The Institute for Government’s Performance Tracker 2025 has landed, and for those of us working in prisoner rehabilitation, it makes for sobering reading. Not because the findings are surprising – we see these challenges every day in our work – but because the data starkly confirms what we’ve been saying for years: you cannot rehabilitate people in chaos.
The Numbers Tell a Story We Know Too Well
Let’s start with the headline figure: UK prisons are operating at 97.7% capacity. For context, that leaves an operating margin of just 1,640 spaces across the entire estate – down from 2,000 spaces in the early 2010s. Nearly a quarter of all prisoners are in overcrowded accommodation, sharing cells designed for fewer people.
But here’s what those statistics mean for rehabilitation: when prisons are this stretched, everything we know works gets pushed aside. The report reveals that in many facilities, staff can’t meet basic requirements like getting prisoners to appointments or providing both a shower and a hot meal on the same day. If we can’t manage the basics, how can we possibly deliver meaningful rehabilitation programmes?
The Emergency Release Paradox
The government’s SDS40 scheme – releasing prisoners after serving 40% rather than 50% of their sentence – was meant to ease pressure. It reduced the prison population by 3.5% between August and December 2024. Within five months, those gains were completely wiped out.
Why? Because recalls to custody surged by 45% year-on-year. At The Oswin Project, we weren’t surprised. When you release people without proper preparation, without accommodation sorted, without support services in place, failure is almost inevitable. The report confirms what our frontline teams observed: planning for releases, including organizing accommodation and transfers to community support, was “seriously affected” by the emergency measures.
This creates a vicious cycle we see daily: rushed releases lead to increased recalls, which puts more pressure on capacity, which leads to more emergency measures. Meanwhile, the people caught in this system – the ones we’re supposedly rehabilitating – become statistics rather than individuals with potential.
“Wildly Ambitious” Reforms in a Broken System
The report quotes an interviewee describing the gap between rehabilitation aims and ground reality as “really stark.” The proposed earned progression model, where good behaviour could mean earlier community supervision, sounds progressive. But as another interviewee notes, these reforms are “wildly ambitious in terms of what we think operationally can be delivered in a system that is in as bad a shape as it currently is.”
We agree. Our staff work in these prisons daily. We see the inconsistent rule enforcement, the poor relationships between officers and prisoners, the widespread belief among prisoners that the adjudication system is unfair. Adding release decisions to this already strained dynamic could make things worse, not better.
A Call to Action
This report should be required reading for anyone who cares about criminal justice. Not because it tells us anything new, but because it provides the data to back what rehabilitation professionals have been saying for years: the current system is unsustainable.
At The Oswin Project, we remain committed to our mission. We’ll continue delivering programmes wherever we can, supporting people through the chaos, and advocating for change. But we need policymakers to understand that rehabilitation isn’t a luxury to be cut when times are tough – it’s the only way to break the cycle.
The statistics are damning. The human cost is worse. It’s time to move beyond emergency measures and commit to genuine, long-term reform that puts rehabilitation at its heart. Because ultimately, 97.7% isn’t just a capacity figure – it represents thousands of people cycling through a system that’s failing them, their families, and society.
0 responses to “Why the Latest Prison Statistics Should Be a Wake-Up Call for Rehabilitation Services”