How Andy Burnham’s government could find a more lasting solution to the prisons crisis

So once again it is all change at the Ministry of Justice, with the appointment of a new Secretary of State and Lord Chancellor, and the resignation of Lord Timpson as Prisons, Probation and Reducing Reoffending Minister. This is against the backdrop of much wider change in government, and the larger question of what an Andy Burnham premiership might mean for criminal justice reform. 

The new Secretary of State, Alex Norris, formerly a Border Security and Asylum Minister at the Home Office, will have plenty on his plate. Lammy and Timpson depart on the eve of the Sentencing Act coming fully into force in the autumn, especially the complex and somewhat confusing changes to early release brought in through the ‘progression model’. (The ‘earned’ bit of ‘earned progression’ has quietly been dropped since the legislation passed through Parliament.) It will be a challenge for anyone to get their head around the inheritance that the Sentencing Act amounts to. At the same time, officials would be remiss not to point out that even if all the changes in the Act are successfully implemented, the government will still face running out of prison cells again in a few years’ time. 

We also have the recently announced review of prisons by Amber Rudd, which surprised many in the sector given all the previous reviews since 2024: the Release in Error Independent Review, the Independent Review of Prison Capacity, the Review of Separation Centres, the Independent Sentencing Review, and the Independent Review of Criminal Courts. 

Given this latest exercise was commissioned by Lammy and Timpson, it’s unclear what weight it will hold with the new ministerial team – and the review hasn’t even really begun yet in earnest. 

One way or another, the new Secretary of State will need the backing of his Prime Minister if we are to see further prison reform – and, to add to the lack of clarity, we do not know what Andy Burnham’s position on that will be. But with the need to find funding for social care reform, or cost-of-living initiatives, spending billions more on building new jails ought not to be a priority – so going further to reduce demand on prisons will be key.

Burnham has announced that ending rough sleeping will be one of his government’s priorities, and any whole system approach to tackling this would recognise we currently tolerate many people being released from prison into homelessness. 

There is also a path to something more radical and interesting, if the Prime Minister is willing to take it. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, he presided over a ‘whole system approach’ to violence reduction and to diverting people away from the criminal justice system wherever possible. Such initiatives operate best at a local level, recognising the intersection between social problems and criminal justice. Burnham has already announced that ending rough sleeping will be one of his government’s priorities, for example, and any whole system approach to tackling this would recognise we currently tolerate many people being released from prison into homelessness. 

Burnham’s devolved approach on criminal justice in Manchester was made possible through the legacy of the ‘justice reinvestment’ movement that developed in England (inspired by similar initiatives in the United States) almost 20 years ago.  

At its heart justice reinvestment considers the criminal justice spending in an area and questions whether some of that money wouldn’t be better spent on the area itself. In the US, researchers found ‘million-dollar blocks’ where crime was common and the blocks themselves were rundown, where residents faced challenges securing employment or getting childcare or other forms of support. The government was spending plenty money – the eponymous million dollars – on the block but it was spent incarcerating people from there, rather than on improving the block itself. What if we spent more of that money on the block instead? 

It is exactly the sort of place-based policy that Andy Burnham champions elsewhere and would suggest a far more localised approach to the delivery of probation services in the community – but also, potentially, to how prisons operate across the country (the one bit of the system excluded from devolution in Manchester).  

When Labour won the last election, the Howard League briefly touched on revitalising the justice reinvestment agenda when we published our Grasping the Nettle policy briefing to outline the steps that an incoming government could take to deal with the prison capacity crisis. We included many more immediate policy ideas, such as bolder reform to curb recall to prison, that should be considered by Alex Norris and his team at the Ministry of Justice. But a Burnham government could also connect the dots between crime and community, between prisons and place, and find a more lasting solution to the endless cycle of crisis and failure.

Andrew Neilson
Director of Campaigns

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