london —
For weeks, British media has been bombarded with warnings from almost every group involved in the country’s criminal justice system.
Probation officers are threatening to go on strike. Victim rights groups are concerned that victims are not being adequately protected. Prison governors have warned that prisons are acting as a “revolving door”.
The criminal justice system in England and Wales is on the brink of a long-term crisis, plagued by persistent prison overcrowding. And the issue has been thrust into the spotlight by a controversial move to release thousands of prisoners early starting Thursday, while underscoring the urgency of the problem and the political minefield constraining any attempts to alleviate it.
“The whole system is running at high heat, which means there is no margin for error,” said Pia Sinha, a former prison warden who now heads the UK charity Prison Reform Trust.
“This is like knowing that hospitals are full and an epidemic is imminent,” she told CNN, noting that any major incident or riot would put almost unbearable pressure on prisons.
The public backlash against the policy was the first real political test for newly appointed Prime Minister Andy Burnham, as he tries to balance criticism from grieving families with reality on the ground.
Current government figures show that prisons, whose occupancy rate hovered between 97% and 98% last month, are estimated to be full by November unless urgent action is taken.
The reforms were passed by former British Prime Minister Keir Starmer with the aim of giving the system some leeway. As part of this, most people serving standard sentences will be released earlier than originally planned. Adults convicted of minor crimes are released after one-third of their sentence has been served (instead of 40% or half). Others are released after serving half their sentence (rather than two-thirds). Prisoners will be released “on license,” the equivalent of parole, and those convicted of the most serious crimes will be excluded from the reform.
“We have heard reports from victims who have become very unwell as a result of hearing the news,” said Claire Waxman, chair of the Independent Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, a government-appointed post that represents victims’ issues and advises ministers. “(They) are unable to work and struggle to make ends meet.”
Debbie Adlam said she “felt sick” when she was informed of the change. Her son, PC Andrew Harper, had been married for less than a month when he was killed trying to stop a quad bike theft in 2019.
When he confronted the robbers, he became tangled in a tow strap hanging from their car and was dragged along the ground for more than a mile at breakneck speeds. Three young men were found guilty of manslaughter, with one driver sentenced to 16 years in prison and the other two sentenced to 13 years in prison. Under the new rules, the latter two could be released within months.
“Andrew’s life will never be the same again,” Adlam told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper in July, sparking an uproar.
Burnham was ultimately forced to backtrack on some of his policies, including excluding those convicted of manslaughter, dangerous driving resulting in death, and historic child sex offenses from early release in a bid to quell public outrage.
But despite Burnham’s changes, probation officers’ unions and victims’ rights groups argue the system is ill-equipped to deal with the influx of offenders into the community, pointing to years of chronic underfunding and staffing pressures.
The prison population in England and Wales has doubled in the past 30 years, according to the Institute for Government, a London-based think tank. Even though overall crime rates have fallen over the past decade, prison sentences have increased over that time, keeping people in prison longer and outpacing the number of new prisons being built. At the same time, more people are being recalled to prison for violating the terms of their parole, and many more are awaiting trial on remand.
Individual sentences are determined by the judiciary, but politicians have always been able to influence the process by passing legislation that imposes more punitive penalties. Criminologists call this phenomenon “penal populism.”
The average minimum sentence for murder rose from 13 years in 2000 to 21 years in 2021, according to the Sentencing Council, the body that publishes sentencing guidelines for England and Wales. Average custodial sentences for other crimes increased from 13 months in 2005 to 21 months in 2023.
“There is nothing that justifies this doubling of sentences,” five former most senior judges in England and Wales wrote in 2024, referring to the trend.
And between 2010 and 2024, when the Conservatives took power and cut funding for public services in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, only 500 net prisons were created. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem, creating backlogs in already stretched courts and forcing people to wait longer in prison for trial. Further prison construction programs are planned but will take years to complete.
Meanwhile, overcrowding “creates instability throughout the prison pipeline, and managing it safely becomes the town’s sole focus,” Sinha said. Because staff may have less time to properly evaluate inmates, inmates may be sent to less secure facilities, where their management may be compromised.
Mistakes are also more likely to occur. Between April 2024 and March 2025, 262 prisoners were mistakenly released in England and Wales, the highest number ever and a 128% increase on the previous year.
Meanwhile, prisoners have less access to rehabilitation programs, have more incentive to kill time by taking illegal drugs, and are spending more and more time in solitary confinement. This, in turn, fuels higher levels of violence against prison staff.
And with capacity so stretched, Sinha said it is much more difficult to renovate crumbling Victorian-era prisons, which are still an integral part of prison infrastructure. While serving as governor of HMP Liverpool in north-west England from 2017 to 2020, she recalls being able to reduce the number of prisoners and “rebuild the prison wing by wing”.
“Right now we don’t have that capacity. That’s the fundamental big difference…In 2017, 80%[of capacity]would be considered overcrowding. Now it’s 98%.”
Attempts to ease pressure on prisons will be transferred to the Probation Service, which monitors offenders serving sentences in the community.
But the probation service is “heading towards complete collapse”, warned Ian Lawrence, general secretary of NAPO, the union representing probation officers. Union members overwhelmingly supported the possibility of going on strike in August over increased pay and workloads.
“Without early release, workloads are at an all-time high. Sickness is at an all-time high,” Lawrence told CNN, noting that 60% of people who take sick leave suffer from burnout.
“The mood music between the members is all about, ‘How on earth do we deal with this?'” he said. These overwhelming workloads are creating a “more risk-averse culture”, which means officers are more likely to send offenders released on license back to prison, Mr Lawrence added.
The government has announced plans to invest £700 million (about $925 million) in the probation service and recruit thousands more police officers as part of sentencing reform, but Lawrence warns that additional officers will take time to understand the complexities of the job.
These dysfunctions are already resulting in “extremely high rates of victims withdrawing their support for prosecution after they report,” says Victims Commission Commissioner Waxman. She worries this trend could accelerate, especially if sentencing is not properly communicated.
“Right now, we’re hearing from victims saying, ‘What’s the point? Why do we have to wait years to go through the criminal justice system when we can ultimately release criminals sooner?'”
