Britain's Prison Fix Starts With the Cells It Failed to Build

Andy Burnham's government has widened the list of offenders who will be kept out of England and Wales's new prison release model. Manslaughter, death by dangerous driving, causing or allowing the death of a child, indecent assault and further historic child sex offences will join rape, serious child sex and grooming offences on the exclusion list.

The immediate political logic is clear. The Sentencing Act 2026 is due to introduce a progression model from October, releasing eligible prisoners after at least one third of a standard determinate sentence, or at least half for more serious offences. The remaining sentence is served in the community under licence. Life and extended determinate sentences are already outside the model.

The Ministry of Justice estimates that 4,500 prisoners will be released on the first day of the ten tranches running from October 2026 to June 2027. The newly excluded offences account for an estimated 1,400 of those people. These are modelled figures, rounded to the nearest 50, and they describe first day releases rather than prison places saved. That distinction matters when ministers present a spreadsheet as a safety plan.

The government says adult male prisons are operating at 98 per cent capacity. It has built more than 3,200 places and promises another 14,000 by 2031. Those numbers point to the real failure: successive governments allowed the prison estate to become a permanent emergency, then asked sentencing policy to absorb the shortage.

The pressure is also visible after release. Ministry of Justice figures reported by the BBC show 51,419 licence recalls in the year to March 2026, up from 40,259 the year before, a 28 per cent increase. Most recalls were for breaches of licence conditions rather than a new offence. A system that releases people earlier and recalls more of them is moving prisoners through a revolving door while calling the motion rehabilitation.

Excluding people convicted of unlawful killing and serious sexual offences is a defensible correction. Victims should not carry the risk created by a capacity crisis, and a sentence must mean something to the public who rely on the courts. Yet each last minute exclusion also exposes a deeper weakness. Parliament set a release framework that had to be amended under pressure because the state had failed to provide enough cells and enough confidence in supervision.

The durable answer is competence. Build the promised places on time, speed up courts, give probation the staff to enforce licence conditions and publish clean data on recalls and reoffending. Let judges set punishment within a system that has the capacity to carry it out. Prison is expensive, but the cost of making sentences uncertain is paid by victims, police, courts and communities.

Burnham's announcement reduces an immediate risk and gives victims a reason to believe the system has heard them. October will test whether the wider model can deliver safety without another emergency rewrite. Britain needs a prison policy that is planned in advance, funded honestly and trusted when a court pronounces sentence.