I visited a prison — it’s clear something has to change
Justice secretary Shabana Mahmood has rejected a proposal intended to address racial imbalances in sentencing. But she’s running out of options
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In the days following Labour’s landslide election victory, I bumped into someone who had found themselves at the heart of power.
“You wouldn’t believe what we’ve found,” they said, referring to the state of the country’s finances. But then came an even more ominous warning: “Wait till you hear about justice.”
Within days, the stark reality of the UK’s prison crisis became clear. Reports emerged about Labour’s plans for prisoners to be released early because of overcrowding; since then, the government has released more than 3,000 prisoners ahead of schedule simply because there was no room to keep them behind bars. It is testament to the dire state of the UK’s justice system — a system pushed to its limits, and one that Labour knows it has to sort as soon as possible.
As questions mount about what can be done, the government has called for an independent review to assess whether sentencing itself could be reformed to ease pressure on the system. With all these issues in the air, I — on behalf of ITV News — was given rare access to HMP Highpoint in Newmarket, Suffolk, a prison housing about 1,300 inmates. The government’s plan to expand its capacity by 700 is now in motion, but my visit confirmed what many feared: the system is struggling.
The person now tasked with fixing this crisis is James Timpson, the prisons minister, Labour peer and former boss of the Timpson retail chain. Known for his commitment to hiring former prisoners, Lord Timpson has long been an advocate for rehabilitation over incarceration. He has argued that only a third of prisoners actually belong in jail, and his approach to justice reform places a strong emphasis on training, rehabilitation, and reducing reoffending rates.
HMP Highpoint, a category C men’s prison, houses people convicted of non-violent offences with sentences ranging from weeks to life. The jail offers various training courses, including programmes on railway maintenance and electronic waste recycling. But demand far exceeds availability, I was told, with courses that can only take eight people at a time having waiting lists of more than 100 people.
“There are so many people in the prison right now that it’s really hard to get into the courses,” one prisoner told me. “There’s not much in place to help people change — you just get forgotten about.”
Staff were reluctant to go into why they could not do more but when I spoke to Timpson he conceded that schemes like these cost money. Sure enough, the justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, acknowledged to me this week that conversations with the Treasury were under way about how the Ministry of Justice could cut costs. “We’ve all got to play our part,” she told me. “Every department has already had to make difficult decisions.”
It is interesting, then, that both the prisons minister and the justice secretary have expressed admiration for the prison system in Texas — which would not be cheap to replicate.
Mahmood revealed that the government was “interested in punishment outside of prison” — the Texan system has emphasis on community-based punishments — while Timpson highlighted the Texan system’s use of incentivised programmes that allow inmates to reduce their sentences through employment or good behaviour.
“Look at the figures,” Timpson told me. “One of the prisons had a reoffending rate of 17%. We could only dream of 17%.”
The most recent statistics put the UK’s reoffending rate at more than 26%, a figure that everyone in government is desperate to bring down.
As if the crisis of overcrowding and underfunding weren’t enough, Mahmood has now also found herself in the crosshairs over sentencing policies. The Sentencing Council, an independent body that sets the parameters within which judges can sentence offenders, this week urged judges to widen the use of so-called pre-sentence reports, particularly for offenders from ethnic minority backgrounds. These reports include detailed accounts of offenders’ backgrounds and personal circumstances, some of which may be seen as mitigating factors.
Official figures show that offenders from ethnic minorities consistently receive longer sentences than others, and the new guidance seeks to mitigate this. But the proposal has ignited fierce debate.
Supporters of the move say that systemic biases in sentencing must be addressed to correct an unfair system whereby ethnic minorities currently face tougher sentences. Critics, however, say that taking into account an offender’s ethnicity at any point in the process of sentencing could undermine the principle of blind justice, where all are equal under the law. The Conservatives argue that it would result in “two-tier” justice — a particularly loaded phrase that recalls claims made by some on the right after last year’s racist riots.
But nor is Mahmood in favour. She has written to the Sentencing Council to “make clear her displeasure”.
“As someone who is from an ethnic minority background myself, I do not stand for any differential treatment before the law,” she wrote.
She has urged the council to reconsider, warning that she will review its powers and even “legislate, if necessary” to overrule its guidance, which is usually binding.
One thing is clear: the justice system cannot continue on its current trajectory. Whether through alternative sentencing, increased rehabilitation efforts or a fundamental shift in how we view both crime and punishment, something has to give. There are simply more people going into prison than we have spaces. If things don’t change, we will find ourselves back here again, in a few short years, facing the same overcrowding crisis, the same rising reoffending rates, and the same political fights over who deserves to be behind bars.
The question now is whether the government has the resources at hand to really reform the system.
Shehab Khan is an award-winning presenter and political correspondent for ITV News.
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