How viable are plans to free up prison space in England and Wales?

Andy Burnham said on Monday he was “increasingly confident” that PC Andrew Harper’s killers would not be freed in the new year.

Determined to ensure that Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole, who were jailed for 13 years in 2020 for manslaughter, serve their full sentences, he has asked the justice secretary, Alex Norris, to examine three options for increasing prison capacity.

The options outlined by Burnham are speeding up the deportation of foreign offenders, releasing female prisoners from jail and reviewing indefinite sentences given to “lower-risk” prisoners.

How feasible are they?

Accelerating the deportation of foreign prisoners

There were 10,134 foreign nationals held in prisons across England and Wales at the end of June 2026, according to the most recent Ministry of Justice figures.

Removing them from the UK would therefore be a major political coup for Burnham.

But there are several major obstacles.

Going back to Tony Blair, governments have pledged to clear jails of foreign prisoners, but all have failed.

Andrew Neilson, the director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the government would struggle to achieve any immediate relief for the overcrowding crisis by seeking to deport foreign prisoners.

He said: “Reciprocal agreements will have to be drawn up with many of the countries involved and they take time to draw up, and so it does not provide immediate relief to the capacity crisis.”

Tom Wheatley, the president of the Prison Governors’ Association, said: “Releasing foreign offenders is difficult because many of them don’t want to go, and quite often they are undocumented. If they have come over on small boats, you do not necessarily know where you might be able to deport them to.

“Many victims will want to see that justice has been served. If someone has been physically attacked or raped by someone from a foreign country which is corrupt, it may well be difficult to guarantee that their attacker’s sentence will be served.”

Emptying women’s prisons and filling them with men

This is an option that has been examined and re-examined by successive governments.

Ministry of Justice officials have been seriously examining schemes to divert female offenders out of jail for more than a year.

Burnham could adopt approaches pioneered by the Greater Manchester authority to steer women away from prison for lower-level offences. These reduced the number being jailed in the region by 55% in eight years.

Turning the biggest women’s prison – HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Surrey – into a men’s jail would free up more than 500 spaces.

Neilson said: “There should be scope to reduce the number of women in custody, but it is difficult to assess whether Burnham’s plans would work without more detail.”

Wheatley said there would be difficulties in quickly converting women’s prisons so they could hold men.

He said: “Many women’s prisons would not meet the security measures needed for male prisoners.

“For example, some of the prisoner accommodation at HMP Styal is essentially a set of houses within a secure perimeter. The security standards would not meet the requirements needed for men.

“HMP Bronzefield is a newer, secure prison that could be used for men, but it needs to hold women so that women can be brought to London courts.”

Releasing ‘lower-risk’ offenders serving IPP sentences

Imprisonment for public protection sentences were introduced in 2005 for dangerous offenders whose crimes did not warrant a life sentence. They allowed offenders to be detained for a potentially unlimited period until they could prove that they were no longer a threat to the public. If released back into the community on licence, they could be returned to custody.

Although IPP sentences were abolished in 2012, the change was not retrospective, and more than 2,200 people remain in prison despite having served many years beyond their minimum tariff.

Neilson said: “Around 70% of IPP prisoners are in category C or D prisons so the system does not see them as a great risk.

“But identifying them and then putting in place the structures to be able to help people who have been in jail for many years would not be a quick fix.

“People do recognise that people who have been in prison for many, many years will require proper support. It will not free up space immediately.”

Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.