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Population pressures, staffing challenges and overcrowding have undermined staff and prisoner safety and the effectiveness of rehabilitation across the prison estate in England and Wales, the Welsh Affairs Committeewarns in a report published today.

• Read the report [HTML]
• Inquiry: Prisons, Probation and Rehabilitation in Wales

The wide-ranging report ‘Jagged Justice: Prisons, Probation and Rehabilitation in Wales’, which follows a more than year-long inquiry into prisons and probation services in Wales, makes recommendations relating to prison capacity, rehabilitation, youth justice and the importance of Welsh-specific justice data. 

It also warns that addressing the challenges is made more complex by the division of responsibilities between the UK and Welsh Governments and calls for close cooperation between the two to support offenders in turning their lives around.

Highlighting serious concerns about the Welsh prison estate, the committee concludes that alleviating pressures and ensuring successful rehabilitation will depend on improving staff retention, increasing time out of cell and ensuring prisoners are held as close to home as possible. 

Investment in staff is vital if prisons want to deliver effective regimes that facilitate rehabilitation, and the committee recommends that the MoJ meet with Welsh justice unions to identify the main barriers to recruiting and retaining staff. Concerns regarding pay and conditions should be addressed as soon as possible, the report adds.

MPs are also calling for a review to investigate why the imprisonment rate in Wales has consistently been shown to be higher than that seen in England, as well as in most of Western Europe.

The report outlines how with no women’s prisons in Wales, Welsh women who receive custodial sentences are held in England, often far from home and family support, which poses challenges for resettlement and rehabilitation. 

MPs therefore urge the MoJ to confirm its plan for the Swansea Residential Women’s Centre, including whether it will open and when. The centre was due to open two years ago, but after funding was reallocated by the previous UK Government it remains unclear whether the project will be going ahead at all. The committee is clear that the centre should support women who have committed low-level offences to address the root causes of their offending behaviour, therefore being a genuine alternative to custody: not a prison in all but name.

The report also highlights the importance to rehabilitation of Welsh-speaking prisoners being able to exercise their rights to speak Welsh no matter where they are held in the prison estate.

The committee is urging the prisons inspectorate to adopt a more consistent approach to assessing and recording Welsh language provision during their inspections, and recommends that UK Government agencies, like HMPPS, follow the Welsh Language Standards Regulations 2023 as a means of bolstering the rights of Welsh speaking prisoners.

Chair comment

Ruth Jones MP, Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee, said: 

“Throughout our inquiry and visits to prisons across England and Wales, we found dedicated staff and genuine examples of good practice and innovation. But we also found a system that too often fails the people it is meant to serve. It’s a system struggling with population pressures, staffing shortages, and increasingly complex demand, all of which have serious implications for safety and rehabilitation outcomes.

“Additionally, Welsh women who are serving their custodial sentences in prisons are often far from home, family and the support services they will be returning to. That’s why we are urging the Government to confirm its plans for the Swansea Residential Women’s Centre.  

“The justice system in Wales needs better data, sustained investment, and policy that is designed with Wales’ devolution settlement in mind and that is tailored to the needs of the people of Wales. 

“To deliver on this will require decisive action from the UK Government, as well as close collaboration with the Welsh Government, who are responsible for services that are vital to rehabilitation, including healthcare, education and housing.”

Main findings and recommendations

Imprisonment rates

• The imprisonment rate in Wales has consistently been shown to be higher than that seen in England. The committee recommends the MoJ and the Welsh Government co-commission a joint academic review to investigate this trend. The findings of this review should be shared with the committee in twelve months’ time.

Welsh Women Prisoners

• The committee calls on the MoJ to confirm its plans for the Swansea Residential Women’s Centre as soon as possible, noting that the centre must serve as a genuine alternative to custody. These plans should confirm whether the site will be opening, and if so, when it will open.
• The number of Welsh women receiving custodial sentences in Wales is rising. The committee is supportive of the establishment of the Women’s Justice Board and welcomes the publication of its report. The committee recommends that the UK Government use its ongoing recruitment drive for magistrates as an opportunity to enhance their training, encouraging them to make greater use of alternatives to custody and to consider the impact that short sentences can have on women in particular. 

Rehabilitation and Education

• Engaging with purposeful activity, such as education and skills provision, is vital to reducing reoffending rates among prisoners. The MoJ should support prison leaders in designing regimes (the structured daily schedule that prisoners follow) that prioritise time out of cell and engagement with purposeful activity alongside safety and order. The committee is clear that without adequate staffing levels, prisons will not be able to deliver such regimes.
• The committee calls on the MoJ to immediately reverse its real-term cuts to the prison education budget in England and to ensure that future funding grows in line with inflation and is aligned with the true costs of delivery. The committee encourages the Welsh Government to publish education data for Welsh prisons, noting the disparity between that which is available for prisons in England versus prisons in Wales.
• MoJ should support prison leaders in their engagement with local employers to ensure prisoners are being provided with the right skills to gain employment upon release. This must be balanced against ensuring there is consistency in provision, so that prisoners who transfer between prisons are not disadvantaged. 

