Shabana Mahmood on Prison

Shabana Mahmood, as Lord Chancellor, has positioned herself as addressing a severe prison system crisis she inherited, which she stated was on the verge of collapse, threatening the breakdown of law and order. Her core strategy involves a dual approach: massive capital investment to expand prison capacity, described as the largest expansion since the Victorian era, and implementing significant reforms to sentencing and offender release to manage demand sustainably. She announced full Treasury funding for a £4.7bn expansion aiming for 14,000 new places by 2031, while also accepting the principle of recommendations from an independent sentencing review to adjust sentence lengths and expand community punishments.

This proactive stance contrasts with the previous reliance on emergency early releases, which she has stated will not return. Furthermore, her approach includes specific policy changes targeting subsets of the prison population, such as creating a Women's Justice Board to divert women from custody and introducing fixed-term recall periods for certain sentenced prisoners to manage the recall population. While critics argue that a focus on building more prisons fails to address underlying structural issues, she asserts that building is necessary but not sufficient, framing her policies as bringing order and control back to the system.