This Government inherited prisons days from collapse. We had no choice but to take decisive action to stop our prisons overflowing and keep the public safe. Without the changes this Government made, courts would have had to halt trials and the police cancel arrests, undermining public safety.

Whilst measures like the SDS40 change provided the intended medium-term relief to the system, this was only ever a temporary change as a bridge to a more sustainable solution. That is why the Sentencing Act has been passed, to deliver a more sustainable solution to the prison capacity crisis we inherited.

Following a review, the Prime Minister and Lord Chanceller have decided that rape and certain child sex offences will be excluded from the progression model and these sentences will retain their current release points. This is in addition to the 18,000 offenders who are already ineligible for earlier release under the model given they have either been found by a court to be the most dangerous or are serving a life sentence.

This Government inherited prisons days from collapse. We had no choice but to take decisive action to stop our prisons overflowing and keep the public safe. Without the changes this Government made, courts would have had to halt trials and the police cancel arrests, undermining public safety.

Whilst measures like the SDS40 change provided the intended medium-term relief to the system, this was only ever a temporary change as a bridge to a more sustainable solution. That is why the Sentencing Act has been passed, to deliver a more sustainable solution to the prison capacity crisis we inherited.

Following a review, the Prime Minister and Lord Chanceller have decided that rape and certain child sex offences will be excluded from the progression model and these sentences will retain their current release points. This is in addition to the 18,000 offenders who are already ineligible for earlier release under the model given they have either been found by a court to be the most dangerous or are serving a life sentence.

This Government is committed to strengthening public protection and ensuring the Probation Service has the tools and capacity it needs to keep communities safe and protect victims. We are investing £700m into probation and community services, recruiting 1,300 additional probation officers this year, and ensuring every prison leaver is tagged unless there is clear reason not to. We are delivering the biggest expansion of tagging in history, with thousands of offenders having their every movement tracked as well as investing £100m to expand our ability to monitor even more individuals in the community. These changes will significantly strengthen probation’s ability to monitor offenders in real time and intervene quickly where risk escalates or conditions are breached.

We are ensuring there is a robust regime of controls and punishment outside of prison, offenders may be controlled by a range of measures. This includes curfews, exclusion zones, requirements to live in a different part of the country to their victim, bans from spaces such as sport matches and pubs. This is designed to manage risk and restrict offenders’ movements as necessary.

Probation will apply additional licence conditions where appropriate to address the specific risks an offender presents – including victim-related conditions such as exclusion zones and no-contact requirements. We are also introducing tough new Restriction Zones which will restrict the movements of the most serious sexual and violent offenders to specific geographical areas where appropriate, so their victims know they are safe wherever else they want to go. These will be robustly monitored by electronic monitoring and provide probation with greater visibility of offenders’ movements and strengthen their ability to identify and respond to breaches at an early stage. Victims who are eligible and opted into the Victim Contact Scheme will be notified of an offender’s release, in line with existing practice and will continue to be able to make representations for licence conditions.

From September 2026, we are expanding the Domestic Abuse Perpetrators on Licence (DAPOL) scheme from 8 probation regions to all 12 across England and Wales from September 2026. This will give probation staff a greater ability to track hundreds of prison leavers who pose a threat to a former partner or their children.

We are also introducing Electronic Monitoring Data Insight (EMDI), a new tool allowing probation practitioners near real-time access to electronic monitoring information and GPS trail maps. This will help practitioners monitor compliance with licence conditions, identify emerging risks more quickly and make better-informed decisions and make better-informed decisions to support public protection.

We are extending and expanding a feasibility pilot in the South West of England to the North West and North East NHS regions pilot on the use of Medication to Manage Problematic Sexual Arousal (MMPSA) for sex offenders, which marks a vital first step towards a national rollout and is a wider intervention probation can use. We are also exploring the feasibility of mandatory or incentivised treatment.

