Flashing Red

Why the criminal justice system should be top of No. 10's "shit list"

In the last ten days we’ve had a spree of high profile prisoners being accidentally released from prison: Hadush Kebatu, whose arrest sparked summer-long protests against asylum hotels, sex offender Brahim Kaddour-Cherif and fraudster Billy Smith.

Many people’s reaction has been, reasonably enough, to wonder how on earth this could happen. But it turns out it’s fairly common. 262 prisoners were released in error last year, up from 115 the year before that and 50/60 a year throughout the previous decade. The numbers have risen because of rushed early release programmes put in place to manage prison numbers, the doubling of prisoners being held on remand due to court delays, and the failure of a computer system designed to help calculate release dates.

But they’re also indicative of a criminal justice system that is falling apart. Kebatu was being held at Chelmsford Prison (he has now been deported). The last inspection there from 2024 found numerous and serious problems, with parts of the prison in a state of total disrepair, poor support for prisoners and very high levels of self-harm. It’s a reception and resettlement prison, meaning nearly all their prisoners are there only briefly while waiting for trial, to be released, or moved somewhere else. As a result, it has a high level of churn, leading to more mistakes. That 2024 inspection found the team managing releases was short-staffed, leading to a catalogue of errors.

Wandsworth, where Kaddour-Cherif and Smith are being held (they’ve both returned, Smith voluntarily), is also a reception prison, and is possibly the worst in the country, receiving an “urgent notice” after its last inspection, also in 2024. It’s worth quoting the report to get a sense of quite how bad things are:

“We found chaos on the wings, and staff across most units were unable to confirm where all their prisoners were during the working day. There was, for example, no reliable roll check that could assure leaders that all prisoners were accounted for….There had been 10 self-inflicted deaths since the last inspection, seven of which had occurred in the last 12 months. Overall rates of violence, including serious assaults, had increased since the last inspection and were higher than most similar prisons…Over half (51%) of prisoners surveyed said it was easy to get illicit drugs and the smell of cannabis was everywhere…..”

Unfortunately, while Wandsworth is particularly bad, these problems are widespread across the system. Far too many prisons are overcrowded, filled with bored prisoners locked in their cells all day, with flourishing illegal economies built around drugs. The system is hopelessly overstretched.

To try and manage this capacity problem the government is pushing a new Sentencing Bill through Parliament to reduce numbers going to prison. But the trouble with the criminal justice system is that every part of it is broken. Attempting to fix one element puts more pressure on another bit that can’t cope. These reforms are dependent on a probation system that’s just as much of a mess, and a police force that’s already under pressure. Given growing public concern about crime and a widespread belief that sentencing is too lenient, if these reforms go wrong it could put this and future governments in an impossible position.

When Labour arrived in government they had a “shit list” of the biggest problems they inherited. Some have stabilised or been at least partly ameliorated. This one has got worse and should now be right at the top of the list. So how has it got so bad and what can be done?