The Government has changed course on its plans for the criminal courts, abandoning proposals that would have significantly reduced the number of Crown Court jury trials while pressing ahead with plans to give magistrates greater sentencing powers. Under the proposals, magistrates’ current maximum sentencing power of 12 months would increase to 18 months, with an option to extend it further to two years. At the same time, defendants charged with certain “either way” offences would lose the right to choose whether their case is heard by a Crown Court jury or by magistrates. The Government’s wider proposal to remove jury trials for defendants likely to receive sentences of up to three years has, however, now been dropped following strong opposition from lawyers and others. The changes form part of the Government’s response to a criminal justice system facing substantial delays. There are almost 81,000 cases in the Crown Court, while the magistrates’ courts have a backlog of more than 380,000 cases. Ministers have argued that reform is necessary to allow cases to be dealt with more quickly, while concerns remain over whether transferring greater responsibility to magistrates will simply place further pressure on another part of the system. Magistrates set to receive greater sentencing powers The proposed increase in magistrates’ sentencing powers would represent a significant extension of their existing authority. Their maximum sentencing power was increased from six months to 12 months in 2024, and the Government is now proposing to raise it again to 18 months, with the possibility of extending the limit to 24 months. The intention is to allow some more serious cases to remain in the magistrates’ courts rather than being sent to the Crown Court, enabling the Crown Court to concentrate on the most serious offences. Magistrates already deal with the overwhelming majority of criminal cases. Ministry of Justice figures cited in the proposals show that more than 90 per cent of cases, around 1.5 million, were dealt with by magistrates’ courts last year, more than 11 times the number dealt with by the Crown Courts. The proposed changes would therefore place cases carrying longer potential custodial sentences within a court system which already handles a very substantial proportion of criminal proceedings. The expansion of sentencing powers is also linked to a government recruitment campaign. The number of magistrates is intended to increase from 15,259 to 21,000 by 2028-29, with Labour having recruited approximately 3,000 since coming to power following a fall in numbers to around 12,500 in 2022. The Ministry of Justice has described magistrates as the “backbone of local justice” and said the recruitment campaign is intended to ensure there are sufficient magistrates to meet the demands placed upon the courts. The proposals have nevertheless attracted significant criticism. The Bar Council has warned that increasing magistrates’ sentencing powers could transfer delays from the Crown Court to the magistrates’ courts, which already have a backlog exceeding 380,000 cases. Kirsty Brimelow, chair of the Bar Council, has questioned whether the summary system was designed for magistrates to have such extensive powers to send people to prison and has raised concerns about doing so while prisons are at or near capacity. The Bar Council has also previously estimated that the changes could increase demand on magistrates’ courts by 10 to 15 per cent. The Magistrates’ Association takes a different view. Its chief executive, Catherine Feast, has supported increasing sentencing powers to 18 or 24 months, arguing that this would allow Crown Courts to focus on the most serious cases, including murder and rape, while cases appropriate for magistrates could be dealt with in the lower courts. The Association has also pointed to the 2024 increase from six months to 12 months as evidence that magistrates have already demonstrated their ability to take on greater sentencing responsibility. Government abandons wider plans to reduce jury trials Alongside the changes affecting magistrates, the Government has now abandoned its more extensive plans to reduce the number of Crown Court jury trials. The proposals, developed when David Lammy was Justice Secretary, followed a government-commissioned review by former judge Sir Brian Leveson, which had recommended removing the right to a jury trial from thousands of defendants as part of an attempt to prevent the criminal justice system from reaching breaking point. Under the abandoned proposals, defendants likely to receive a sentence of up to three years would have faced the prospect of a judge sitting alone rather than a trial before a jury. The plans prompted strong opposition from lawyers and some Labour MPs, with critics arguing that the proposals would undermine a longstanding right without making a substantive difference to the backlog. Ministers have now decided against creating the proposed wider judge-only Crown Court system. Justice Secretary Alex Norris said the Government had listened to the strength of feeling surrounding the plans and had changed course, arguing that abandoning the proposals would allow work to address the backlog to begin sooner rather than waiting for a new judge-only Crown Court bench division to be established. Judge-only trials have not disappeared altogether. The Government intends to retain them for a small number of particularly lengthy and technical fraud cases where a judge considers that a jury trial would not be appropriate. The change therefore represents a narrower use of judge-only proceedings than that contemplated under the earlier reforms. The decision has been welcomed by the Law Society of England and Wales and the Criminal Bar Association, although both have expressed concern about the additional pressure that could result from sending more cases to magistrates. The Law Society has also called for greater investment in the criminal justice system, including legal aid. The Bar Council has welcomed the abandonment of the wider judge-only proposal while maintaining its concerns about the proposed expansion of magistrates’ powers and the removal of defendants’ right to elect for a jury trial. The right to choose the court remains under pressure Although the Government has abandoned the wider reduction in jury trials, it has retained an

