Gauke’s 192-page Independent Sentencing Review, issued this week, proposes funding research into clinical management of sex offenders. It acknowledges such treatment would need to be specifically targeted and carefully piloted, and would not be suitable for all. Sex offences accounted for about 21% of prisoners in March 2025.
Gauke proposed the use of short custodial sentences only in ‘exceptional circumstances’, as they ‘can lead to a merry-go round of reoffending’. More creative community sentencing would be introduced, such as bans on attending football matches. Foreign national prisoners would be deported after serving 30% rather than the current 50% of their sentence.
The threshold for suspended sentences would be increased from two to three years. Provision of specialist domestic abuse courts would be expanded, and judges would be given training on violence against women and girls.
Women make up about 4% of the prison population, and included 215 pregnant women in the year to April 2024. More than three-quarters of all women prisoners received a sentence of 12 months or less. Gauke called for more long-term funding for Women’s centres, which provide trauma-informed support and at a lower cost than incarceration in prison. His review heard evidence that highly intensive interventions cost about £4,000 per woman, compared to about £52,000 per year for a place in prison.
A key component of Gauke’s proposals is ‘earned progression’ whereby prisoners can be released after serving one third of the sentence would be introduced for those on standard determinate sentences. Under this model, prisoners would complete programmes in order to ‘progress through three distinct stages: the custody stage, the post custody supervision stage, and the at-risk stage’.
There would be improved investment in accommodation for offenders leaving prison or serving community sentences, and the probation service would be given more funds to cope with the increased workload.
Gauke said, in his foreword, that the combined effect of his recommendations would reduce the prison population by an estimated 9,800. There were more than 87,000 prisoners in April, projected to increase, leading to an overcrowding crisis last summer.
He noted the high cost per prisoner—about £53,801 each year, according to Home Office estimates for 2023-24, compared to about £3,150 each year for probation. The planned prison builds are estimated to cost about £10bn.
Katie Wheatley, head of crime, fraud and regulatory, Bindmans, said: ‘It is not just prisons that are under strain.
‘Probation officers do a vital job in supervising prisoners on licence and community orders.’ She urged the government to ensure the probation services are given adequate resources to manage the increased workload.
The review has been welcomed by the Law Society and Bar Council.
Bar Council Chair Barbara Mills KC said the main political parties had treated sentencing as ‘a political football’ for years to try to look tough on crime, resulting in ‘the highest incarceration rate in western Europe’.
‘Now is the time to be bold,’ she said.
‘Our sentencing regime should both punish and rehabilitate, ensuring offenders don’t become better criminals, but better citizens.’
Andy Slaughter MP, chair of the Justice Committee, described Gauke’s proposals as ‘necessary and pragmatic steps to reduce the unsustainable increase in the prison population’. He highlighted that ‘changes towards community-based programmes and away from short custodial terms will however require adequate investment in the Probation Service and associated tagging technology and supervision, and I am pleased to see there is substantial additional funding for these purposes’.
