The PM is proposing three ways of increasing jail capacity – but none offer a quick or straightforward solution
Andy Burnham said on Monday he was “increasingly confident” that PC Andrew Harper’s killers would not be freed in the new year.
Determined to ensure that Albert Bowers and Jessie Cole, who were jailed for 13 years in 2020 for manslaughter, serve their full sentences, he has asked the justice secretary, Alex Norris, to examine three options for increasing prison capacity.
The options outlined by Burnham are speeding up the deportation of foreign offenders, releasing female prisoners from jail and reviewing indefinite sentences given to “lower-risk” prisoners.
There were 10,134 foreign nationals held in prisons across England and Wales at the end of June 2026, according to the most recent Ministry of Justice figures.
Removing them from the UK would therefore be a major political coup for Burnham.
Going back to Tony Blair, governments have pledged to clear jails of foreign prisoners, but all have failed.
Andrew Neilson, the director of campaigns at the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the government would struggle to achieve any immediate relief for the overcrowding crisis by seeking to deport foreign prisoners.
He said: “Reciprocal agreements will have to be drawn up with many of the countries involved and they take time to draw up, and so it does not provide immediate relief to the capacity crisis.”
Tom Wheatley, the president of the Prison Governors’ Association, said: “Releasing foreign offenders is difficult because many of them don’t want to go, and quite often they are undocumented. If they have come over on small boats, you do not necessarily know where you might be able to deport them to.
“Many victims will want to see that justice has been served. If someone has been physically attacked or raped by someone from a foreign country which is corrupt, it may well be difficult to guarantee that their attacker’s sentence will be served.”
This is an option that has been examined and re-examined by successive governments.
Ministry of Justice officials have been seriously examining schemes to divert female offenders out of jail for more than a year.
Burnham could adopt approaches pioneered by the Greater Manchester authority to steer women away from prison for lower-level offences. These reduced the number being jailed in the region by 55% in eight years.
Turning the biggest women’s prison – HMP Bronzefield in Ashford, Surrey – into a men’s jail would free up more than 500 spaces.
