Prisons in England and Wales are full because sentences have increased, and everybody knows this. Lord chief justices know this – four of them said it outright in a report for the Howard League two years ago – ministers know it, and anyone who can count knows it. The prison population in England and Wales was 40,000 in 1991, 88,000 in 2024 and is estimated to hit 105,000 by 2028. Every government promises to increase capacity; no government this century has been able to do that fast enough to cope with the numbers.

One prisons inspector, lamenting conditions that were creating unacceptably high levels of violence, said: “The bath was in danger of overflowing, and they either had to turn the taps off or they had to let some water out.” But the taps have not been turned off, the bigger baths (new, often private jails) have been offset by existing baths (old Victorian prisons) disintegrating, and as soon as a government found the energy and maturity to let some water out – in the form of the early release scheme – it immediately hit the wall of tabloid outrage that created this problem in the first place.

The fact is that Andy Burnham can press ahead with the........

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