With thousands of prisoners due for earlier release from October, pressure on the criminal justice system is again under scrutiny. East Anglia Bylines (EAB) has been documenting the warning signs for years.
When Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on 13 August, he was responding to questions about the horrific case of murderer and serial sex offender Simon Levy.
Levy had remained at liberty despite repeated contact with different parts of the criminal justice system before going on to murder two women and rape another. Rowley acknowledged failings by the Metropolitan Police, but also pointed to problems across the wider system.
“The whole system is struggling,” he said. “This is a systemic disinvestment by successive governments.”
According to Rowley, the Met has around 4,000 fewer staff than when he became commissioner four years ago. Meanwhile, it is monitoring 10,800 registered sex offenders in London, a number he said was growing by around 100 every three months.
When Rowley’s comments were put to Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson, he acknowledged that the criminal justice system was “under pressure”.
For regular East Anglia Bylines (EAB) readers, that diagnosis will be familiar. For several years we have reported on pressures throughout the criminal justice system: policing, courts, legal aid, prisons, rehabilitation and probation.
The problems are different, but they are also interconnected. When one part of the system struggles, the consequences are felt elsewhere.
Police
Back in December 2024, EAB highlighted concerns about the finances of regional police forces. Then, in January 2025, we reported that the ‘thin blue line’ was starting to fade. Police officers were overworked and owed hundreds of hours of additional overtime, sometimes unpaid, simply to cope with existing caseloads.
At the time, Laura Heggie, chair of Essex Police Federation, told the BBC it was “very rare” for officers to go home on time and that they would work on their days off. She added that officers needed overtime “because they wouldn’t be able to survive without it”.
Rowley’s comments suggest those pressures are far from confined to East Anglia.
Courts
As early as 2022, EAB reported on the crisis in the courts. In a little under 14 years, HM Courts & Tribunals Service in England and Wales had lost nearly half its serving magistrates and a fifth of court staff.
A parliamentary research briefing showed that between 2012/13 and 2022/23:
- the number of magistrates in post fell by 43%, from 23,401 to 13,340;
- the number of court judges, measured as full-time equivalents, fell by 4%, from 3,621 to 3,483;
- the number of judges and non-legal members in tribunals fell by 9%, from 5,518 to 4,978.
The latest Ministry of Justice figures show how serious the pressure has become. At the end of March 2026 there were 80,061 open Crown Court cases in England and Wales, 5% more than a year earlier. More than 22,000 had been open for at least a year – the highest number in the current statistical series.
Magistrates’ courts had another 370,722 open cases, also a record for the current series.
Meanwhile, the different agencies involved in criminal justice – police, courts, prisons and probation – have struggled with different electronic systems, making the movement of information through the system more difficult.
Prisons
The consequences eventually reach the prison gates.
EAB has highlighted concerns about the condition of prisons in our region and their ability to cope with the numbers in their care. We have also reported on prison healthcare, where dealing with an emergency is not simply a case of phoning 999, nor is providing medication as straightforward as it might be outside prison.
Overcrowding has now led to one of the most controversial attempts to relieve the pressure.
Changes under the Sentencing Act 2026 will come into force on 1 October. They will allow many prisoners serving standard determinate sentences to be released after serving a smaller proportion of their sentence in custody, with the remainder served in the community on licence.
Following protests from victims, campaigners and politicians, the government has excluded a number of serious offences from the new release arrangements, including rape, serious child sexual offences, manslaughter and causing death by dangerous driving.
But releasing people from prison does not remove them from the criminal justice system. It transfers much of the responsibility for managing them to another already stretched part of it.
Leaving prison
EAB has previously exposed the reality of leaving prison, including the pressure on newly released prisoners to reach their designated probation office as soon as possible, even when it is miles – or counties – away. Often they have to rely on public transport to get there.
In August 2024, we also reported on the difference between the reality of being on probation and public perceptions of it.
Accommodation, addiction treatment, employment and other support can all affect someone’s chances of rebuilding their life after prison. Failure can have consequences not only for the individual, but for future victims and the wider community.
Probation under pressure
Late last year we revealed the pressures on probation, both regionally and nationally, highlighting staffing problems and the demands of high caseloads.
Those pressures have not gone away.
Official figures show that 258,332 people were being supervised by the Probation Service in England and Wales at the end of March 2026.
In July, HM Chief Inspector of Probation Martin Jones described a service facing “serious systemic challenges”, an increasingly large and complex caseload and continuous change.
Then, in August, EAB reported on the additional workload expected from the government’s early-release plans.
On 11 August, members of Napo, the probation officers’ union, overwhelmingly backed potential industrial action over workloads and the early-release scheme.
The following day, Jones warned that he was “not fully confident” the service could cope. Probation officers were already managing around 258,000 cases, he said, and early release would increase the pressure considerably.
Asked what could happen if the service failed to manage the risks, his answer was stark: it could mean “a serious sexual or violent offence or even murder”.
The government says it is recruiting more probation officers, investing in technology and expanding electronic monitoring. It says 1,389 trainee probation officers started in the year before Jones made his warning.
But from 1 October, the system will face another test as the first prisoners affected by the new release arrangements begin to leave custody.
And what of the victims?
In 2025 the Public Accounts Committee warned that delays in the Court service were having a ‘devastating’ impact on the victims of crime as they waited for the criminal justice system to take its course. Victims of violent and sexual crimes regularly wait three years or more for a trial to commence. And when the prisons are full, there is a hard choice: let convicted offenders out early, or letting those accused awaiting trial walk the streets.
A system, not separate problems
The BBC television programme Crimewatch used to end with one of its presenters saying: “Don’t have nightmares.”
But the criminal justice system is not a collection of isolated institutions. A case may begin with the police, move through the courts and prison system and eventually become the responsibility of probation. Failure or delay at one stage can increase the pressure on the next.
For several years, EAB has reported on warning signs at almost every point in that journey. Victims wait for justice. Defendants wait for trials. Prison staff deal with overcrowding. People leaving custody need accommodation, treatment and supervision. Probation officers have to assess and manage the risks.
Governments can relieve pressure at one point in the system, but if doing so simply transfers that pressure somewhere else, the underlying problem remains.
When the country’s most senior police officer says “the whole system is struggling”, the evidence suggests we should take that warning seriously.
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