PRT comment: Prison population projections

Reacting to the latest Ministry of Justice prison population projections, published today, Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said:

“These worrying projections will have alarms bells ringing across the prison service. Despite the introduction of emergency measures at the end of last year to reduce demand on the system, the prison population is expected to be 1,800 higher in March 2025 than it was in the previous population projection.

“It seems almost impossible that the prison system will be able to accommodate this increase in numbers without the introduction of more radical measures to reduce demand.

“In the longer term, a prison population which could rise to as high as 114,800 by March 2028 seems simply unsustainable. Ministers urgently need to break out of the reactive and dysfunctional debate on prisons and present a positive alternative vision for our criminal justice system. One that is rooted in the things that matter to the communities that they serve—safety, fairness, effectiveness and decency—and which relies on evidence rather than rhetoric”