According to the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), reducing short-term sentences and releasing offenders earlier could result in thousands of additional offences within months of implementation. The organisation said it expected a short-term surge in crime of up to 6 per cent, potentially adding nearly 400,000 new offences to an already stretched system.
The new Sentencing Bill aims to ease prison overcrowding by ensuring offenders sentenced to less than 12 months are not jailed and by allowing earlier release for others. However, police leaders fear that the reforms are being rushed through Parliament without the necessary support for community supervision and rehabilitation programmes.
Assistant Chief Constable Jason Devonport of Lancashire Police, who is leading the NPCC’s work on the Bill, said that while the reforms are well-intentioned, they will likely lead to a temporary rise in crime.
“We are expecting that while community programmes are being scaled up by the Probation Service, there will, in the short term, be an increase in offending in the community,” he said.
He added that the legislation had moved “unusually fast” through Parliament, with limited consultation and planning time for law enforcement agencies.
Gavin Stephens, chair of the NPCC, warned that police forces may have to scale back neighbourhood policing and community engagement efforts to deal with offenders released early. He noted that the cost of managing the additional workload could exceed £300 million, calling it “an unfunded consequence” of the reforms.
Despite acknowledging that shorter sentences are often ineffective in preventing reoffending with rates near 50 per cent for those jailed for under a year. Stephens stressed that reforms must be backed by proper resources.
“We support rehabilitation over short sentences,” he said, “but the shift in demand on policing needs to be properly recognised and resourced to protect communities.”
Meanwhile, the Probation Service has announced plans to recruit 1,500 new officers a year for the next three years to meet the expected rise in supervision cases once the Bill becomes law.
Critics of the reforms have accused the government of prioritising cost-saving over public safety. Opposition figures described the proposed sentencing changes as “reckless”, warning they would put more offenders back on the streets and increase risks to communities.
The Home Office insists the Bill will make the justice system fairer and more efficient by focusing prison capacity on the most serious criminals, while expanding rehabilitation and community-based penalties for low-risk offenders.
However, police leaders maintain that without additional funding, early release measures could push local forces to the brink and undermine efforts to reduce crime.
