The new edition of Prison Reform Trust’s Bromley Briefings, consisting of up-to-date facts on the Criminal Justice System throughout England and Wales, have now been published.
Five key points are as follows:
- Prison Admissions – Of the 47,000 people sent to prison in the year to June 2025, 57% had committed a non-violent offence and 32% were sentenced to serve six months or less.
- Longer Prison Sentences – More than three times as many people were sentenced to 10 years or more in 2024 than in 2010. For serious offences, the average prison sentence is now 69.9 months — more than two and a half years longer than in 2010.
- The Growth of EDS – 13% of the sentenced prison population are serving an Extended Determinate Sentence (EDS) and are not subject to automatic release until the end of their full custodial term.
- IPP Prisoners – Despite its abolition, there are 946 people in prison serving an Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) sentence who have never been released. 99.6% are still in prison despite having already served their tariff and 73% of unreleased IPP prisoners have spent an additional 10 years or more in prison on top of their tariff.
- Remand – The number of people on remand remains at its highest level in at least 50 years, accounting for 20% of the prison population – some 18,000 people. 66% are awaiting trial, whilst the rest are awaiting sentencing. In September 2022, 32% of those on remand had been held in prison beyond the six-month custody time limit — nearly 4,600 people. 5% had been there for longer than two years — 770 people. The government has subsequently said that it is too costly to provide this data.
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