Prisoner numbers projected to increase by 36% in next 10 years

The coalition Government’s laws targeting repeat offenders and sentence reform will cause the prison population to rise by more than 30% in the next decade, a report has found.

The Ministry of Justice’s Justice Sector Projections report shows the prison population is expected to increase by 36% in the next 10 years, from 10,488 in February 2025 to 14,230 in June 2035.

It said the population would “increase rapidly” until June 2028 and then rise gradually until June 2035.

Rebecca Parish, the Ministry of Justice’s sector insights general manager, said this was because of new policy settings, such as the Sentencing Reform Act and the reinstatement of the Three Strikes law.

“The new policy settings are expected to see more offenders receive prison sentences and for those sentences to be longer.”

Although the new policy settings were signalled last year, the laws were not enacted until this year, she said.

Another driving force was the high number of serious offenders currently before the courts and the resulting higher rates of remand.

Parish said the backlog of court cases waiting to be heard would also result in an increase in remand cases.

“Multiple initiatives are under way to improve timely access to justice.

“These aim to reduce the average time taken to resolve a case and ultimately reduce the average time spent in custodial remand.

“Current modelling suggests that the 90% standard for timely access to justice can be achieved by June 2027.”

This includes the Timely Justice Action Plan – a consolidated programme of initiatives across police, the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Corrections and the judiciary.

In November last year, the number of people in prison was higher than 10,000 for the first time in more than four years.

The population last breached 10,000 in early 2020 before it fell to its lowest point – about 7500 at the end of 2021 – before it began rising again.

The fall from a peak of 10,820 prisoners in March 2018 came after the Labour Party pledged to cut the prison population by 30% over 15 years when it came into office in 2017, when there were 10,400 prisoners.