Reoffending Rates, Prison Population Records, Early Release, Probation Privatisation Failure, and the Criminal Justice System’s Most Expensive Failure
Prison: The Thing That Doesn’t Work That Every Government Builds More Of
The British prison system is, by the measures that matter to the public — does crime reduce when we imprison more people? — an expensive failure, and by the measures that matter to politicians — does announcing more prison places look tough on crime? — a durable success. This gap between evidence and policy has sustained a prison population that has doubled since 1990, a reoffending rate that has remained stubbornly at approximately forty percent within one year of release, and a prison estate that has been described as overcrowded in virtually every annual report of His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons since the inspectorate was created.
England and Wales imprison approximately 86,000 people — the highest rate in Western Europe — at a cost of approximately £47,000 per prisoner per year. The total annual cost of the prison system is approximately £4.7 billion. The annual cost of reoffending — reconvictions, new victims, further court proceedings, further imprisonment — is estimated at approximately £18 billion. A system in which four in ten prisoners reoffend within a year of release is a system generating more of its own inputs, which is either a structural failure of the rehabilitation function or a deliberate feature of a criminal justice system that has concluded that punishment rather than rehabilitation is its primary purpose. The evidence suggests the latter, whatever the official statements say.
Probation Privatisation: The Reform That Reduced Probation Effectiveness While Increasing Its Cost
The 2014 Transforming Rehabilitation programme — introduced by Chris Grayling as Justice Secretary — split the probation service into a National Probation Service (managing high-risk offenders) and twenty-one Community Rehabilitation Companies (managing medium and low-risk offenders), awarded to private and voluntary sector providers on contracts designed to incentivise through-the-gate rehabilitation support for those leaving prison. The programme was introduced against the advice of the probation profession, implemented faster than the evidence base supported, and produced outcomes that Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Probation described with consistent critical detail across multiple reports.
The CRCs — unable to make the contracts commercially viable at the volumes and payment-by-results terms specified — delivered reduced supervision intensity, high staff turnover, inadequate continuity of support for those leaving custody, and innovation that was consistently less evident than the contract design had anticipated. The government terminated the CRC contracts in 2019 — five years early — at a cost in contract termination payments and emergency funding of hundreds of millions of pounds, returning the probation service to unified public management. The National Probation Service absorbed the CRC caseload under conditions described by the inspectorate as stretched, with staffing levels and workloads that the inspectorate found concerning throughout the transition period.
The Prison Building Programme: More Cells for the Same Results
Every government since approximately 1990 has announced a prison building programme. The programmes have produced new prison places. The prison population has grown to fill them. The reoffending rate has remained approximately the same. The criminal justice arithmetic — more places enabling more imprisonment enabling more people coming out and reoffending enabling more imprisonment — has continued without systematic disruption from the policy interventions directed at it.
The Prison Reform Trust and the Howard League for Penal Reform have, for decades, produced evidence that shorter sentences with better rehabilitation support, treatment for addiction and mental health, stable housing and employment support on release, and community sentences for non-violent offenders reduce reoffending more effectively than imprisonment. This evidence has been available, cited in government reviews, and incorporated into strategy documents that have not produced the policy change the evidence supports. The political economy of penal policy — in which “tough on crime” generates favourable tabloid coverage and “community sentences” generates negative coverage regardless of their relative effectiveness — has been more influential on policy than the evidence base.
The Emergency Early Release: When Overcrowding Becomes Unavoidable
The Starmer government’s emergency early release of prisoners in 2024 — releasing thousands of prisoners before the end of their sentences to address overcrowding that had reached record levels — was presented as a necessary response to a capacity crisis inherited from the previous government. The previous government had also conducted emergency early releases, as had the government before that, in a pattern that suggests the crisis is structural rather than episodic and is being managed through emergency measures rather than the systemic reform that would prevent it recurring.
Early release has known reoffending risks — the period immediately after release is the highest-risk period for reoffending, and early release without adequate through-the-gate support increases those risks. The political management of this tension — necessary action described as carefully managed with appropriate conditions — and the subsequent monitoring of reconvictions will determine whether the emergency measure produces the human costs that the critics predicted or the managed transition that the government claimed.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!
England and Wales imprisons approximately 86,000 people, the highest rate in Western Europe. The annual cost per prisoner is approximately £47,000; the annual cost of reoffending is estimated at approximately £18 billion. The reoffending rate within one year of release is approximately 40%. The 2014 Transforming Rehabilitation programme privatised probation through Community Rehabilitation Companies; contracts were terminated five years early in 2019. The Prison Reform Trust and Howard League for Penal Reform provide evidence that community sentences and rehabilitation support are more effective at reducing reoffending than imprisonment. The Starmer government conducted emergency early releases in 2024 to address record overcrowding. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons has described multiple prisons as overcrowded, understaffed, and inadequate for rehabilitation in consecutive annual reports.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
A Hackney politician said it was damaging democratic engagement because people understood voting didn’t affect predetermined outcomes. He didn’t ask if outcomes were predetermined.
The accuracy of bureaucratic language is almost cruel. That’s transcription.