How to free up prison places

Busting the remand backlog using magistrates

Here’s an idea to save money and/or free up more prison places.

The number of people who are in prison on remand in England and Wales has increased hugely in recent years, up from 9,708 in December 2019 to 16,005 in December 2023. Remand is now 18% of the total prison population.

Of these, about a third (5,518) have been tried and are awaiting a sentence, while two thirds (10,487) are awaiting a trial.

Given the size of the average jail, that is about 15 prisons worth of people just waiting for a trial.

Some will obviously get found guilty and stay in jail. But some of those who are awaiting trial will be found not guilty and will be released.

The Ministry of Justice has been working to address court delays that built up during the pandemic. If we could work through the backlog of people awaiting trial in jail faster that would free up a bunch of new prison places for free.

One thing we could do to get through the backlog would be to empower magistrates to hear more cases specifically where the person is on remand awaiting trial. 

A couple of years ago Magistrates were empowered to do more across the board. Magistrates received training to hear more serious cases.

From May 2022, for triable either way offences magistrates were permitted to sentence up to 12 months (up from the previous limit of six months).  But from 30 March 2023 their sentencing powers reverted to six months again. In the press release announcing the initial increase in magistrate powers it was said that it was “expected to free up around 1,700 extra days of Crown Court time each year”.

My proposal is that we return to this, but not across the board.  My guess would be that the scheme was abolished because doing it just increased the flow of people into prisons, which is what the MOJ is trying to avoid.

Instead, we would enable magistrates to do more specifically for cases in the remand backlog, so freeing up prison places. The prize is huge - getting back to pre-pandemic levels of remand would be worth 6,000 places.

Who knows, that could even mean we could avoid some unwelcome measures on short sentences.