As a prison-based research evaluator by trade, I spend a lot of my time in prisons or speaking with the professionals within them. It’s fair to say that it has become almost fashionable in public and policy discourse to critique our aging prison estate and its many argued failings.

The UK’s prison population is set to hit 93,500 by this September, highly concerning in a system with a capacity of only 89,720. According to the latest government figures, there is an average overcrowding rate of 25%, with many prisons operating well above safe capacity. They have seen increases to their remand (prisoners awaiting conviction) populations, due to delays further up the chain in the criminal justice system, reduced budgets, and a prison estate that would require billions to adequately repair and modernise. This also sits within a backdrop of high staff absence, a quiet recruitment crisis across the sector, spiralling rates of self-harm and poor mental health (for prisoner and prison staff alike). This is but a small taste of the reality, in which prisons must achieve meaningful goals of rehabilitation and fulfil their statutory offending strategies. To engage prisoners in a range of ‘purposeful activities’ in this context where education provisions are typically inadequate for prisoner needs and with prisons barely having the staffing capacity or resource to ensure 3 square meals a day and a shower, let alone loftier goals of desistance and rehabilitation. Instead, prisons are often forced to adopt a governance of mere capacity management.

If that were not enough to contend with, they are also facing a raft of policy related changes with huge operational implications. The Independent sentencing review – which formed the basis of the new Sentencing Bill 2024-25 represents significant reform to the current sentencing framework. Essentially allowing certain lower tier offenders to be released early, on an ‘earned progression model’ (provided they have served a third of their sentence). It will also transfer some of the sentencing focus to community alternatives to custody, e.g. community orders, deferment orders etc and increase powers at probation and supervision levels. Additionally, HMPPS is also currently overhauling its offender assessment system (OASys). Alongside colleagues Kevin Wong and Jake Philips, we recently conducted research with HMPPS to assist them with this implementation. This new Assessing Risk, Needs, and Strengths (ARNS) tool (publication in progress) will attempt to incorporate the latest research on strength-based approaches and collaborative techniques.

Now I think it’s important to put aside the arguments for or against these changes. Instead, it is more salient to highlight for policy makers, that this climate of stretched resource, chronic overcrowding and staff shortages are where such dramatic changes are playing out. When it comes to solutions to such perennial problems, I tend to see myself more as a realist and take the world as it is, and not how I would like it to be. In my doctoral research, for example, I explored homeless provision, with a focus on rough sleeping. In many ways, it’s the other side of the coin when it comes to prison populations. As I reflect on that work, there are clear insights that I suggest can be useful here. In particular, when thinking about policy and practice-based solutions.

Firstly, as I have done elsewhere with homelessness organisations, allowing the research or service to be directed by the complex needs of the population in question can be an effective means of meeting that need – as we have seen in the explosion of more relational public services in other settings. The prison estate, much like the third sector (which underpins the homelessness sector) suffers from a lack of governmental foresight. This is not always intentional, and more often than not, a feature of our short-term political system. I would argue there is obvious need for longer term solutions, for example in the adoption of public health or system approaches that don’t merely address the current crisis but look at the primary, secondary and tertiary solutions simultaneously. Finally, there is often a politicisation of prisons (insert latest narrative of being ‘tough on crime’ here), which is deeply unhelpful and frequently conceals the tremendous strategic and operational challenges unfolding in our prisons. While also obscuring the truly heroic work I have seen taking place in there, despite just some of the demands discussed in this piece.

As an old philosopher friend used to say to me on my undergrad, “It’s always easier to criticise than it is to create, Anton”, and he’s right, there are no quick fixes for this problem. However, at the policy level, a long-term, relational and cross-party effort that transcends political affiliation is a bloody good start.