Remand population highest ever
Yesterday’s (25 April 2024) Offender Management Statistics make for unsurprisingly grim reading given the current state of our prison and probation services. The figures cover the prison population on 31 March this year and all other trends up to the end of 2023. The main trends are:
- Prison population up 4% on last year
- A massive jump (34%) in the number of adjudications and an almost doubling (90% rise) in the award of additional days as punishment
- Prison recalls up yet again by 17%
- Probation caseload falls by 1%
Remand crisis
The 31 March 2024 remand population figure of 16,458 is 13% higher than in March 2023 and is the highest figure in at least the last fifty years. The untried prison population rose by 10% (to 10,680) when compared to the end of March 2023 whilst the convicted unsentenced population rose by 19% (to 5,778) over the same period.
Most of those in custody on remand were being held for either violence against the person (44% of the untried population and 31% of the convicted unsentenced population); or drug offences (13% of the untried population and 19% of the convicted unsentenced population).
The introduction of new domestic abuse legislation active from June 2022 appears to be a contributing factor to a substantial increase in the number of prisoners associated with a violence against the person offence (57% increase in the untried population, 89% increase in the convicted unsentenced population in the last 12 months).
While white prisoners make up 73% of the sentenced population, they make up only 66% of the remand population. All other reported ethnic groups have the same, or greater, proportional representation in the remand population than they do in the sentenced population.
Indeterminate sentences
On 31 March 2024, there were 8,526 (8,181 male; 345 female) ‘unreleased’ prisoners serving indeterminate sentences (Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) and life sentences). This is largely the same as 31 March 2023 (a less than 0.5% increase).
The number of ‘unreleased’ prisoners serving life sentences (7,346) has increased by 3% compared to one year ago whereas the number of ‘unreleased’ IPP prisoners fell by 13% to 1,180. At point of sentencing, offenders are given a minimum time period (“tariff”) that they must serve in prison before they can apply to the Parole Board for release. The majority (60%) of the remaining ‘unreleased’ IPP prisoners have been held for at least ten years beyond the end of their tariff.
The number of ‘recalled’ prisoners serving life sentences increased by 6% to 853 when compared to 31 March 2023, whilst the number of ‘recalled’ IPP prisoners saw a 4% increase to 1,616.
Recall
The population recalled to custody (12,344 prisoners) has increased by 8% relative to the total a year earlier. The increasing recall population is likely driven by a combination of factors such as a longer-term increase in the average length of determinate sentences and an increase in the number of people serving indeterminate sentences or sentences with an extended licence.
Probation caseload
A smaller and smaller proportion of people supervised by the probation service are serving community sentences with increases in suspended sentence orders and, in particular, the numbers of people on pre-release supervision accounting for the overall growth in the probation caseload last year. See the graph above for the trends over the last 10 years.
The total number of offenders starting court order or pre-release supervision by the Probation Service in 2023 increased by 3% to 141,127 compared with 2022, and this was primarily due to an 8% increase in the number of offenders starting pre-release supervision.
Between 2013 and 2019, the number of court order starts decreased by 26% to 104,038, and then by 23% to a series low of 79,621 in 2020. In 2021, court order starts increased by 16% to 92,718, but subsequently decreased again by 3% to 89,885 in 2022, before remaining constant between 2022 and 2023, to 90,014. Community Orders starts decreased by 2% between 2022 and 2023, while starts for SSO with requirements increased by 4% over the same period.
The average length of Community Order starts increased slightly from 13.4 months in 2022 to 13.6 months in 2023. The average length of SSO with requirements starts also increased slightly from 18.0 months to 18.1 months over the same period.
As a result of the Offender Rehabilitation Act being implemented in February 2015, the number of offenders starting pre-release supervision in custody increased by 114% from 45,063 in 2014 to 96,594 in 2016. Between 2019 and 2020, this figure decreased by 20% to 65,505 and then, unlike court order starts, which saw an increase in 2021, decreased by 8% in 2021 and by 12% in 2022, before increasing by 8% in 2023, the first year-on-year increase in pre-release supervision since 2016.
However, despite these increase there were 238,765 offenders under probation supervision as at 31 December 2023, down 1% on the previous year.
