence. Violence and the infliction of trauma and abuse may continue behind prison walls,” Edwards has said.
Mark Fairhurst believes that there are too many female prisoners with severe mental health problems and that they should be placed in mental health institutions instead.
He told me women in prisons are often victims of coercion and abuse from their male partners, forcing them to shoplift, deal drugs, and become associated with criminal gang activities.
The PRT found that 40% of women who committed theft and were sentenced to prison for less than six months in 2023.
“We need to address their addiction first and then also to address the fact that they are dealing with trauma because of what they’ve experienced prior to their committed crime,” Fairhurst said.
“We’re very restricted on what we can do with female prisoners because we simply haven’t got the resources to do it, and we certainly haven’t got enough health support for female offenders in prisons. That’s why we need to do something different.”
The issues with overcrowding
When prisons have reached high levels of overcrowding, prisoners often feel frustrated and inevitably are led to violence and corruption due to limited spaces, lack of healthcare and poor relationships with prison staff.
Dr Nasrul Ismail, senior lecturer in Criminology at the University of Bristol, believes that overcrowding can lead to unfairness and inefficiency within the justice system.
“Prisoners frequently spend long hours locked in these cramped spaces, which heightens tension and aggression,” he explained.
“Overcrowded conditions strain prison staff and reduce the system’s capacity to deliver meaningful rehabilitation, increasing the likelihood of reoffending.”
If healthcare is not taken seriously, then there is a higher chance former prisoners will reoffend due to untreated issues like addiction and mental health, which are two predictors of criminal activities.
Ismail told me reduced staffing in prisons is creating a growth of prison gangs and drug-related crime. He also links the use of drugs or related crimes to violence and instability, which is becoming harder to regulate and control.
Although the government and authorities are finally acting on the prison overcrowding issue, there is still a long way to go to address the inequalities for prison staff, women inmates, and the overall fairness of the justice system.
Featured image by 7500 RPM via Unsplash.