Happy new year and welcome to the January 2025 edition of the Clinks Policy Briefing. Let us know your thoughts about this newsletter, or any of the things it has covered by emailing the Policy team.
This month:
- Our Policy Work, including our work in preparing responses to the Independent Sentencing Review and parliamentary committee inquiries.
- Latest Justice News, including the Government's first annual prison capacity statement and its 10-year prison capacity strategy, the National Audit Office report into increasing the capacity of the prison estate, the announcement of a review into the Youth Justice Board as part of the public bodies review programme, the launch of an independent review of criminal courts, and the creation of new regional Employment Councils.
- Parliamentary News, including a short debate in the House of Lords on people serving IPP sentences, a Westminster Hall debate and an oral question in the House of Lords on the impact of National Insurance contributions on charities, the Justice Committee hearing oral evidence from the Lord Chancellor, committee stage consideration of the Mental Health Bill in the House of Lords, and a range of other committee oral evidence sessions as part of their ongoing inquiries.
- Sector Insights, including statistics on alcohol monitoring tags, HM Inspectorate of Probation's response to its consultation on national probation inspection standards, details on the costs of maintaining prisons, research into Child First in youth justice, an evaluation of Learning Difficulties and Challenges suite accredited offending behaviour programmes, and the latest Community Life Survey findings covering areas such as in civic engagement, volunteering and charitable giving, amongst others.
- Get Involved, including a series of calls for evidence from parliamentary committees, an online roundtable on the environmental crises and the prison system, upcoming Clinks training, and the next All Wales Criminal Justice Forum.
The end of last year and the beginning of this year have been a busy time, as we respond to a number of different consultations and inquiries across a range of different areas. In December, Clinks responded to NCVO's consultation on the new draft Civil Society Covenant principles, that aims to set the foundations for a successful relationship between the voluntary and statutory sectors. We will publish this response on our website in due course.
We have also been working on our response to the Independent Sentencing Review, which was submitted last week. Thank you to all the organisations who responded to our survey and attended to focus groups to help contribute to this response. We will be publishing our response to the review on our website very shortly.
Over the rest of January, we are preparing responses to a range of different parliamentary committee inquiries, including from the Justice Committee, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee, and the Public Accounts Committee. You can find out more about all of these open calls for evidence in the 'Get Involved' section below.
Prison Capacity Strategy
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) published its 10-year prison capacity strategy, setting out how it plans to deliver 14,000 new prison places by 2031. Between 2024 and 2026, the Government has committed to investing about £2.3 billion into prison build programmes. Its current assessments of programmes is that they will cost between £9.4 billion and £10.1 billion, compared to an original estimate of £5.2 billion made in 2021. Consequently, the Government says it will review the value for money of building and running new prison places as part of the forthcoming Spending Review.
In the strategy, the Government also sets out how it aims to deliver the 14,000 new places. This includes delivering about 6,500 places through the construction of four new prisons, 6,400 places through the construction of new houseblocks at existing prisons, 1,000 places through rapid deployment cells in existing category C, category D, and women's prisons, and 1,100 places through refurbishment of existing residential units and facilities.
Annual Prison Capacity Statement
Alongside this, the MoJ also published its first annual statement on prison capacity. This sets out the current prison population, the projections for the population over the next eight years, and probation capacity. By November 2032, the central forecast estimates that the prison population will reach 104,100 people, whilst the total supply of places in the adult estate would stand at 99,000 places.
Increasing the Capacity of the Prison Estate Report From the National Audit Office
The National Audit Office (NAO) published a report looking at increasing the capacity of the prison estate to meet demand. It concluded that the current crisis in the prison estate is a consequence of the previous government failing to align its criminal justice policies with funding for the prison estate. This led to reactive solutions that represent poor value for money. The NAO noted that 'years of under-investment in maintaining the prison estate put [the] MoJ and HMPPS [HM Prison and Probation Service] in a weak position to respond to these increases' in demand for prison places. It explains that emergency measures, like Operation Safeguard, are expensive, and others could worsen the rehabilitation of people in prison or their resettlement into the community, which could lead to higher reoffending rates.
Review of the Youth Justice Board
The MoJ announced a review of the Youth Justice Board (YJB), as part of the public bodies review programme. This programme aims to ensure public bodies are operating effectively, and that their functions remain useful and necessary. The Minister, Sir Nic Dakin, said the review is an opportunity to consider whether the YJB's statutory functions remain useful and necessary, where those functions should sit, and whether the YJB's current delivery model remains appropriate.
