The crisis in the criminal justice system will be the defining domestic policy issue of Andy Burnham’s government. The warning lights are flashing across the dashboard: England’s prisons are full, courts swamped and police forces riven by a mix of bureaucratic zealotry and incompetence. Public confidence in the system is wavering as it becomes evident that the state is struggling to fulfil certain basic functions in upholding law and order.
The lack of prison capacity in the country is the most emblematic of these failures. It is very difficult to convince people that the best way out of the prison crisis is to release convicted felons. Despite the government’s best attempts to target the release of prisoners convicted of arguably ‘lesser’ crimes, it turns out that the public’s entirely reasonable view is that it does not want sexual predators, domestic abusers or people convicted of the manslaughter of a police officer walking the streets.
It is onto this blazing fire that the government is now dumping gallons of gasoline
Unfortunately for the public, and for Burnham’s favourability in the polls, this crisis isn’t going away. The entire model for the government’s prison management programme – which does include the construction of new prisons – is predicated on the changes passed in the Sentencing Act 2026. This baked in the policy of earlier release for various categories of custodial sentence, including reductions for prisoners convicted of violent or sexual offences.
