Britain’s prisons are full. The solution has sparked outrage

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For weeks, British media has thrummed with warnings from almost every group connected with the country’s criminal justice system.

Probation officers are threatening strike action. Victims’ rights groups worry that victims aren’t adequately protected. Prison governors warn of prisons acting as a “revolving door.”

Beset by persistent prison overcrowding, the criminal justice system in England and Wales is in the throes of a years-long crisis. And it has been thrust into the spotlight by a controversial measure starting Thursday which will see thousands of prisoners released early, simultaneously underscoring the urgency of the problem and the political minefield constraining any attempts to alleviate it.

“You’re running the whole system hot, and that means there is no room for error,” said Pia Sinha, a former prison governor who now leads the Prison Reform Trust, a UK charity.

“It’s kind of the equivalent of knowing you don’t have any hospital spaces and you’ve got an epidemic looming,” she told CNN, pointing out that any major event or riots would place near-unbearable pressure on prisons.

For newly installed Prime Minister Andy Burnham, the public backlash to the policy represented his first real political test as he sought to balance criticism from grieving families with the realities on the ground.

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Current government figures estimate that prisons, which hovered somewhere between 97% and 98% capacity last month, will fill up by November without urgent action.

The reforms were passed by the UK’s previous prime minister Keir Starmer who aimed to give the system some headroom. As part of this, most of those serving a standard prison sentence will be released earlier than initially planned. Adults convicted of less serious offences will be freed after a third of their sentence (rather than 40% or halfway through); others will be released after serving half of their sentence (instead of two thirds). Prisoners will be released “on license,” equivalent to being on parole, and those convicted of the most serious crimes are excluded from the reforms .

“We’ve heard from victims who’ve become very unwell as a result of hearing that news,” said Claire Waxman, the independent Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, a government-appointed post which represents victims’ issues and advises ministers. “(They are) not able to work, struggling to live their life.”

When Debbie Adlam was informed of the changes, she said she felt “sick.” Her son, PC Andrew Harper, had been married less than a month when he was killed in 2019 while trying to stop a quad bike theft.

As he confronted the thieves, he became entangled in a tow strap hanging from their car and was dragged along the ground at speed for more than a mile. Three young men were convicted of manslaughter – one, who was driving the car, received a 16-year prison sentence while the other two received 13 years. Under the new rules, the latter two could have been released within months.

“Andrew’s life doesn’t get to come back,” Adlam told Britain’s Telegraph newspaper in July, kickstarting an uproar.

Burnham was eventually forced to backtrack on parts of the policy, excluding anyone convicted of manslaughter, death by dangerous driving and historic child sex offenses from early release to appease public anger.

Even with Burnham’s changes, however, the probation officers’ union and victims’ rights groups say the system is ill-equipped to cope with an influx of offenders into the community, pointing to years of chronic underfunding and staffing pressures.

Prison populations in the England and Wales have doubled over the past 30 years, according to the Institute for Government, a London-based think tank. Sentence lengths have increased in that time, keeping people behind bars for longer and outstripping the number of new prisons being built, even as overall crime rates have fallen during the last decade. At the same time, more people are being recalled to prison for breaching the terms of their parole, and more are held on remand, waiting to go to court.

Although the judiciary determines individual sentences, politicians have always been able to influence that process by passing legislation which imposes more punitive penalties – a phenomenon criminologists refer to as “penal populism.”

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On average, the minimum term for murder cases has risen from 13 years in 2000 to 21 years in 2021, according to the Sentencing Council, the body which issues guidelines on sentencing for England and Wales. For other crimes, the average custodial sentence has risen from 13 months in 2005 to 21 months in 2023.

“There is nothing which justifies this doubling of sentence lengths,” wrote five of the most senior former judges in England and Wales in 2024, referring to this trend.

And between 2010 and 2024, when the Conservatives were in power and cut funding to public services following the 2008 financial crisis, just 500 net prison places were created. The Covid-19 pandemic only compounded the issue, creating a backlog for already stretched courts, forcing people to wait in prisons longer before their trial. Further prison building programs are planned but will take years to complete.

In the meantime, overcrowding “creates instability all through the prison pipelines, and then managing it safely becomes the only show in town,” said Sinha. Staff may have less time to properly assess prisoners, meaning they can be sent to less secure facilities, creating problems for management there.

Mistakes are more likely to happen too. Between April 2024 and March 2025, 262 prisoners were released in error in England and Wales – the highest number on record and a 128% increase from the previous year.