In a letter to the Chair of the Justice Committee, Sir Nic said the decision to undertake the review is based on three factors:
- The last Cabinet Office review of the YJB was conducted in 2013
- There has been a change in the nature of the youth justice system since the Board's formation, particularly with fewer children in the youth justice system with more complex needs, and Youth Offending Teams working with more children on non-statutory caseloads
- The changes to the structure and responsibilities of the YJB following provision for the children's secure estate being moved to the Youth Custody Service.
In the letter, the Minister also explained that the Review Team in the MoJ had completed a 'self-assessment' for the YJB. This found there are some areas where the Board works well, but that there are also fundamental questions around its form, the functions it undertakes, and the effectiveness of its performance metrics.
Steve Crocker, the former president of the Association of Directors of Children's Services, will lead the review. This will include a period of stakeholder engagement across England and Wales, with the review expected to be completed in Spring 2025.
Independent Review of the Criminal Courts
The MoJ announced an independent review into the criminal courts, to be carried out by Sir Brian Leveson, former President of the Queen's Bench Division. The purpose of the review is to produce recommendations for how the criminal courts could be reformed to ensure cases are dealt with proportionally in light of current Crown Court pressures, and how courts could operate as efficiently as possible. This would include consideration of the processes of partner agencies where they impact the criminal courts.
The scope of the review includes:
- Considering longer-term options for reform, with the aim of reducing demand on the Crown Court by retaining more cases in the lower courts
- The efficiency and timeliness of processes through charge to conviction or acquittal.
Relevant partners across the criminal justice system will be consulted and engaged as part of the review to ensure recommendations are operationally viable and consider other ongoing or planned work to improve efficiency. The review will report on long-term reform options by late Spring 2025, and on findings on court efficiency by Autumn 2025.
Regional Employment Councils
The MoJ is introducing 11 new regional Employment Councils, to bring probation, prisons, and local businesses together. They are designed to build on prison Employment Advisory Boards that connect local businesses with prisons, and will be the successor to regional Employer Advisory Boards, with a renewed focus on supporting people in the community.
The Government says these Employment Councils aim to provide support to probation staff by providing a greater understanding of the local labour market and by helping to improve relationships with employers. The Department for Work and Pensions will also be part of these Councils, to help link people with work coaches in Jobcentres. Employment Advisory Boards will continue to operate in 93 individual prisons, with the new Councils seeking to help people leaving prison to look for work across an entire region, rather than just the local area around the prison.
Preventing Homelessness
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) has announced that local authorities will receive additional funding to help tackle, reduce, and prevent homelessness. MHCLG said this funding could help councils to continue to fund tailored services for people leaving prison to access accommodation in the private rented sector, and other locally run services to help prevent them facing homelessness.
Criminal Legal Aid
The MoJ announced criminal legal aid solicitors will receive up to £92 million more a year, representing a 12% increase in funding. This is in addition to the increases announced for police station and youth court fees in November that came into force on 6 December 2024. The MoJ also noted that ministers have committed to working with Bar leadership through the Criminal Legal Aid Advisory Board on longer-term reform of the criminal legal aid market.
Recent Business
Parliament rose for the Christmas Recess on 19 December 2024, and returned on 6 January 2025.
Before Christmas, Baroness Burt of Solihull (Liberal Democrat) led a question for short debate in the House of Lords Grand Committee, looking at further steps being taken to reduce the size of the Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) prison population, following the publication of the Annual Report on the IPP Sentence. In her speech, she said 'is it not time to abandon this risk-averse approach' and asked 'do we not need a more realistic and balanced approach, a bit more like we give to ordinary prisoners today?'.
On 17 December, the Justice Committee held an oral evidence session with the Lord Chancellor. In this session, the Committee asked about areas of her work including the Sentencing Review, prison conditions and capacity, sentence inflation, the SDS40 scheme, the expansion of magistrates sentencing powers, staffing in prisons and the probation service, youth custody, the women's justice board, and community sentences.
On the same day, the Justice and Home Affairs Committee held an oral evidence session as part of its inquiry into prison culture. In this session, it heard evidence from Charles Clarke and Michael Gove.
Since Parliament returned, on Tuesday 7 January 2025, there was a debate in Westminster Hall on the potential impact of changes to employers' National Insurance contributions (NICs) on the charity sector, led by Joe Robertson (Conservative; Isle of Wight East). Mr Robertson highlighted the estimate from NCVO that the overall cost of the NICs increases to charities will be £1.4 billion.