The number of people being recalled to prison in England and Wales has reached what the Chief Inspector of Probation has described as “crisis” levels, raising fresh concerns about the pressure on a probation service already responsible for supervising a very large number of people in the community. Official figures show that 13,193 licence recalls were recorded between January and March 2026, 31% higher than during the same period in 2025. There were also 13,178 prison admissions following recall, 32% higher than the previous year. Significantly, the number of licence recalls during the quarter exceeded the 12,977 releases from custodial sentences. The timing is particularly important. The Government is preparing to introduce the new Progression Model under the Sentencing Act 2026 from October, with thousands of eligible prisoners expected to leave custody earlier under the new system. The Government estimates that around 4,500 prisoners will be released on the first day of the ten implementation tranches running from October 2026 to June 2027. Those prisoners will then be subject to the appropriate supervision and licence arrangements in the community. That raises an uncomfortable question: if the Government is relying on earlier release to reduce pressure on prisons, what happens if increasing numbers of those released are subsequently recalled? A probation service under pressure Martin Jones, the Chief Inspector of Probation, has warned that the probation service is “seriously understaffed and under huge pressure”. He has called for a closer examination of the recall system, arguing that the increase cannot simply be explained by a corresponding increase in further offending. Recall is, of course, an important public-protection mechanism. There will be cases where a person’s risk can no longer be safely managed in the community and returning them to custody is entirely appropriate. The difficulty is that probation officers are being asked to make these decisions while dealing with significant pressure on the service. They supervise people released from prison as well as people serving community-based sentences, and are responsible for monitoring compliance, managing risk and responding when circumstances change. The latest figures show how substantial the recall problem has become. There were 7,555 recalls of prisoners serving determinate sentences of 12 months or more during the first quarter of 2026, 53% higher than in the same period of 2025. The Ministry of Justice says the increase is likely to be associated with a series of changes to recall and early-release policy, which have increased the number of people released on licence and, consequently, the opportunities for recall. The wider prison-capacity crisis makes the issue still more significant. As the Guardian highlighted on 10 September, probation has become an increasingly important part of any attempt to deal with overcrowding: releasing people into the community only works if there is a probation service capable of supervising them effectively. You do not have to commit another crime For prisoners and their families, there is an important point behind these figures: a person can be recalled to prison without being convicted of another criminal offence. When someone is released on licence, they remain subject to conditions. Depending on the individual case, these can include requirements to keep in contact with probation, live at a particular address, comply with a curfew or electronic monitoring, attend appointments or treatment, and avoid particular people or places. A failure to comply with licence conditions can result in recall. A new conviction is therefore not required. The official statistics demonstrate how significant this is. Around 73% of recalls between January and March 2026 involved non-compliance. Around 38% involved failure to keep in touch, while 24% involved failure to reside. A charge of further offending was recorded in around 22% of recalls. These categories overlap, so they cannot be used to say that a particular percentage of recalls involved no alleged further offending. Recall is therefore different from being prosecuted and convicted for a new offence. It is a mechanism for returning someone to custody where they have breached their licence conditions or where their behaviour indicates that the risk they pose can no longer be safely managed in the community. That does not mean that every breach should result in recall. Indeed, this is at the heart of the current debate. The Chief Inspector has argued that the focus of recall should be on protecting the public rather than simply enforcing strict compliance with licence conditions. Why the timing matters The recall figures have emerged just weeks before the Government’s new Progression Model is due to begin. The model will change the release arrangements for eligible prisoners serving Standard Determinate Sentences, with implementation phased across ten tranches. The Government’s estimates put the combined number of first-day releases across those ten tranches at approximately 4,500, although the figures are modelled estimates and will not represent the total number of people released under the new system over the whole period. This makes the condition of probation particularly important. If people are released earlier but then return to custody shortly afterwards, some of the intended reduction in the prison population can quickly be lost. That is the concern behind the recent warnings. The issue is not simply the number of recalls in isolation, but whether the probation service has enough capacity to supervise a growing population effectively while making sound decisions about risk. The Ministry of Justice has defended recall as an important public-safety tool while acknowledging the pressure on probation and stating that it is working to rebuild the service. The recall system itself has also recently changed. Since 31 March 2026, the previous 14-day and 28-day fixed-term recall periods have been replaced by a 56-day fixed-term recall for most eligible adult prisoners serving Standard Determinate Sentences, subject to statutory exclusions and limited circumstances in which a standard recall can apply. What does this mean for someone facing recall? A recall can have serious consequences, but being recalled does not necessarily mean that someone has committed another offence. The circumstances leading to the recall, the licence conditions involved, the alleged

