Terms of reference

The review will consider the available data and intelligence in order to: 

• consider the reasons prison supply and demand did not meet;  
• make recommendations that may help future governments avoid the cycle of repeated prison capacity crises.  

Specifically, the following areas will be considered to shine a light on relevant decision making and an analysis of impacts on the wider criminal justice system:

Strategic supply and demand choices

Including:

• How these choices affected projected capacity gaps
• The extent to which options to manage the level of demand into the system were considered
• The commitments to prison build and the delivery of those commitments and how and with what impact wider investment choices were made that affected supply and demand
• To what extent were impacts on wider criminal justice partners considered, including impacts from contingency measures introduced in response to capacity crises?

Operational police decisions with regard to their duties to protect the public and to seek to bring offenders to justice are outside the scope of the review.

Structures and early warning signs

• To what extent were the structures in place to monitor and manage prison capacity sufficient to enable decisions to be made about capacity?

Lessons for future governments

• What action or structures, if any, would help future governments avoid the cycle of repeated prison capacity crises

Arrangements for the review

The review will be led by Dame Anne Owers. The reviewer will be supported by a dedicated secretariat team. Civil servants supporting the review will be drawn from areas unrelated to prison capacity matters. 

The reviewer will be given access to papers and meetings with relevant individuals as appropriate. However, this will not include legal advice and the Law Officers’ convention will be protected. Any papers of a previous administration which are necessary for the reviewer to conduct their work will be provided to the Reviewer and her team, but in doing so the government has not accepted that they should be disclosed further in any form, including being published, either in full or as extracts. Ministers and special advisers will not, including by way of sight of the report, be given access to such papers and the proceedings of Cabinet and its committees will be kept confidential, and legal privilege. 

The reviewer will also invite former Lord Chancellors and prisons ministers to contribute to the review. The review will report within 3 months.