Prisons are full - who should be released early?

监狱人满为患——谁应当提前释放?

Today in Focus

2026-08-14

30 分钟
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Former prison governor Judith Feline on the reality of our overcrowded prisons and Peter Walker on why it’s causing a headache for Andy Burnham. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus
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  • This is The Guardian.

  • Today, our prisons are full, but who should we release early to make space?

  • Counts, just two weeks ago, there were almost 86,500 people in prison in England and Wales.

  • That is about 5,000 more than even the Ministry of Justice accepts can be held safely on the prison estate.

  • It's not exactly a new story.

  • Prisons have been full for years now.

  • They were full when David Cameron was Prime Minister.

  • The truth is that simply warehousing ever more prisoners is not financially sustainable.

  • They were full under Boris Johnson.

  • So we're going to have another 10,000 places.

  • Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.

  • It does not apply to anyone serving a life sentence.

  • Anyone convicted of a serious...

  • And when Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, he inherited a system about to collapse.

  • Unless he carried on with Tory plans to release a bunch of prisoners early.

  • We're releasing prisoners who should be in prison early and giving

  • instructions to the police not to arrest in certain cases.

  • That is how broken the system is.

  • But that was only a temporary fix.

  • And before he stepped down,