Overcrowding, staffing shortages and fragmented responsibility between Westminster and Cardiff are undermining safety and rehabilitation across prisons and probation services in Wales, MPs have warned.

In a new report published, the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee said the prisons, probation, and rehabilitation system in Wales was struggling with population pressures, workforce shortages and increasingly complex demand, with serious consequences for prisoners in the justice system. The report, Jagged Justice: Prisons, Probation and Rehabilitation in Wales, follows a year-long inquiry into prisons, probation and rehabilitation services in Wales. It concludes that although there are ‘dedicated staff’ and ‘pockets of effective practice’, the system remains constrained by overcrowded prisons, stretched services, and UK Government policy.

Criminal justice in England and Wales remains reserved to Westminster and operates under a single legal jurisdiction. However, many of the services central to Welsh rehabilitation, including healthcare, housing and education, are devolved to the Welsh Government. This  creates what is colloquially referred to as a ‘jagged edge’, which the committee said makes reform more complex and requires closer cooperation between the UK and Welsh Governments.

Ruth Jones MP, chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee, said the inquiry had found ‘a system that too often fails the people it is meant to serve’. She continued: ‘Throughout our inquiry and visits to prisons across England and Wales, we found dedicated staff and genuine examples of good practice and innovation. But we also found a system that too often fails the people it is meant to serve. It’s a system struggling with population pressures, staffing shortages, and increasingly complex demand, all of which have serious implications for safety and rehabilitation outcomes.’

The committee called on the Ministry of Justice to engage with the Welsh Government earlier when formulating policy, and to use co-design and co-commissioning approaches where possible. MPs said partnership working had often been positive, but relied too heavily on the goodwill of individual officials rather than formal structures.

The report also raised concern over Wales’ persistently high imprisonment rate. MPs said Wales has consistently been shown to have a higher imprisonment rate than England, and among the highest in Western Europe. The Justice Gap previously reported that Wales has the highest imprisonment rate in Western Europe, with an imprisonment rate at 177 per 100,000 as of September 2023, more than double the Western European average of 83.

The committee recommended that the Ministry of Justice and Welsh Government co-commission an academic review into the causes, with findings shared within twelve months. Women’s imprisonment emerged as one of the report’s central concerns. Wales has no women’s prison or Approved Premises, meaning Welsh women sentenced to custody are held in England, often far from home, family and the services they will return to on release.

Still, Wales has historically had a consistently higher female imprisonment rate than England, indicating that these women are held across the border in England.

The committee said short custodial sentences for women were often damaging and ineffective. In 2024, 78% of women sentenced to immediate custody in Wales received sentences of twelve months or less, compared with 66% of men. The report said short sentences were long enough to ‘bring considerable chaos and disruption’ to women and their families, but not long enough to “facilitate effective rehabilitation” or deliver interventions to reduce reoffending.

MPs expressed particular frustration over delays to the Swansea Residential Women’s Centre, which was slated to open in 2024. The centre was intended to provide a community-based alternative for approximately 50 women who would have otherwise received prison sentences of 12 months or less.

The committee said the previous government reallocated the  £10 million funding and the current government still had not decided whether the project would go ahead at all.

Jones said Welsh women serving custodial sentences were often far from home, family and the support services they would return to after release. ‘That’s why we are urging the Government to confirm its plans for the Swansea Residential Women’s Centre,’ she said.

The committee also raised concern about oversight of Welsh prisons. The report noted that the Independent Monitoring Board at HMP Parc, where seventeen men died in 2024, had been unable to produce its 2023–24 annual report because it had only two board members, despite an expected number of seventeen.

The committee called for a targeted recruitment campaign, with a focus on bilingual Welsh speakers, to ensure Independent Monitoring Boards across Wales are properly resourced.

Probation was another major theme. The committee warned that probation staff in Wales had been “stretched to their limit” and said the service risked being overwhelmed without tangible investment in officers, pay and working conditions.

The Welsh Affairs Committee said the upcoming strategic review of probation should be accompanied by a review of staffing levels, pay and working conditions, so that the Ministry of Justice can meet its ambition to increase the use of community alternatives to custody.

In October, The Justice Gap reported that the probation service in England and Wales remained ‘significantly strained’, with the National Audit Office finding that it had met just 26% of its performance targets in 2024. 

The report further criticised gaps in Wales-specific justice data. Although MPs welcomed the Ministry of Justice’s first annual Welsh Justice Data release in September 2025, they said further disaggregated data is still needed to understand outcomes for Welsh offenders and improve policy.

The committee said the Ministry of Justice should continue working with the Welsh Government and the Wales Governance Centre to publish Wales-specific justice data, and provide annual updates on the remaining datasets requested by stakeholders.

On devolution, MPs said the UK Government should clarify how it intends to meet its manifesto commitment to explore devolving probation and youth justice to Wales, while accepting that the wider prisons system must first stabilise. The committee recommended that the government provide a checklist of the steps and timelines needed before a final decision is made.

Jones said the justice system in Wales needed ‘better data, sustained investment, and policy that is designed with Wales’ devolution settlement in mind and that is tailored to the needs of the people of Wales’.

She added: ‘To deliver on this will require decisive action from the UK Government, as well as close collaboration with the Welsh Government, who are responsible for services that are vital to rehabilitation, including healthcare, education and housing.’