Performance Tracker 2025: Criminal justice system

Major sentencing and court reforms require investment and a more joined-up approach across the criminal justice system and beyond

The government has laid out plans for substantial reforms to sentencing, increasing the use of community sentences,¹⁷

Ministry of Justice, ‘Sentencing Bill impact assessment’, The Stationery Office, 2025, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68b6a680b0a373a01819fd02/SIGNED_SR_Bill_IA_1_Sept_2025_FINAL__SIGNED_.pdf
expanding specialist intensive supervision courts^* and introducing stricter probation supervision.¹⁸

Ministry of Justice, ‘Sentencing Bill impact assessment’, The Stationery Office, 2025, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68b6a680b0a373a01819fd02/SIGNED_SR_Bill_IA_1_Sept_2025_FINAL__SIGNED_.pdf
It is still evaluating its response to Sir Brian Leveson’s recommendations for structural reform of criminal courts, but major changes are likely here as well.

Successfully delivering these reforms will require a joined-up approach that recognises the interdependencies of the different organisations involved and the ripple effects changes in one part of the system will have elsewhere, as described above. Additional investment, including in the workforce and in commissioned support services outside the formal criminal justice system, will also be crucial to handle the volume of work and deliver the potential benefits of reduced reoffending and better outcomes for victims, offenders and the public.

The most crucial example of this is in sentencing reform. The planned ‘earned progression’ model in prisons will see thousands of prisoners released after a third of their sentence, rather than 40% as now, and be subject to more intensive supervision once in the community. At the same time, the government is introducing a presumption to suspend all prison sentences of 12 months or less, meaning offenders avoid prison unless they breach the terms of their sentence, as well as expanding options for suspended and deferred sentences and the use of intensive supervision courts.

Altogether, these will ease pressure on prisons. But they will also substantially increase the caseload for the probation service, which is responsible for setting and monitoring requirements for offenders serving sentences in the community or after release from prison, and for responding when offenders breach these conditions.^** Managing this increased workload safely will require more probation officers and staff;¹⁹

Ministry of Justice, ‘Sentencing Bill impact assessment’, The Stationery Office, 2025, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/68b6a680b0a373a01819fd02/SIGNED_SR_Bill_IA_1_Sept_2025_FINAL__SIGNED_.pdf
in a service currently 30% below its target staffing level for qualified probation officers even before these changes are implemented this may prove difficult. Reforms or changes in priorities in other services, such as courts and policing, will similarly have knock-on effects elsewhere in the system.

The government has recognised some of these interdependencies and the need for investment. When then-justice secretary Shabana Mahmood announced emergency early prison releases just after entering government, she committed at the same time to hiring an additional 1,000 trainee probation officers by March 2025, to support the probation service to meet the additional demand.²⁰

Ministry of Justice, ‘Lord Chancellor sets out immediate action to defuse ticking prison ‘time-bomb’’, press release, 12 July 2024, www.gov.uk/government/news/lord-chancellor-sets-out-immediate-action-to-defuse-ticking-prison-time-bomb
Having successfully hit that target, the government is now recruiting a further 1,300 by March 2026. It has also substantially increased funding for probation: in the 2025 spending review, the probation service was promised up to £700m a year of additional funding by 2028/29.²¹

HM Treasury, Spending Review 2025, Cp 1336, The Stationery Office, 2025.
This is an increase of around 45% from 2025/26.

But we do not yet know how this money will be spent. The government plans to use electronic tags to monitor tens of thousands more offenders,²²

Ministry of Justice, ‘Tens of thousands more to be tagged under biggest ever expansion’, press release, 2 September 2025, www.gov.uk/government/news/tens-of-thousands-more-to-be-tagged-under-biggest-ever-expansion
which will require substantial investment in more tags and staff to monitor them. This is likely to take up a sizeable proportion of that overall increase in funding.

So will hiring new probation officers. Effectively managing more offenders in the community and trying to address the causes of their offending relies, however, not only on more probation officers to supervise them, but also on available support services – such as drug and alcohol, mental health, housing and employment support services.²³

Comptroller and Auditor General, Improving resettlement support for prison leavers to reduce reoffending, Session 2022-23, HC 1282, National Audit Office, 2023, www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/improving-resettlement-support-for-prison-leavers-to-reduce-reoffending.pdf

Probation capacity cannot feasibly be scaled up fast enough to deliver these services itself, and in many cases is not best placed to do so. Instead, it will rely both on other public services (for example those provided by local authorities) and services commissioned from the third or private sector. Other proposed reforms, such as increasing neighbourhood policing and expanding out-of-court resolutions, would likewise place greater pressure on these other services. But as we show in our local government overviewcouncils are already facing acute financial challenges. Without knowing more about how the government plans to spend the cash injection for probation, it is impossible to know if it will be enough to meet demand for these support services and deliver the promised benefits of reform.

Criminal justice services cannot currently cope with the level of demand they are facing, particularly in criminal courts, prisons and probation. The Labour government has taken the right steps in its first year to try and reduce and redirect demand to make it more manageable, and to scale up capacity. The reforms being considered on the whole address the right problems and should improve performance – but only if they are adequately resourced and part of a joined-up, cross-system approach. Without this, the risk is an even greater crisis than the system was experiencing when Labour entered office last summer.

_{*    Intensive supervision courts are a type of problem-solving court that aim to take a rehabilitative approach to offenders with complex needs, diverting them away from prison sentences while addressing the causes of offending. Offenders are provided with support to address needs such as drug use and have regular reviews with the judge who sentenced them to assess their progress and apply incentives and sanctions as appropriate. Ministry of Justice, ‘Crime cutting courts to target prolific offending hotspots’, press release, 25 July 2025.
**    This increase will be partially offset by other changes to probation, such as allowing supervision to be terminated early if all requirements in the sentence plan have been met.}