The Guardian view on sentencing reform: a landmark chance for change

The Guardian

25-05-2025

The independent sentencing review for England and Wales under David Gauke is a landmark response to both an immediate crisis in the prisons and to an endemic criminal justice policy failure going back decades. It creates the platform for penal policy to take a much-needed new direction. As Mr Gauke says, this will take bravery from government. Encouragingly, the lord chancellor, Shabana Mahmood, has accepted most recommendations in principle, though with some exceptions. The need now, though, is for sustained action, investment and results.
When the review was established in 2024, prisons for men had been at 99% of capacity for 18 months and a surge of further prison sentences was developing after the summer riots. Managed early-release measures eased some pressures, but demand for places is still projected to exceed supply by 9,500 in 2028. The inescapable truth is that the crisis has its roots in long traditions of excessive prison sentencing, sometimes politically and media driven, and of grossly inadequate investment in new prisons and non-custodial alternatives. Both of these things now have to change in radical and measurable ways. The Gauke review takes a wide-ranging approach. More prisons must certainly be part of the answer, but Ms Mahmood and Mr Gauke are right that Britain cannot build its way out of this crisis. That can only be ended by different sentencing policies, on which the review makes proposals on everything from the sentencing of serial violent offenders to the need for more deferred sentences for low-risk offenders with high needs, including pregnant women.
The report's central proposal is to reduce prison numbers by 'earned progression' sentences with three phases – custody for at least one-third of the sentence, intensive non-custodial management (including tagging) and continuing lighter supervision in which the offender remains subject to recall. Most short prison sentences would also be abolished, a move that would help a lot of female prisoners. Suspended sentences should be used more. The review estimates its proposals would save nearly 10,000 male prison places. These proposals should be actively supported. However, they inevitably sharpen the need to invest in extensive high-quality non-custodial support. Released offenders will need to be properly supervised and, in far more cases than is possible in today's custody-heavy sentencing, managed back into useful non-criminal, non-drug-dependent lives.
That means tagging, but it also means better-paid and properly valued and resourced probation officers. Probation services in Britain are under pressures at least as severe as those facing the prisons, with cuts in staff numbers, excessive caseloads and inadequate technology. They cannot play their part in this new approach without serious investment. The review rightly says that relationships between probation staff and offenders should get priority. Yet this will not be possible without training, educational, work experience and drug rehabilitation resources for custodial and non-custodial offenders alike. For this new start to have meaning and credibility, these needs must be fully reflected in the government's spending review next month.
The Gauke review has a wider lesson for the UK state too. The review was commissioned amid the crisis last October. It has reported, at nearly 200 pages, and been adopted as policy in a mere seven months. It provides Ms Mahmood with a once-in-a-generation chance to introduce radical change. Compare that model of delivery and momentum with successive, often judge-led, inquiries that have taken not months but years to do their job, yet with no guarantee of any lasting change to follow.