Our CAS 1 provision, also known as Approved Premises, accommodates higher-risk prison leavers and people on probation. Approved Premises are temporary accommodation for public protection purposes in the community and are staffed 24 hours a day, operate a curfew, carry out mandatory drug testing, closely monitor licence conditions, and are covered by CCTV across all sites. They provide a high level of supervision in a controlled environment and are closely integrated with Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). This will allow continuous monitoring of the highest risk offenders as they transition from custody to the community.

Probation has a broad range of tools available when setting conditions or managing offenders safely in the community. These will be dependent on the specific risks posed by each offender and not all measures will be applied in every case. All offenders will remain on licence to the end of their sentence and where an offender breaches their licence conditions, probation have a full suite of options for managing this, including recall to prison.

All Ministry of Justice policies are routinely kept under review and statistics relevant to core policies will be published in the usual way to support public scrutiny.

First, I would like to express my sincere sympathy with all victims of these appalling crimes. This Government inherited a prisons system days from collapse. We had no choice but to take decisive action to stop our prisons overflowing and keep the public safe. Our landmark Sentencing Act 2026 will now deliver a more sustainable solution to the prison capacity crisis we inherited, including through the progression model which will help ensure there are always enough places for the courts to be able to send people to custody in order to keep the public safe. The worst thing for victims would be running out of prison space and not being able to lock up dangerous offenders.

The progression model amends release points for offenders on Standard Determinate Sentences.

Over 18,000 offenders serving more serious sentences like Extended Determinate Sentences or life sentences will be unaffected by these reforms and will be kept in prison for as long as they are now. Once released, offenders will be managed under strict licence conditions in the community. Offenders released on licence can be recalled if they breach their conditions or if they cannot be safely managed in the community.

First, I would like to express my sincere sympathy with all victims of these appalling crimes. This Government inherited a prisons system days from collapse. We had no choice but to take decisive action to stop our prisons overflowing and keep the public safe. Alongside our record prison building programme, our landmark Sentencing Act 2026 will help prevent the catastrophic consequences of prisons running out of space. Without intervention, police could be forced to halt arrests, placing unacceptable pressures on the criminal justice system. Keeping prison capacity available for arrests, prosecutions and imprisonment is essential to protecting the public and the progression model which will help ensure there are always enough places for the courts to be able to send offenders to custody. The worst thing for victims would be running out of prison space and not being able to lock up dangerous offenders.

The progression model amends release points for offenders on Standard Determinate Sentences. Over 18,000 offenders serving more serious sentences like Extended Determinate Sentences or life sentences will be unaffected by these reforms and will be kept in prison for as long as they are now. Once released, offenders will be managed under strict licence conditions in the community. Offenders released on licence can be recalled if they breach their conditions or if they cannot be safely managed in the community.

The Government recognises the devastating impact of sexual offending on victims and survivors. Ministers regularly engage with victims and the victims’ sector to inform relevant areas of policy. During the development of the reforms in the Sentencing Act 2026, Ministers and policy officials met with victims’ stakeholders through a range of individual meetings, roundtables and sector-wide engagement groups. We remain committed to continuing to engage with the victim sector to monitor the impact of these changes.

First, I would like to express my sincere sympathy with all victims of these appalling crimes. This Government inherited a prisons system days from collapse. We had no choice but to take decisive action to stop our prisons overflowing and keep the public safe. Alongside our record prison building programme, our landmark Sentencing Act 2026 will help prevent the catastrophic consequences of prisons running out of space. Without intervention, police could be forced to halt arrests, placing unacceptable pressures on the criminal justice system. Keeping prison capacity available for arrests, prosecutions and imprisonment is essential to protecting the public and the progression model which will help ensure there are always enough places for the courts to be able to send offenders to custody. The worst thing for victims would be running out of prison space and not being able to lock up dangerous offenders.

