New research has found that courts, prisons, police and probation services are failing to keep up with growing pressure and demand. The annual assessment has been produced by thinktank the Institute for Government warns of increasing backlogs, staff shortages and near-capacity prisons.

The IfG reported that prisons are operating at 98 per cent capacity and that a quarter of inmates are housed in cells deemed a fire risk. This problem is expected to worsen when those cells become unlawful to use by 2027. The paper also notes a 45 per cent rise in recalls to custody in the final quarter of 2024 after Labour’s early-release measures.

The IfG report finds the crown court backlog has almost tripled since 2019, at over 108,000 cases. Magistrates’ courts now take an average 6.5 months from offence to completion, 42 per cent longer than in 2010. The report estimates that 5,000 more trials could have been held last year if courts had maintained 2016 productivity levels.

Report author, Cassia Rowland, warned the justice system ‘can’t cope with the level of demand’. This was attributed to mounting pressure from increasingly complex crimes, extended case preparation times (driven by rising volumes of evidence), and a persistent mismatch between sentencing policy and prison capacity. Former BBC journalist Danny Shaw, also speaking on the podcast, remarked that ‘whichever area you look at, the system is broken’.

The government’s Sentencing Bill, currently progressing through Parliament, is expected to reduce the use of short custodial sentences and allow release after a third of the sentence has been served . Ministers argue this will free up about 8,900 prison places by 2028. Rowland told The Times that its effectiveness will depend on how courts exercise discretion and on the capacity of the probation service, which the report notes remains well below target.

The IfG has urged ministers to tackle the courts’ productivity crisis and to invest in effective supervision and rehabilitation, both inside and outside of prison. Without sustained reform, it warns, pressures across the system will continue to mount.