The Gauke Review

David Gauke’s Independent Sentencing Review was published on 22 May 2025 in response to what was described as a “crisis in prison capacity”. The aim of the report’s recommendations is to reduce the prison population. In broad terms it does so by transferring the burden from the prison service to the probation service.

One of the key recommendations of the Gauke review, accepted by the Ministry of Justice, is the “earned progression model”, in which offenders serving standard determinate sentences may be released at the one-third point (50% for offenders who would otherwise have been released at two-thirds) if they have “engaged constructively with the prison regime”. Once released they would be placed under “intensive supervision” by the probation service under “strict licence conditions” until the two-thirds point. Gauke recommended that the criteria for early release should include “the expectation that the offender will engage in purposeful activity”. The Ministry of Justice’s statement on 22 May 2025 accepted this model “in principle”.

This proposal will require significant investment. It is not clear at this stage what work has been done to assess the costs of the “earned progression model” both in prison and outside, when offenders are released earlier and require longer periods of probation supervision. Much has been made of the Texas prison model, which links good behaviour to early release. Texas is a state where offenders are required to fund their own post-release probation supervision through the payment of fees. It is also a state regarded as having a high spend on its prison system.

All of us working in this area know the reality of prison conditions in this jurisdiction. 23-hour lockdown remains common and access to education and training is seriously lacking. It will be interesting to see what practical steps are taken to allow prisoners to “earn” their release. The reality may be that all offenders will be released at the one-third point unless they violate prison rules.

The criteria for earning early release have a particular significance because the Ministry of Justice ’s statement described a decision “not [to] place an upper limit” on the proportion of the custodial term offenders may serve, which appears to amount to an end to any automatic early release. This is explicable within a carrot-and-stick model but risks offenders who are unable rather than unwilling to earn release remaining in prison for far longer than under the existing system, exacerbating prison overcrowding.

It is clear that the pressure on probation will only increase as a result of the recommendations for earlier release from custody, longer suspended sentences (three years instead of two), the capping of recall for breach of licence conditions and “tougher”, more intensive community requirements. The Gauke review recognised this, referring to high caseloads and low staffing. Gauke recommended increased investment in the probation service and third-sector providers of community service treatment requirements.

The Ministry of Justice’s statement announced that funding for probation will rise by “up to” £700 million by the final year of the spending review period, representing a 40% increase. The Ministry of Justice described this as to “allow us to tag and monitor tens of thousands more offenders”. In reality, significant investment has to be made in the staffing and resourcing of the probation service, not merely in tagging infrastructure. Those of us who sit or appear in the Crown Court will know that community requirements routinely do not start for months or even years because the system is under such pressure. The waiting list for mental health treatment requirements in many areas is over a year.

The Ministry of Justice has added some ideas of its own. The tentative suggestion that pharmaceutical interventions for sex offenders might be made mandatory has been widely reported. The Ministry of Justice also expressed a desire to involve “business leaders” in a model where offenders carry out unpaid work and their notional salary is “used for the good of victims”. The orange-jumpsuit unpaid work model, often thought to be popular with voters, has also reemerged with a suggestion that offenders might be “filling potholes or cleaning rubbish”. There is an emphasis throughout the Ministry of Justice ’s statement on toughness – which is a different focus to the more nuanced Gauke Review, which argues for an emphasis on rehabilitation to reduce offending.

The key question in all of this is how these proposals will be funded. Gauke makes the point that “an effective probation service” is crucial and will require significant funding. So too will any prison model that links release to “constructive engagement”.