The progression model amends release points for offenders on Standard Determinate Sentences. Over 18,000 offenders serving more serious sentences like Extended Determinate Sentences or life sentences will be unaffected by these reforms and will be kept in prison for as long as they are now. Once released, offenders will be managed under strict licence conditions in the community. Offenders released on licence can be recalled if they breach their conditions or if they cannot be safely managed in the community.

The Government recognises the devastating impact of sexual offending on victims and survivors. Ministers regularly engage with victims and the victims’ sector to inform relevant areas of policy. During the development of the reforms in the Sentencing Act 2026, Ministers and policy officials met with victims’ stakeholders through a range of individual meetings, roundtables and sector-wide engagement groups. We remain committed to continuing to engage with the victim sector to monitor the impact of these changes.

The Government is taking action to reduce both releases in error and the risk of prisoners escaping from custody.

Following the independent review led by Dame Lynne Owens on release in error, published on 15 April 2026, all 33 recommendations were accepted in principle. Work is underway to address the issues identified in the review, including improvements to governance, data, processes, accountability, staff guidance and training. This includes introduction of strengthened pre-release checks across prisons, including clearer assurance by authorising governors. The department has also established stronger governance to maintain momentum on the review through a Release Accuracy Board and operational delivery is supported by a specialist headquarters team to offer direct help to prisons, provide guidance and help mitigate the risk of early or late release.

The Government has also committed to simplifying release policy through the Sentencing Act 2026 and is investing in new technology to reduce human error, digitise paper-based prison systems, strengthen manual checks across courts and improve information sharing and tracking of offenders from arrest to release. This includes work to develop Justice ID and a digital rapid response unit focused on options to improve digital systems.

To limit the risk of escapes, HMPPS requires all prisons to maintain a Local Security Strategy, based on local risk assessment, which sets out the security measures in place. These include searching procedures for prisoners, vehicles and cells, accommodation fabric checks to identify vulnerabilities, and use of the Escape List for prisoners assessed as presenting an escape risk.

In February 2026, HMPPS also introduced enhanced management assurance for prisoners escorted from prison to hospital, including additional restraint requirements where needed, strengthened checks on restraint procedures and refreshed competency training for operational staff involved in escort duties.

Data on SDS40 is published transparently and can be broken down by prison rather than constituency or offence (partly because many offenders have more than one offence). Table 8 provides data on SDS40 releases by prison: Standard Determinate Sentence (SDS40) release data: October 2024 to December 2025 - GOV.UK

SDS40 included an eight‑week implementation period which gave HMPPS and partners across the criminal justice system time to undertake release planning, prepare operational processes and work collaboratively to support the safe implementation of the measure.

First, I would like to express my sincere sympathy with all victims of these appalling crimes. Last month, we announced £100 million to crack down on child sexual abuse, and we have made grooming a statutory aggravating factor to ensure sentences reflect the severity of harm. This sits alongside a full statutory inquiry to get to the truth and deliver justice for grooming gang victims.

This Government inherited a prisons system days from collapse. We had no choice but to take decisive action to stop our prisons overflowing and keep the public safe. Our landmark Sentencing Act 2026 will now deliver a more sustainable solution to the prison capacity crisis we inherited, including through the progression model which will help ensure there are always enough places for the courts to be able to send people to custody in order to keep the public safe. The worst thing for victims would be running out of prison space and not being able to lock up dangerous offenders.

The progression model amends release points for offenders on Standard Determinate Sentences. Over 18,000 offenders serving more serious sentences like Extended Determinate Sentences or life sentences will be unaffected by these reforms and will be kept in prison for as long as they are now.

Victims of serious sexual or violent offences where an offender receives a custodial sentence of 12 months or more are eligible for the Victim Contact Scheme (VCS). Victims who are eligible and opted into the VCS will continue to be able to make representations as to conditions they would like to see in the offender’s licence, such as exclusion zones and no-contact conditions.

Once released, offenders will be managed under strict licence conditions in the community. Offenders released on licence can be recalled if they breach their conditions or if they cannot be safely managed in the community.