Earlier this week (12 October 2026), the Institute for Government published its latest report tracking the performance of the criminal justice system. As usual, the report is collated and produced by Cassia Rowland and is an invaluable, impartial assessment of the state of our CJS.
Prisons and Probation
The IfG report summarises the picture with admirable brevity and accuracy stating that in July 2024, when the Starmer government came into office, the prison system in England and Wales was facing disaster. Prisons were almost out of space, with occupancy levels hitting 99%; existing early release schemes were highly chaotic and had largely reached their limits. Violence was very high, protests and self-harm were both at record levels and all were rising rapidly. Purposeful activity for prisoners – education, employment and training – was very poor, and prisons were struggling with inexperienced staff and high leaving rates.
The state of the probation service was not much better. The Sunak government’s ad hoc early release scheme saw thousands of prisoners released, often with only a few hours’ notice, making effective preparation for release impossible; at its peak, 14% of people released were sleeping rough.* The unification and renationalisation of the probation service in 2021 had failed to improve its poor performance, with inspectorate ratings falling even further. Caseloads and vacancy rates were very high, and sentence requirements such as unpaid work and rehabilitative activity were not being delivered for many offenders.
Facing this incredibly difficult set of challenges, the Starmer government “did an impressive job” of stabilising the situation. Within days of the general election, the then justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, set out a plan for dealing with the immediate capacity crisis in prisons, and also committed to expanding the recruitment of probation officer trainees, addressing (although not resolving) the two most pressing problems. After that, the administration brought in substantial changes to sentencing and policy changes to reduce the active caseload on probation, as well as making some progress in stabilising the workforce.
Minimal improvements
The IfG’s assessment though is that all this “has only been enough to stave off disaster”. Performance improvements have so far been extremely modest, with violence and deaths in prisons still high and the probation service still failing to deliver adequate risk assessment or manage offenders effectively in the community. And there is no coherent strategy to improve this.
Over the summer of this year, the then justice secretary David Lammy appointed Amber Rudd, former Conservative home secretary, to conduct a review into safety and security in prisons. But this will not report for several months, and in the meantime, prisons will continue to struggle with serious problems from drugs, violence and organised crime.
The situation is still more precarious in probation, which is currently facing perhaps its most difficult moment at least since the service was broken up under the coalition government in 2014. Around 4,500 prisoners are being released from October with the implementation of the Sentencing Act 2026. This is on top of thousands more offenders expected to receive suspended sentences rather than short stretches in prison, who will also need supervising.
The Starmer government struggled to substantially increase the number of probation practitioners – probation officers and probation services officers who supervise offenders. This has left probation still far short of the number needed to manage this caseload effectively. The service deserves real credit for how it has managed an extremely difficult situation and multiple policy changes. But performance improvement is still a long way off.
The infographic which I have reproduced below gives a great summary.
Detailed analysis
The rest of the report provides an extremely high quality analysis of most of the key challenges facing the prison and probation services at the moment. I summarise most of these in the bullet points below but encourage readers to look at the report in full which is comprehensive and full of dta links.
- The Burnham government has kept most of the measures in the Sentencing Act, but the changes to prison releases risk further crisis
- Prison expansion is already behind schedule, leaving prisoners in unsafe cells
- Early release schemes and the struggle to manage capacity have caused releases in error to soar, although there has been progress in the past year
- The slight easing of capacity pressure has seen violence, deaths and protests in prisons all start to improve
- Prisons are increasingly short of prison officers, making packed prisons harder to manage
- Reducing demand on prisons has shifted the burden to probation, which is already failing to meet its core requirements
- Slow progress on recruitment means probation practitioners are still overstretched and ill-equipped to absorb additional demand
- Rationing probation supervision is necessary to manage demand, but has serious drawbacks
- The scramble to increase probation capacity has led to constant policy churn, with policies being implemented before they were even finalised
- Pressure on probation means the service is struggling to manage cases effectively in the community
- Electronic monitoring is not working effectively and is unlikely to be able to deliver on the promises ministers have made
- Rehabilitation both in custody and the community is fatally undermined by violence, drugs and a lack of adequate activity and support
Conclusion
The report’s conclusion reflects the complexity of the situation and the enormity of the challenges. Essentially the IfG conclude that the
“state of prisons and probation remains extremely poor”
but
“this is a success story for the Starmer government. The situation when it came into office in July 2024 was so bad that it is a real achievement to have got this far. “
Looking to the future, the IfG assessment is that:
“the Burnham government has a long way to go and there is plenty of room for things to go wrong.”
It urges the Government to focus on building capacity and capability in probation while maintaining enough space in prison both to avoid more emergency releases and to sustain lower rates of violence and increase purposeful activity.
The report makes six key recommendations:
- Avoid imposing unnecessarily restrictive and punitive licence conditions on people on probation, to encourage trusted relationships with probation supervisors and reduce administrative recalls.
- Increase the number of probation practitioners at a steady pace, avoiding large staff influxes (and likely exits) as far as possible.
- Provide probation delivery units with more flexibility to hire or commission specialist services, such as housing and mental health advisers, to provide timely access to specialist support. This could be done using some of the budget currently allocated to increase probation capacity and improve performance.
- Reintroduce home detention as a first-line means of managing the prison population, should it become necessary.
- Develop a sentencing model that is transparent and understandable for the public and victims, with an explicit custodial period. For prison sentences, this should set out time in prison and time supervised in the community. Avoid the use of licence periods with no supervision.
- Emphasise purposeful activity in prisons, to try to drive down violence, self-harm and drug use.
