Record prison population projected
Yesterday (5 December 2024), the Ministry of Justice published its official Prison Population Projections for 2024-2029. The central finding is that the prison population is projected to increase to between 95,700 and 105,200 by March 2029, with a central estimate of 100,800. The projected increase in the prison population is driven by several factors including: continued growth in police charging and prosecutorial activity; increased flows into the courts; rising levels of people on remand; and changes in sentencing policy and behaviour to keep the most serious offenders in prison for longer.
The devil is in the detail
There is, however, a morsel of good news. In the central scenario, by September 2028, the total prison population is now estimated to be about 5,500 lower than in the previous 2023-2028 publication. The difference is predominantly driven by a lower starting population combined with the impact of recent sentencing policy measures discussed further down this post.
Calculations
There are several sources of uncertainty in projecting the future prison population, particularly around the level of demand entering the Criminal Justice System (CJS). This report presents three prison population projections to assess the impact of differing potential upstream demand scenarios which have been agreed between the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the Home Office and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS):
- Low upstream demand: Assumes demand remains at the level observed in the 12 months to May-24.
- High upstream demand: Assumes a further 10% increase in police and prosecutorial activity and associated court receipts, based on Home Office estimates of the potential impact of increasing officer experience. Additionally, this scenario assumes a further rise in volumes of violent and sexual offences with the latest insight from the Home Office indicating that the observed rise in sexual offence Crown receipts is likely due to an increase in reporting of crimes.
- Central upstream demand: Assumes an additional risk of a 5% increase in court receipts on the levels observed in the 12 months to May-24 over the next five years.
The table I have reproduced below shows projections for each of these three scenarios with a helpful breakdown of the prison population into four main categories: remand, determinate sentence prisoners, indeterminate sentences and recalls.
A changing profile
As you can see from the table, the overall make-up of the prison population is projected to change. If we focus on the middle (central upstream demand) calculations, we can see that in four years time (September 2024), there is projected to be:
- A total prison population increase of almost 13,000 – UP 14.7%
- An increase in the remand population of over 3,600 – UP 20.6%
- An increase in the number of people sentenced to determinate sentences of over 8,000 – UP 17.3%
- A reduction in the number of people sentenced to indeterminate sentences of 500 – DOWN 5.9% (mainly due to the projected big reduction in the number of unreleased IPPs)
- An increase in the number of recalls of over 1,300 – UP 10.5%
Drivers
The projected changes in the prison population are expected as the result of a range of policies, including those already in effect but not yet fully represented in the population and others expected to commence over the projection period. The estimated impacts factored into the projections include the following, most of which are expected to result in higher numbers of people in prison:
- The impacts of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 202216, which includes provisions for changing the automatic release point for violent and sexual offenders sentenced to a standard determinate sentence of 4 to 7 years;
- The impacts of the Release of Prisoners Order 202017, which increases custodial sentences for offenders convicted of a relevant violent or sexual offence with a custodial sentence of 7 years or more;
- The impacts of The Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Home Detention Curfew) Order 2023;
- The impacts of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024;
- The Criminal Justice Act 2003 (Requisite and Minimum Custodial Periods) Order 2024;
- The Sentencing Act 2020 (Magistrates’ Court Sentencing Powers) (Amendment) Regulations 2024; and
- Operational changes to increase the capacity of the Bail Information Service and Community Accommodation Service which will increase the information available to judges making remand decisions and provide additional accommodation for offenders to be managed in the community respectively.
Thanks to Andy Aitchison for kind permission to use the header image in this post. You can see Andy’s work here