The Minister for Civil Society, Stephanie Peacock, wound up this debate for the Government. She noted the increase of the employment allowance which is designed to protect the smallest charities, but recognises 'the last few years have been difficult' for the sector. She also said 'to grow our economy and our country, touch decisions have to be taken, and I appreciate that that is difficult'.
In addition, on Monday 13 January, Baroness Slater (Conservative) led an oral question on the impact of the increase in National Insurance contributions on the charity sector.
Upcoming Business
Today (Tuesday 14 January) the Mental Health Bill will begin its committee stage in the House of Lords. Amongst other things, this Bill seeks to remove prisons and police stations as places of safety under the Mental Health Act.
This will be preceded by a oral question on the provision of health services in prisons, led by Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (Labour).
Also today, the Renters' Rights Bill, which seeks to improve the protections for people in rented accommodation, will complete its remaining stages in the House of Commons. It will then be passed over to the House of Lords for consideration over the coming weeks.
On Wednesday 15 January, Baroness Hazarika (Labour) will lead an oral question on tackling court backlogs and reducing trial by jury.
On Monday 20 January, the House of Lords will resume consideration of the the Mental Health Bill at committee stage, with consideration continuing on Wednesday 22 January, and Monday 27 January.
Thursday 23 January will see an oral question in House of Lords asking about insourcing all prison maintenance, led by Lord Woodley (Labour).
On Monday 27 January, the Public Accounts Committee is holding an oral evidence session as part of its inquiry into prison estate capacity. As part of this session, the Committee will hear evidence from senior officials including Dame Antonia Romeo, Permanent Secretary at the MoJ, Amy Rees, Director General Chief Executive at HMPPS, and Ross Gribbin, Director General, Prisons, Offenders, and International Justice at the MoJ.
The next session of Justice Questions is due to be held on Tuesday 28 January. This will give backbench MPs, shadow ministers, and opposition spokespeople an opportunity to pose oral questions to the Lord Chancellor and other ministers in the MoJ.
Probation
At the end of the year, the MoJ published an ad-hoc statistical release looking at alcohol monitoring tags. This shows that at the end of September 2024, approximately 3,400 people were fitted with an alcohol monitoring device, with the provisional figure for the end of November 2024 standing at 3,800.
The MoJ also issued an announcement that there would be a pause in the publication of the Electronic Monitoring Statistics, due to the award of new contracts for providing this service changing how data is provided to the Government. It said this is to enable the necessary data assurance processes to be implemented with the new provider. Consequently, there will be no release in January 2025, and the data series will be paused until no earlier than April 2025.
HM Inspectorate of Probation (HMI Probation) published its response to its consultation on national probation inspection standards. Following this consultation, the Inspectorate decided that it will undertake a national inspection, the first of which will be carried out in early 2025. HMI Probation will comment through its standards framework on the sufficiency of national arrangements to support, enable, and drive the effective delivery of probation services by regions and PDUs. It will be interested in the relationship between what happens at a national level and what how this links to the effective delivery of probation services.
The MoJ and HMPPS published a new policy framework for probation court services. This aims to summarise, consolidate, and where needed, clarify existing policy instructions and practice guidance about Probation Service court services. This policy framework covers topics including pre-sentence reports (PSRs), and guidance for probation officers on determining the format in which PSRs should be given, amongst other areas.
Prisons
The UK National Preventative Mechanism (UK NPM) published its annual report for 2023-24. In this report, it highlights many ongoing concerns from different settings of deprivation of liberty from across all four nations of the UK. The UK NPM said it was disappointed to be reiterating in another annual report the same systemic issues that NPM bodies have been reporting for the last 15 years. The UK NPM said the treatment of people deprived of their liberty and the conditions in which they are held must improve. It argues recommendations alone are not enough: it is up to governments to lead, taking meaningful action to create sustainable change.
With the demand for prison places remaining high, the maintenance of the existing prison estate is an important area of focus. The MoJ and HMPPS published an ad hoc release summarising the findings from the Prison Estate Conditions Survey Programme. This Programme was a survey of all publicly owned prisons, carried out from December 2021 to November 2023. From this, the cost of bringing the publicly owned prison estate into a 'fair' condition (where assets are sound, operationally safe, and only exhibit minor deterioration), and maintaining it until 2029-30 is estimated at circa £1.4 billion. Moreover, the HMPPS commitment to make all cells Fire Safety Compliant would also cost a further circa £1.4 billion.