Devolution

• The committee recognises that the justice system in Wales has been under immense strain in recent years and agrees with Minister Timpson that it is best to wait until the system has stabilised before introducing further changes. However, it also acknowledges that exploring and considering the case for devolving probation and youth justice were manifesto commitments for the UK Government, and there must be clarity and transparency around what steps need to be taken before a final decision can be reached on this matter. 

Welsh-Specific Justice Data

• The MoJ should continue working with the Welsh Government and the Wales Governance Centre to publish Wales-specific justice data. As part of this work, the committee calls for the department to provide annual updates on its progress in publishing the remaining datasets that have been requested by stakeholders.

Welsh Language 

• Welsh-speaking prisoners should be able to exercise their rights to speak Welsh. Ensuring consistency in the Welsh language obligations placed on Crown agencies operating either side of the England-Wales border should help to improve compliance and to drive the cultural change needed to embed respect for the language within prisons across the estate. The committee recommends that the UK Government work with the Welsh Government to subject Crown agencies to the Welsh Language Standards Regulations 2023.
• The committee calls on HMI Prisons to work with the Welsh Language Commissioner to design an additional survey for Welsh-speaking prisoners, with questions specifically designed to gather information about the quality and availability of Welsh language services in Welsh prisons. The information gathered through this survey should inform a dedicated section—designed to be uniform and consistent, to allow for effective comparison—on the Welsh language within all of the inspectorate's future reports on Welsh prisons.

Independent Monitoring Boards (IMBs)

• The lack of oversight provided by IMBs during a significant period of turmoil and unrest at HMP Parc caused the committee great concern. The MoJ should undertake a targeted recruitment campaign with a focus on bilingual Welsh speakers to ensure that each of Wales’ IMBs is fully resourced and able to undertake its statutory obligations.

Prison capacity

• MoJ must focus on reducing prison population pressures through the Sentencing Act 2026. The committee recommends that in 18 months' time, once the Act has had time to bed in, the department conduct a review of its approach to prisoner placement, focusing particularly on the placement of Welsh prisoners.
• There must be enough staff with the right experience to deliver effective regimes. This requires investment in staff and ensuring that their concerns around pay and conditions are heard. We recommend that the MoJ meet with the Welsh justice unions representing prison staff in Wales to identify the main barriers to recruiting and retaining staff. 

Healthcare and Welfare

• Prisoners in Wales should not be disadvantaged when it comes to healthcare provision. We recommend that the MoJ and the Welsh Government co-commission an independent review of the provision of healthcare services in prisons in Wales, focusing particularly on the effectiveness of the existing health board model.
• The UK Government’s recurrent transfer to the Welsh Government to support prisoner healthcare in public prisons in Wales has been eroded by inflation. The UK Government must revise its funding formula so that it is uplifted in line with inflation to maintain the recurrent funding in real terms.
• Too many women are self-harming, especially in the prisons that hold the majority of Welsh women offenders. The committee calls on the MoJ to understand and tackle this problem, and to make it easier for women to stay in contact with their families by reducing the cost of phone calls. 

Housing

• The committee calls on the MoJ and prison leaders to prioritise timely notification of upcoming releases to local authorities, giving them the best chance to identify suitable accommodation among an already limited stock of options. It also highlights the impact that the decision to freeze local housing allowance rates has had on Wales, and calls for the decision to be reversed. 

Probation 

• Probation staff in Wales have been stretched to their limit and without tangible investment in additional officers at a national level—as well as measures to improve retention—the service runs the risk of being overwhelmed in the future.
• The committee calls on the MoJ to increase its support for the staff of the Probation Service in Wales. The upcoming strategic review of probation should be accompanied by a review of the service's staff numbers, pay and working conditions so that the department can best realise its ambition to increase its use of community alternatives to custody.

Youth Justice

• The committee recommends that the UK and Welsh Governments build on the existing success of the youth justice system in Wales, working in lockstep to support children, provide funding certainty to youth justice services, and ensure that the welfare of children underpins decision-making in this area. As part of this work, both governments should review the case for embedding speech and language therapists within all Youth Offending Teams in Wales, as well as for utilising smaller modular units across Wales that would allow children in the secure estate to maintain their family connections. 

Policymakers in Whitehall

• The committee heard mixed evidence when it came to the extent to which justice policy was tailored to the needs of Welsh people and was reflective of Wales’ devolution settlement. Going forward, the committee calls on the MoJ to engage early and work closely with the Welsh Government and other relevant stakeholders to ensure policies meet the needs of Welsh offenders.

Further information

• About Parliament: Select committees
• Visiting Parliament: Watch committees