How will the sentencing review recommendations be turned into operational reality?

Now that David Gauke’s sentencing review has delivered its recommendations, we expect legislation to be introduced any day. This legislation will start to fill in what is currently an incomplete picture, as we wait to understand precisely how the government will interpret the review’s recommendations and go about turning them into operational reality. 

In hindsight, the sentencing review was a game of two halves. The first half led to a report published in February on the history and trends in sentencing. This was an excellent piece of work that identified the current use of custody as profligate and unsustainable. The review diagnosed penal populism as the driver behind this and recognised, as the Howard League has been campaigning on for some time, that sentence inflation must be addressed if our ballooning prison population is to be checked. 

The review’s second half, however, is considerably less ambitious in scope. That’s partly because certain matters, most obviously the sentencing law around murder, were excluded from the review’s remit. This made tackling sentence inflation especially difficult. But other issues around longer sentencing, such as the escalation of maximum sentences and the use of mandatory minimum sentences, were put aside by the review in its final report. The euphemism used is that the review “did not have enough time” to look at these issues. It’s hard not to conclude, however, that these issues were shelved because they were viewed as too politically challenging.

We would expect this to buy the government perhaps two more years before it starts to run out of prison places again.

At the heart of the review’s recommendations are five proposals that are estimated to save between 9,000 and 10,000 prison places. These are: 

• Curbing the use of short custodial sentences. 

• Extending the use of suspended sentence orders. 

• Introducing an ‘earned progression’ model for those on standard determinate sentences (SDS). 

• Introducing a similar model for those on extended determinate sentences (EDS). 

• Simplifying the recall system for those on SDS. 

The government has already rejected the recommendation for people on EDS. If all the other proposals go through and save the prison places they are intended to save, we would expect this only to buy the government perhaps two more years before it starts to run out of prison places again. 

What’s worrying about this prospect is that the government will be closer to the next general election by that point. It will have faced two more years of the attrition of being in power. In that scenario, how likely is it that there will be an appetite for making bolder policy choices? 

There is also some concern about how an ‘earned progression’ model will work when the prison system is so overcrowded and unable to deliver positive regimes in a consistent manner. Staying out of trouble is already difficult in the current system – for example, new Ministry of Justice (MoJ) research shows that prisoners in overcrowded cells are 19% more likely to be involved in an assault. 

The operational challenge of implementing an earned progression model has implications for many people in prison, but we are particularly concerned about young adults. There is a very real danger that young men in this age group will be set up to fail. It is worth spelling out why, with an example of how a poorly implemented model of earned release could backfire on the government.

It is hard not to conclude that young adults might be disproportionately impacted by the proposals around earned release.

We know that young adults continue to develop physically and psychologically until their mid-twenties and that maturity affects judgement, decision-making skills, and impulse control. Moreover, young adults reside in some of the most violent and unsafe prisons in the estate. Safety in custody statistics show that young men aged 18-20 have the highest rates of involvement in assaults (including as victims).  

If additional days of imprisonment are used as a mechanism to keep people in prison who are viewed as not having ‘earned’ their release, then it is notable that two prisons holding young adults (Isis and Brinsford) saw the highest use of additional days in 2024. We are currently conducting data analysis that suggests more than a third of additional days handed out in 2024 were given to people aged 24 and under. It is hard not to conclude that young adults might be disproportionately impacted by the proposals around earned release. 

The legislation we expect to see published soon will start to answer some of these questions we have coming out of the sentencing review. As it is debated in Parliament, there will be further opportunities to scrutinise the detail of what is being proposed. In the meantime, what we do know is that the government is ploughing ahead with a prison building programme. In the recent spending review, the MoJ was allocated £7billion of capital expenditure to create 14,000 new prison places. 

While the department’s day-to-day budget also received an annual average increase of 1.8%, it is worth noting that those 14,000 new prison places represent an expansion of the prison estate by about 15%. The sentencing review alone can’t fix this colossal mismatch in the department’s sums. In other words, the MoJ is struggling to provide lasting solutions to the problems it faces today, while storing up even greater problems for the future.

Andrew Neilson
Director of Campaigns

Comments

• Dionne worsley says:

  7 Jul 2025 at 12:16 am

  My son is in prison serving six years for section 18 joint enterprise, 1st offence he was found not guilty of having any weapon but guilty as they said he encouraged or assisted the unknown man to use the knife .. the victim was stabbed in the leg and although known in court that no injuries were caused by the person they say my son was he was still found guilty he is also classed as high risk and has to serve 4 years .. the system is broken

  Reply
• Maria Draper says:

  1 Jul 2025 at 9:35 am

  Why is it someone who killed somebody can get an early release, when someone who has NOT killed somebody but has EDS can’t ??? … hurry up and argue this out for EDS prisoners, surely they should be getting more help, as now all early release prisoners are being prioritised for progression courses before the EDS prisoners, pushing them back isn’t going to help rehabilitation for them.

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• Gillian Griffiths says:

  1 Jul 2025 at 9:00 am

  This is exactly right the early release scheme for young adults cannot work it is impossible as all young inmates can explain why if asked , they wake up everyday in jungle where they need to protect themselves to survive . 75 percent resort to taking spice to cope with the hours locked in cells with no rehabilitation this puts them in a world of not knowing where they are and kills the unbearable time.
  If 3/4 years in prison doesn’t stop reoffending then neither will 5/6 so get on with the early release without the reward scheme for the 16/30 age group instead of wasting tax payers money and causing years of mental health to cost more.

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