UK Prisons Are Nearly Full — Here's What the Government Is Doing About It
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has added more types of prisoner to the list of those who cannot be released early from jail, after pressure from victims' groups. At the same time, the Ministry of Justice is speeding up plans to keep more serious offenders behind bars. Prisons in England and Wales are running at about 99 percent of their available space, with 88,087 people in custody, according to figures published by the Lord Chancellor's department in May 2025 (gov.uk).
Burnham acted after victims and their families objected to the early release scheme. He told the BBC he was "confident" the killers of PC Andrew Harper could be excluded from the scheme, after it emerged that they remained eligible. PC Harper, 28, was killed in 2019 when he was dragged by a car down a country road as three teenagers fled the scene of a quad bike theft in Berkshire. The case has become a flashpoint in the debate over early release, with the prime minister under pressure from victims' families and Conservative MPs over how far the policy should reach (BBC News).
In a written article on 3 August, Burnham said he had "wanted to go even further" but had "pushed to the very limits of what is possible to do." The reason is that early release is governed by laws and sentencing guidelines, not by a decision ministers can simply make on their own.
The Ministry of Justice said it was fast-tracking a plan to keep more of the most serious offenders in jail. Murderers, anyone on life sentences, and those convicted of rape, serious child sexual abuse and grooming offences are already blocked from early release. A spokesperson said "public safety will always be our priority." The department also said it shared "the public's anger" that these options were even being considered, after inheriting a prison system "on the brink of collapse" (BBC News).
The numbers behind the crisis are stark. The prison population in England and Wales stood at 87,342 on 31 March 2026, according to Ministry of Justice data — 83,881 male and 3,461 female (justice.gov.uk). In the year to March 2025, the average population was 87,116, marginally down from 87,129 the previous year (gov.uk). These figures have been broadly flat for two years, but the pressure has not gone away: the adult male estate remains almost completely full.
The direction of travel is upward. The Ministry of Justice expects the prison population to rise to between 95,700 and 105,200 by March 2029, with a middle estimate of 100,800 (gov.uk). Updated projections published in December 2025 forecast steady growth through to 2030. One particular pressure point is the remand population — people held in prison before their trial or sentencing. That group is projected to reach 18,200 by the end of September 2026, roughly 2,000 lower than previously estimated (gov.uk). Remand numbers are driven by court backlogs and delays, not by sentencing policy, so ministers cannot directly reduce them by changing sentences.
The Ministry of Justice said it was building more prisons while also looking at early release options and expanding electronic tagging, where offenders wear a device that monitors their location. The department publishes weekly estate figures and monthly population figures for England and Wales throughout 2026, with the monthly data updated as of 10 August.
This crisis has been building for some time. In August 2024, the BBC reported that fewer than 100 available spaces remained across the male estate (BBC News). Ministry of Justice figures showed the population reached 88,521 in early September 2024, up from 88,350 a week earlier (Reuters). The situation has been getting worse since at least October 2023, when the population hit 88,225, up 8 percent year on year (Reuters).
All of the prison and probation figures in this article relate to England and Wales only. Criminal justice is devolved — meaning Scotland and Northern Ireland run their own prison systems and early release rules through their own parliaments: Holyrood in Scotland and Stormont in Northern Ireland.
The problem for Burnham is that every time he adds a group of prisoners to the exempt list, fewer people are eligible for early release, which means less free space in prisons. The government's claim that it inherited a system on the brink of collapse fits with the data, but it creates a dilemma: the more offenders shielded from early release, the less relief the scheme provides, and the more the government must rely on building new prisons and expanding tagging to fill the gap. New prisons take years to build, not weeks. Tagging could help more quickly, but the government has not yet said how far or how fast it will be rolled out.
A key question for criminal justice experts is whether the new exclusion list will be based on the type of crime someone committed or on an individual assessment of their risk. Basing it on the type of crime is simpler to administer but less precise. Individual risk assessments are more accurate but require more staff and resources at a time when probation services are already stretched. The Ministry of Justice has not yet said which approach it will take, or whether new legislation would be needed to implement it.
