To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she is taking to increase capacity within the prison system.
Answered on
12 March 2025
This Government inherited a criminal justice system in crisis, with prisons operating at over 99% capacity and on the brink of collapse.
The 10-year Prison Capacity Strategy was published on 11 December 2024, alongside the Annual Statement on Prison Capacity. The former set out our aims to: deliver 14,000 prison places by 2031, invest in maintenance to refurbish the prison estate and improve safety, buy new land for prison development, and introduce planning legislation to build prisons faster.
The previous Government promised to deliver 20,000 places, but ended up only adding around 500 to the prison estate. This Government will build where the previous administration failed to do so. Of the 14,000 prison places, we will deliver around 6,500 places in new prisons (of which HMP Millsike is the first and is due to open in Spring 2025). 6,400 prison places will be delivered through houseblocks at existing sites and around 1,000 through Rapid Deployment Cells, and we are also refurbishing residential units, facilities and ancillaries across the estate.
As well as the 10-year capacity strategy, in October we launched an Independent Review of Sentencing with the aim to ensure we are never again left in a position where we have more prisoners than prison places.