£110m Fast-Tracked for Cells Ahead of Today's IPP Statement
The government fast-tracked £110m to accelerate building new cells within existing prison walls, hours before the justice secretary details the early-release and IPP plan to the Commons this afternoon. Around 5,000 prisoners are due for staged release from October; the justice secretary told the morning round the aim is to escape the “prison crisis doom loop”, while probation bodies raised implementation concerns and the shadow justice secretary said the scheme “raises more questions than it answers”.
The £110m is triage money — cells bolted into existing walls buy hundreds of places against a system short thousands, and its true function is to give this afternoon’s statement a construction announcement to stand beside the harder arithmetic of releases. The statement itself must resolve what Sunday’s broadcast blitz left open: the mechanism for ending IPP sentences, which decides whether 856 never-released prisoners get resentencing, review or executive release — each carrying different risks the government will own alone. The professional bodies’ warning deserves weight; probation absorbs every release this scheme produces, on the same budgets that produced fifty-one thousand recalls. Watch the statement’s IPP mechanism and the first-tranche date — the details Parliament returns specifically to test.