Justice policy has had a turbulent few weeks, and anyone working in rehabilitation, resettlement or offender support will have felt the ground shift. Here is where things stand, and what it means for organisations working alongside the system.
What has changed
This isn’t the first attempt to relieve pressure on an overcrowded prison estate. Back in September 2024, the previous government introduced an emergency early release scheme, letting eligible prisoners out after serving 40% of their sentence rather than half. By March 2026, over 70,000 people had been released under that scheme, but overcrowding never really eased, and recalls kept climbing.
The Sentencing Act 2026 was the next attempt: designed to ease overcrowding further by releasing most fixed-term prisoners at the one-third point of their sentence rather than 40%. Around 6,000 prisoners were due to be released in monthly tranches from 2nd September.
When Andy Burnham became Prime Minister in July, he paused the scheme under pressure from victims’ campaigners and Labour MPs. Following a two-week review, he restarted it on 3rd August with tighter exemptions: people convicted of rape or sexual offences against children are now excluded, and the estimated number benefiting has dropped from 6,000 to 5,000. The start date has moved to October.
A further review is under way looking at IPP sentences, closing a women’s prison, and speeding up deportation of foreign national prisoners. None of these has a confirmed announcement date yet.
A minister moves on, mid-crisis
Lord Timpson left his role as prisons minister on the day Burnham took over. He had been an unusually reform-minded appointment, chair of the Prison Reform Trust before entering government, and known for employing former prisoners at scale. In post, he set up the Women’s Justice Board and built employer partnerships to support people into work after release.
His departure has prompted real concern in parts of the sector about continuity. Timpson’s replacement, Catherine McKinnell, brings a background in education rather than justice, having served as Minister of State for School Standards. She inherits initiatives that were still finding their feet, at a moment when the political mood has shifted towards caution rather than reform.
The recall problem behind the numbers
The most striking figures are not about release, but about return. Between January and March 2026, 12,977 people were released from prison in England and Wales, while 13,193 people were recalled for breaching licence conditions, a recall rate exceeding 100% for the first time on record. This means more people were returned to prison than were released. That figure includes everyone recalled for any reason, not just reoffending: 22% (2,891 people) were recalled because they faced a further charge, while the remaining 78% (around 10,300 people) were recalled for licence breaches with no new offence, such as missing probation appointments or not living at an approved address. The Prison Advice and Care Trust have argued that better support with housing, family relationships and resettlement could reduce avoidable recalls. Much of the current debate is playing out through headline figures, releases, recalls, capacity percentages, without a clear public picture of what helps people stay out once they are released. Probation is already operating well beyond sustainable capacity, at an average of 118% nationally and as high as 126% in the worst-affected regions. In August 2026, probation officers voted overwhelmingly, more than 90%, in favour of potential strike action over excessive workloads, warning it will worsen as more people are released under the Sentencing Act.
This is set against a private rental market under real strain. Landlords have been exiting the sector at scale, with supply tightening noticeably over the past year, for reasons that include financing costs, tax changes and evolving regulation. Fewer available lets, particularly at the lower-cost end of the market, makes it harder to find suitable accommodation for people leaving prison. If accommodation capacity cannot keep pace with the scale of early releases, the recall cycle is likely to continue, and the capacity gained from early release risks being cancelled out. The link between housing instability and recall is well established, and any organisation working on move-on accommodation, tenancy sustainment or housing-first models for this group has a stronger case to make right now.
A harder cohort, through no fault of the sector
There is a structural issue sitting underneath all of this: the system feeding into resettlement and rehabilitation charities isn’t functioning well, and the people coming through it are, on average, harder to support into a positive progression route. Release under the Sentencing Act 2026 is also tied to conduct, not rehabilitation itself. People leave automatically at the set point unless days are added for misconduct, not because a programme has been completed, so someone managing well can leave mid-way through education or treatment with no clear way to continue it in the community. Combined with less preparation time and a tighter rental market, this leaves people arriving with less stability than before.
This matters for how success gets measured. Charities are typically judged on outcomes like sustained employment or reduced reoffending, but with recalls now outnumbering releases, largely for reasons unrelated to reoffending, a share of any charity’s cohort will be pulled back into custody for reasons outside its control.
This creates a real risk of misattributed failure: outcome figures may look weaker over the coming year not because delivery has changed, but because the population is harder to support and the system around it is less forgiving. Funders and commissioners need to understand that context, and organisations have a stronger case than usual for explaining it clearly rather than letting headline figures speak for themselves.
None of this sits in one place for long enough to fix. Pressure moves from prison to resettlement and back again: overcrowding drives early release, early release strains accommodation and probation, strained accommodation and probation drive recalls, and recalls refill the prisons that were meant to be relieved. It’s a cycle, not a series of separate problems, and treating it as separate problems is part of why so little seems to improve. The people best placed to see this clearly are the ones delivering resettlement and rehabilitation support on the ground, and that puts the sector in an unusually strong position to make the case for change, not just to manage the fallout of a system that isn’t working.