Youth Justice
Research, commissioned by the Nuffield Foundation and carried out by academics based at Loughborough University and Aberystwyth University, has been published. This Child First research project aimed to gain a greater understanding of what children think about their collaboration in youth justice decision-making processes. The projects findings included identifying what children considered to be the essential elements of 'collaboration'. It summarises these as being encouraged to engage in respectful conversations, being spoken to appropriately, being provided with clear information, and having their views considered and taken into account.
Women
The MoJ and HMPPS published an updated version of the Women's Policy Framework, setting out the MoJ's expectations for staff and leaders delivering services for women in HMPPS. This latest update to the policy framework follows a review, and the new version aims to describe and mandate the application of HMPPS core principles to support working with women in prison and in contact with probation.
The Prison Reform Trust (PRT) published a blog looking at what could be learnt from the successes of the Youth Justice Board in the setting up of the Women's Justice Board. Written by PRT Senior Associate and former Chief Executive of the Youth Justice Board, John Drew, the piece highlights his personal interpretation of what underpinned the Board's success. He describes the most important strand as being to, from the outset, establish 'a hegemony of thinking about the undesirability of imprisoning all but the most serious of women who offend'.
Accredited Offender Behaviour Programmes
The MoJ published a report presenting an evaluation of clinical outcomes for the Learning Disabilities and Challenges suite of accredited offending behaviour programmes. The suite contains programmes 'for adults assessed as having mild impairments in intellectual and adaptive functioning', and this report looks at the 'Becoming New Me Plus' and 'New Me Strengths' programmes. The study used an uncontrolled before-after evaluation method, meaning changes cannot be directly attributed to participation in the programmes. As such, the report notes that results should be seen as indicative, rather than conclusiveness, of the programmes' effectiveness.
The report's evaluations suggest that participation in the programmes is associated with positive changes in key targets of the interventions. Moreover, participants with reported lower levels of insight and skills appeared to benefit more.
Voluntary Sector
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport published the latest annual Community Life Survey, looking at 2023-24. This explores a range of areas including civic engagement and social action, and volunteering and charitable giving. The data shows that 41% of adults engaged in some form of civic engagement, at least once in the last 12 months. This includes any civic participation, consultation, or activism defined within the survey, such as signing a petition, contacting a local elected representative, being a magistrate, or attending a public meeting. This is in line with the proportion seen in the 2021-22 survey.
On volunteering, 16% of adults said they had taken part in formal volunteering (giving unpaid help to groups or clubs) at least once a month in the last 12 months, and 28% of adults said they had taken part at least once in the last year. Both of these figures are in line with the previous survey. In terms of charitable giving, 67% of adults said they had given money to charitable causes in the last four weeks, in line with the proportion in 2021-22. The average amount given was £29 (excluding people who donated £300 or more).
Parliamentary Committee Inquiries
- The Justice Committee is holding an inquiry into rehabilitation and resettlement, with a call for evidence open until Friday 17 January 2025.
- The Justice Committee has also started an inquiry into tackling drugs in prison. As part of this, the Committee is running a call for evidence that is open until Friday 31 January 2025.
- The House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee is running an inquiry into prison culture, looking at governance, leadership, and staffing. The deadline for the call evidence for this inquiry has been extended slightly, meaning it is now also open until Friday 31 January 2025.
Clinks Events and Training
- Clinks and NPC, supported by Barrow Cadbury Trust, are convening an online roundtable on the environmental crises and the prison system. The roundtable will be held on Thursday 16 January, 10.30-12.30pm, for voluntary organisations working in the criminal justice sector. It will help organisations to: understand how the climate and nature crises will affect people in prison; examine the actions already being taken in policy and practice to mitigate these impacts; take action to ensure further support is available to people in prisons where needed. The roundtable is being convened as part of NPC's Everyone’s Environment programme. Register here.
- The next Navigating the Criminal Justice System workshop takes place on Tuesday 21 January 2025, from 09:30 to 12:30. This session aims to increase awareness of, and provide an opportunity for, voluntary sector staff and volunteers to explore and discuss how the criminal justice system is organised, how it works, and the complexities within it. The session costs £75 for Clinks members.
- The All Wales Criminal Justice Forum takes place on Wednesday 12 February 2025 from 14:00 to 15:30. This forum brings together partners working across Wales in the criminal justice system. It aims to provide an opportunity to find out about latest government policy developments impacting organisations working in Wales, and the space to network with other organisations, discuss opportunities for joint working, and offer each other peer support. The Forum is open to all organisations working in the criminal justice system in Wales and is free to attend.
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This month's edition was written by...
Clinks Specialist Policy Officer, Franklin Barrington
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