Major changes to prison release arrangements in England and Wales are due to take effect on 1 October 2026 under the Sentencing Act 2026. The new Progression Model will bring forward the statutory release point for many prisoners serving Standard Determinate Sentences (SDSs), with many eligible prisoners moving to release at one-third of their sentence and certain others moving from two-thirds to one-half. The policy has, however, changed significantly during the months leading up to implementation. The Government initially proposed a wider application of the new release arrangements, but introduced exclusions for a number of serious offences. On 30 August 2026, those exclusions were expanded again to include manslaughter and a range of offences involving unlawful killing, deaths caused by dangerous driving, historic sexual offences and certain offences involving children. The result is a system in which the headline figures do not tell the whole story. The new law does not simply cancel part of a prison sentence. It changes the statutory point at which eligible prisoners are released from custody, with the remainder of the sentence ordinarily served in the community on licence. At the same time, the Government is relying on probation, licence conditions and electronic monitoring to manage the additional people released into the community. What is the Progression Model? The Progression Model is a new permanent statutory framework governing the release of many adult prisoners serving Standard Determinate Sentences. An SDS is a fixed-term custodial sentence, where the prisoner serves part of the sentence in custody and normally serves the remainder on licence following release. For prisoners whose existing automatic release point is 40% or 50%, the new statutory minimum release point will generally be one-third. For certain prisoners who would previously have been released at two-thirds, the new release point will become one-half. These are minimum release points: prisoners who receive added days as a disciplinary consequence for serious misconduct in custody can remain in prison beyond the basic one-third or one-half point. The precise application also depends upon the sentence, offence and applicable statutory regime, so the percentages should not be treated as universal rules for every determinate sentence. This does not mean that a court imposing, for example, a six-year sentence has reduced that sentence to two years. The court’s sentence remains the sentence imposed. Parliament has instead changed the statutory rules governing when an eligible prisoner is released from custody, with the balance of the sentence ordinarily being served on licence in the community. The new system should also be distinguished from SDS40, the emergency measure introduced in September 2024 which moved many eligible prisoners from a 50% release point to 40%. SDS40 was introduced in response to immediate prison-capacity pressures. The Progression Model is intended to provide a permanent statutory framework rather than another temporary emergency measure. Life sentences and Extended Determinate Sentences are outside the Progression Model, together with other specified categories. The Government says that more than 18,000 prisoners serving more serious sentences such as life and EDS are already outside the new arrangements. Why is the Government changing release arrangements? The principal background is pressure on the prison estate. The prison population has increased substantially in recent years, while the available capacity within the estate has become increasingly constrained. Official figures recorded a prison population of 85,858 on 30 June 2026, against operational capacity of 89,120. The Government’s argument is that continuing to accommodate rising numbers in custody without changing sentencing and release arrangements risks the prison system becoming unsustainable. Earlier release is therefore intended to reduce pressure inside prisons, while greater emphasis is placed on supervision and punishment in the community. That does not remove the pressure; it changes where some of it is felt. Prisoners released earlier still require appropriate supervision, risk management and, where necessary, electronic monitoring and restrictive licence conditions. The effectiveness of the policy will therefore depend not only on prison capacity but also on the ability of probation and other services to manage the additional workload. This is one reason the Government has adopted a phased implementation rather than releasing every eligible prisoner simultaneously. The first releases will take place in October, followed by further tranches through to June 2027. The latest exclusions: what has changed? The most significant recent development has been the expansion of the offences excluded from the Progression Model. The Government initially announced that rape, certain serious child sexual offences and grooming offences would not benefit from the new arrangements. On 30 August 2026, the exclusion list was expanded to include manslaughter and a range of other specified offences relating to unlawful killing, deaths caused by dangerous or other specified forms of driving and cycling, offences under historic sexual-offences legislation including indecent assault, and specified offences involving children. The exclusion list also covers certain inchoate and equivalent service offences relating to the specified offences. The exact statutory offence matters. The term “serious offence” is not itself the legal test for eligibility. The Ministry of Justice has published a detailed list identifying the offences and statutory provisions which are excluded. A prisoner’s eligibility therefore needs to be assessed against the actual conviction rather than a general description of the offence. The inclusion of manslaughter is particularly significant because it removes a category of prisoners who would otherwise have fallen within the new determinate-sentence framework. In the case of PC Andrew Harper, Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole were convicted of manslaughter and received 13-year sentences, while Henry Long was also convicted of manslaughter but received an Extended Determinate Sentence. The EDS was already outside the scope of the Progression Model, while the new manslaughter exclusion means that Bowers and Cole are excluded from the new release arrangements because of their manslaughter convictions. The exclusions have materially reduced the number of people expected to be released when the new system begins. The Ministry of Justice estimates that approximately 1,400 people who would otherwise have been included in the first-day implementation cohorts will instead be ineligible as a result of the