Meanwhile, prisoners increasingly end up spending more time in their cells, with less access to rehabilitative programs and more incentive to pass the time taking illicit drugs. That, in turn, is helping fuel much higher levels of violence towards prison staff.

And with capacity so stretched, it is much harder to upgrade the crumbling Victorian-era prisons which are still an integral part of the prison infrastructure, said Sinha. During her time as governor of HMP Liverpool, in northwest England, between 2017 and 2020 she was able to reduce the number of prisoners there to “rebuild the prison wing by wing,” she recalls.

“There is no such capacity now, so that’s the big fundamental difference … In 2017, you would call yourself overcrowded if you were 80% (capacity). It’s now 98%.”

Any attempt to relieve the pressure on prisons shifts onto the probation service, which monitors offenders serving their sentence in the community.

But the probation service is “heading for a complete meltdown,” warned Ian Lawrence, general secretary of NAPO, the union which represents probation officers. Their members overwhelmingly voted in favor of potential strike action in August over pay and increasing workloads.

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“Already without the early release scheme, workloads are at such a crescendo that we’ve never encountered before. Sickness is at all-time high,” Lawrence told CNN, noting that 60% of those off sick are suffering from burnout.

“All the mood music among the members is ‘How on earth am I going to cope?’” he said. These crushing workloads create a “more risk averse culture,” Lawrence added, meaning officers are more likely to send offenders released on license back to prison.

Although the government announced a £700 million (roughly $925 million) investment into the probation service and plans to recruit thousands more officers as part of its sentencing reforms, Lawrence cautions that those extra officers will need time to understand the complexities of the job.

Such dysfunction is already contributing to very high rates of “victim attrition, where a victim reports and then withdraws their support for a prosecution,” says Waxman, the Victims’ Commissioner. It’s a trend she worries this scheme could accelerate, particularly if sentencing isn’t communicated properly.

“We’re now hearing from victims saying ‘What is the point? Why am I going to have to wait years to go through the criminal justice system if the end result is that you will release the offender much earlier?’”

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数周以来，英国媒体充斥着几乎所有与该国刑事司法系统相关的团体发出的警告。

缓刑监督官威胁要举行罢工。受害者权益组织担心受害者没有得到充分保护。监狱长们警告说，监狱正变成“旋转门”。

长期监狱人满为患的困境使英格兰和威尔士的刑事司法系统陷入了长达数年的危机。一项将于周四生效的争议性措施将使数千名囚犯提前获释，这一举措将使危机成为舆论焦点，同时也凸显了问题的紧迫性以及任何缓解措施都面临着重重政治阻碍。

“你们让整个系统高速运转，这意味着没有犯错的余地，”英国慈善机构“监狱改革信托”的负责人、前监狱长皮娅·辛哈说道。

“这就像你知道自己没有医院床位，而一场流行病即将爆发一样，”她告诉 CNN，并指出任何重大事件或骚乱都会给监狱带来几乎无法承受的压力。

对于新上任的首相安迪·伯纳姆来说，公众对这项政策的强烈反对是他面临的第一个真正的政治考验，因为他需要平衡悲痛家属的批评和实际情况。

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政府目前的统计数据显示，如果不采取紧急措施，监狱上个月的入住率在 97% 到 98% 之间，到 11 月份监狱将全部爆满。

这些改革由英国前首相基尔·斯塔默推动通过，旨在为监狱系统留出一些余地。作为改革的一部分，大多数服刑人员将比原计划提前获释。犯有较轻罪行的成年人将在服刑三分之一后获释（而非40%或一半）；其他犯有较轻罪行的人员将在服刑一半后获释（而非三分之二）。囚犯将获得“假释”，相当于获得缓刑，而犯有最严重罪行的人员则被排除在改革之外。

“我们了解到，一些受害者听到这个消息后身体状况急剧恶化，”英格兰和威尔士独立受害者事务专员克莱尔·瓦克斯曼说道。该职位由政府任命，代表受害者发声并为部长提供建议。“（他们）无法工作，生活举步维艰。”

当黛比·阿德拉姆得知这些变动时，​​她说她感到“恶心”。她的儿子，警员安德鲁·哈珀，在2019年试图阻止一起四轮摩托车盗窃案时殉职，当时他结婚还不到一个月。

当他与窃贼对峙时，被他们车上垂下的拖车绳缠住，高速拖行了一英里多。三名年轻人被判过失杀人罪——其中一人（即肇事司机）被判处16年监禁，另外两人被判处13年监禁。根据新规，后两人本可在数月内获释。

