10-year prison capacity strategy
Yesterday (11 December 2024) the Ministry of Justice published its 10-year prison capacity strategy in which it says it will build 14,000 more prison places by 2031. The strategy presents a reasonably detailed plan, setting out where these places will be built and by when. It also contains a commitment to securing new planning powers, that will allow for greater flexibility should new land be required for future prison sites.
The Government is also hoping to reduce demand on the prison system to a limited extent by its Sentencing Review and by expanding the “range and use of punishment outside of prison, drawing more heavily on existing and emerging technology to curtail freedom outside of prison.”
A four-pronged approach
The strategy contains an assessment that the prison build programmes will cost between £9.4 billion and £10.1 billion, compared to an original estimate of £5.2 billion at the time of the 2021 Spending Review. There are four main components to the programme:
New prisons – 6,500 new places through new prisons which are designed to help positively impact prisoner rehabilitation. All of these prisons are built following the T60 houseblock model, a design that takes the shape of a cross and accommodates around 60 prisoners per storey. This is designed to improve security, safety and decency. New prisons will include:
- a new prison in Yorkshire, HMP Millsike, with around 1,500 places delivering in 2025
- a new prison in Leicestershire, with around 1,700 places which has full planning permission
- a new prison in Buckinghamshire, with around 1,500 places, which has outline planning permission
- a new prison in Lancashire, with around 1,700 places, which has outline planning permission
New houseblocks – Adding additional houseblocks to existing prisons. In total the MoJ plans to add around 6,400 places to the estate through houseblocks including, for example, around 500 new places at HMP Channings Wood.
Rapid Deployment Cells (RDCs) – These are modular, self‑contained units with a 15‑year lifespan placed in existing Category C, Category D and women’s estate prison grounds and designed for low-risk prisoners. 800 RDCs across 14 sites have been delivered and around 1,000 more are planned. The units give prisons the opportunity to further support prisoners in their transition from closed to open conditions (e.g. independent living for those prisoners who are nearing the end of their term and/or are assessed as low risk).
Refurbishments – The MoJ will continue to refurbish residential units, facilities and ancillaries (e.g. kitchens, education spaces and workshops). Refurbishment of the Victorian estate will bring around 1,000 cells into the 21st century, including a wing-by-wing refurbishment of HMP Liverpool which will bring back online, in total, around 350 currently out of use places, as well as upgrading all 800 cells currently in use.
Other commitments
The strategy also makes a number of other commitments. It promises to invest £220 million in prison and probation service maintenance in 2024 to 2025 and up to £300 million in 2025 to 2026, to keep prisons safe and secure. This funding includes a commitment to ensure that much neglected fire safety work is undertaken.
The strategy also commits to improving the IT capacity of the prison estate. It promises to rollout the Digital Prison Service to provide a new set of modern digital services replacing the outdated legacy system that staff use to manage and record data on offenders. It says that improving the infrastructure and building modern digital systems will help to:
- increase the productivity of staff by improving their ability to access digital tools on-the-go
- streamline activities and enable staff to better target their limited capacity by automating manual processes – our prisons still use over five million sheets of paper per month across the country
- improve data-driven decision-making by connecting data across systems, making vital information more accessible to staff to support the management of offenders, including capacity management
Conclusion
While the prison reform sector acknowledge the dilapidated state of many of our prisons, there is concern that building more prisons will simply result in England and Wales imprisoning even more people. We already incarcerate a a greater proportion than any other country in Western Europe – except Scotland.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here