Prisons are full. Courts are backlogged. The Institute for Government warned after the 2024 election that capacity could be exceeded, early releases could follow, court cases could be delayed further and funding was set to fall relative to demand. Two years later every prediction has arrived.
If prisons are full, sentencing becomes theoretical. A judge can hand down five years but there is nowhere to put the defendant. If courts are backlogged, victims wait years for a trial. If rehabilitation does not exist because the budget was cut, offenders come out and reoffend. The system is not failing at one point. It is failing at every point simultaneously: investigation, prosecution, trial, sentencing, imprisonment, release.
Politicians love sounding tough on crime. They rarely want to discuss whether the state can actually investigate crimes, prosecute offenders, conduct trials in reasonable time, imprison the convicted and rehabilitate them before release. Right now it cannot do any of those things reliably. A country that announces tougher sentences while running a justice system held together with remand delays and early release panic is not tough on crime. It is performing toughness on crime while the system behind the performance collapses.