Prisons & Probation – Latest News:
- Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:22:23 +0000: Will Burnham fix our barbaric prisons – or cave to rightwing populism? The answer is a tragedy | Simon Jenkins - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
England and Wales’s prisons are overcrowded, drug-infested and barbaric. Labour has halted a once-in-a-generation effort to change that sorry state
Andy Burnham’s “pausing” of the Starmer government’s prisoner release scheme and the resignation of its architect, James Timpson, are disasters. They indicate a Downing Street that puts populism ahead of policy. England and Wales’s prisons are a total disgrace. Timpson was the first justice minister in 15 years prepared to handle them. Now he has gone. Although he said it had been an “honour” to serve in the government, it is reasonable to assume he resigned in disgust.
In August 2024, the prison population in England and Wales hit a record high. The following March, a savage report from the public accounts committee warned that prisons, already full to bursting, could not cope with such numbers and would overflow by the start of 2026.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading... - Thu, 30 Jul 2026 17:03:01 +0000: Homelessness crisis starts at the prison gate | Letter - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
No government can credibly promise to end rough sleeping while one public institution keeps releasing people straight into it, writes Gary Teper
We should all applaud Andy Burnham’s commitment to end rough sleeping (‘It’s generations of decline’: can Andy Burnham really end rough sleeping?, 24 July). The ambition is right and overdue. But he set the same goal in Greater Manchester in 2017 and found, as anyone would, that you cannot clear people off the street faster than the system puts them there. Much of rough sleeping is manufactured upstream.
Take prison. In 2024-25, around 1,000 people a month left prison in England and Wales homeless and went on to sleep rough. Homelessness feeds reoffending, reoffending feeds custody, and release feeds the street. No government can credibly promise to end rough sleeping while one public institution keeps releasing people straight into it.
Continue reading... - Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:31:07 +0000: More prisoners in England and Wales are recalled than released for first time - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
Returns for breaches of licence conditions rose 31% in the first quarter of 2026, adding to pressure on prison places
More people were recalled to prison than were released during the first three months of 2026, the first time on record the “recall rate” has surpassed 100% in England and Wales.
Between January and March 2026, 12,977 people were released from prison while 13,193 people were returned to prison for breaching their licence conditions, up 31% from last year, new Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data showed.
Continue reading... - Thu, 30 Jul 2026 16:21:41 +0000: Burnham says he told Trump he would be ‘pragmatic’ on drilling for oil in North Sea – as it happened - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
‘There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that,’ the prime minister says when asked about his conversation with Donald Trump
Q: [From ITV’s Romilly Weeks] You say that Reform UK followed all the rules in relation to donations. But why did George Cottrell give $2m to his mother shortly before she made substantial donations to the party?
Jenrick said Reform was certain all the rules were followed. Any questions for Cottrell would have to be directed to him, he said.
It does seem curious that in this case the police have chosen not to take action.
We’ll see whether they take action against the individual who posted the original tweet, who wore the T-shirt. I’m hearing today that the police may have closed that investigation as well. [See 9.20am.]
Continue reading... - Tue, 28 Jul 2026 17:01:54 +0000: UK politics: Tories’ Philp rejects French claim that shots fired from naval boat near him were training exercise – as it happened - Prisons and probation | The Guardian
Shadow minister says there was no warning and ‘it looked and sounded like deliberate intimidation’
It is not just the Russians firing on Brits in the English Channel; Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, has accused a French warship of firing “warning shots” near him while he was on a boat in the Channel monitoring small boat crossings.
In a post on social media, he says:
On the channel today monitoring illegal migrant crossings … as I was being interviewed by the BBC just now a French warship approached close and fired 17 live rounds behind us. There was no notice or training exercise in place. Felt like warning shots or attempted intimidation
On the crisis in prison places, this has been a long time coming. We did some things, as I said [see 10.11am], it wasn’t enough, and I’m sorry about that.
But I can’t fix the past, but what I can do is come up with solutions for now, and for tomorrow.
This was something which we were doing in government. We had plans to rent prison places, just like Sweden has done with Estonia, so that we didn’t have to just release these sorts of violent criminals early. We could have put them in other countries.
If everybody says ‘no prison near me’, we won’t get these [prison places] built, so this is something the public can help with … We cannot say ‘no’ to every potential site for a prison.
Continue reading...