“安德鲁的生命再也回不来了，”阿德拉姆在7月份接受英国《每日电讯报》采访时说道，这番话引发了轩然大波。

为了平息公众的愤怒，伯纳姆最终被迫在部分政策上做出让步，将过失杀人、危险驾驶致人死亡和历史性儿童性犯罪的罪犯排除在提前释放范围之外。

然而，即使伯纳姆进行了改革，缓刑监督官工会和受害者权益组织也表示，该系统仍然无法应对大量罪犯涌入社区的情况，他们指出，多年来，该系统一直面临资金不足和人员短缺的压力。

据总部位于伦敦的智库“政府研究所”称，英格兰和威尔士的监狱人口在过去30年里翻了一番。与此同时，刑期延长，导致服刑人员在狱中待的时间更长，新建监狱的数量也超过了监狱的建设速度，尽管过去十年整体犯罪率有所下降。此外，因违反假释规定而被召回监狱的人数也在增加，还有更多人被羁押候审，等待出庭受审。

虽然司法机关决定具体刑罚，但政客们一直能够通过立法施加更严厉的惩罚来影响这一过程——犯罪学家将这种现象称为“刑罚民粹主义”。

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根据负责制定英格兰和威尔士量刑指南的量刑委员会的数据，谋杀案的平均最低刑期已从2000年的13年增加到2021年的21年。其他犯罪的平均监禁刑期也从2005年的13个月增加到2023年的21个月。

“没有任何理由可以证明将刑期延长一倍是合理的，”2024 年，英格兰和威尔士五位最资深的前法官在谈到这一趋势时写道。

2010年至2024年间，保守党执政，并在2008年金融危机后削减了公共服务经费，期间仅新增了500个监狱床位。新冠疫情更是雪上加霜，导致本已不堪重负的法院案件积压，迫使人们在审判前于监狱中等待更长时间。虽然政府已计划进一步扩建监狱，但这些项目需要数年才能完成。

与此同时，辛哈表示，过度拥挤“导致监狱系统各个环节不稳定，如何安全管理就成了唯一的难题”。工作人员可能没有足够的时间来对囚犯进行全面评估，这意味着他们可能会被转移到安全级别较低的监狱，从而给这些监狱的管理带来难题。

错误发生的概率也更高。2024年4月至2025年3月期间，英格兰和威尔士共有262名囚犯被错误释放，创历史新高，比上一年增加了128%。

与此同时，囚犯们待在牢房里的时间越来越长，接受改造的机会越来越少，也更有动力通过吸食毒品来消磨时间。反过来，这又助长了针对狱警的暴力事件大幅增加。

辛哈表示，由于监狱容量捉襟见肘，升级改造那些摇摇欲坠的维多利亚时代监狱变得更加困难，而这些监狱仍然是监狱基础设施的重要组成部分。她回忆说，在她2017年至2020年担任英格兰西北部利物浦监狱典狱长期间，她得以减少该监狱的囚犯人数，从而“逐个重建监狱监区”。

“现在完全没有这种容量了，这就是根本性的区别……2017年，如果入住率达到80%，你就会说自己超员了。而现在是98%。”

任何缓解监狱压力的尝试都会转移到缓刑服务部门，该部门负责监督在社区服刑的罪犯。

但代表缓刑监督官的工会NAPO秘书长伊恩·劳伦斯警告说，缓刑服务“正走向彻底崩溃”。该工会的成员在8月份以压倒性多数投票赞成就薪酬和日益繁重的工作量采取罢工行动。

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劳伦斯告诉CNN：“即使没有提前下班计划，工作量也已经达到了前所未有的高度。病假率也达到了历史最高水平。”他指出，60%的病假者都患有职业倦怠。

“所有成员的心情都是‘我到底该怎么应付？’”他说道。劳伦斯补充说，如此繁重的工作量造就了一种“更加规避风险的文化”，这意味着警官们更有可能将假释犯送回监狱。

尽管政府宣布向缓刑服务部门投资 7 亿英镑（约合 9.25 亿美元），并计划招募数千名更多官员作为其量刑改革的一部分，但劳伦斯警告说，这些额外的官员需要时间来了解这项工作的复杂性。

受害者事务专员瓦克斯曼表示，这种功能失调已经导致“受害者流失率”居高不下，即受害者报案后又撤回对起诉的支持。她担心，如果量刑沟通不畅，这项计划可能会加速这一趋势。

“我们现在听到受害者说：‘这有什么意义？如果最终结果是罪犯会被提前释放，那我为什么要花几年时间走完整个刑事司法程序？’”