This Government inherited a prison system on the verge of collapse, which would have left the courts unable to send offenders to prison and the police unable to arrest dangerous criminals. I took decisive action and implemented changes to the standard determinate sentence release point which provided essential but temporary relief to the system.
When I updated Parliament in July 2024, I was clear that the capacity crisis would not disappear immediately and the changes to release points were never the whole solution to the prison capacity crisis we inherited. To put our criminal justice system on a sustainable footing for the long term, I launched the independent review of sentencing in October and set out the 10-year prison capacity strategy to deliver the 14,000 new prison places we promised. In my commitment to transparency, I also laid the first annual statement on prison capacity, setting out expected demand and supply for prison places.
Over the last three months population growth in the prison estate has been high—January saw the highest average monthly prison population growth in almost two years, which has only just begun to slow. As of 17 March, there were 824 places remaining in the adult male estate. We are operating at more than 99% occupancy. Operating this close to critical capacity increases the risk that prisons do not have sufficient space for a given prisoner entering the system and so an alternative has to be found, which is most frequently in a police cell. In recent weeks this has happened hundreds of times, far above the rate seen during normal operations. On the night of 10 March, there were 124 no-space lockouts, which is the highest number of business-as-usual lockouts on record.
We have just opened a new 458-capacity houseblock at HMP Rye Hill. In addition, in a few weeks’ time, I will be opening HMP Millsike, a brand new 1,500 capacity prison in North Yorkshire.
However, I expect prison capacity will remain tight until the new capacity is fully operational. Given the recent increase in demand, it is necessary, and prudent, for me to temporarily reactivate Operation Safeguard to better manage the flow of offenders into the prison estate. This is an established protocol that will ensure that His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and police forces can jointly plan which police cells may be required to hold offenders on any particular day. The previous Government last activated Operation Safeguard in February 2023; it ran until it was formally deactivated in October 2024 by this Government. This time we have a clear plan to improve capacity and minimise the use of Safeguard.
Safeguard will help ensure temporary pressures on the prison estate are managed effectively with partners in the police. We will keep its use under constant review and work closely with police colleagues to ensure we can stand down cells as soon as they are not required.
I am incredibly grateful for the support of police colleagues and want to pay tribute to the continued extraordinary work of our frontline staff in police, courts, prisons and probation whose daily efforts keep the public safe.
[HCWS531]