After the Sentencing Act: What now for the justice system?
New sentencing laws take effect this week. Judges and magistrates in England and Wales will be able to suspend sentences of up to three years and courts will have to suspend sentences of not more than 12 months unless there are “exceptional circumstances”.
Revolving Doors has long campaigned for an end to counterproductive short sentences, which only serve to compound cycles of crisis and crime. However, the new legislation will only be successful if the probation service is able to successfully support those it supervises to prevent the presumption to suspend simply resulting in a delay to custody, rather than offering a real alternative.
Revolving Doors Policy Manager and former probation officer Kelly explores what needs to be done to make this happen.
A justice system in crisis: the backdrop to the Sentencing Act
The Government has made it clear that the Sentencing Act is not ideologically motivated; it is a crisis response to years of mounting pressure on a criminal justice system stretched to breaking point, most visibly through the prison population crisis. Overcrowded prisons, staff shortages across the system and people released from prison or sentenced to community orders with minimal support have become the norm rather than the exception.
It comes against a backdrop of decades of penal populism, where sentencing policy has increasingly been shaped by headlines rather than evidence. As prison use has risen, community sentences have steadily declined in both volume and arguably, effectiveness. At the same time, recall to prison has ballooned. There were 3,182 recalls in the year 2000/1 compared to 12,836 people recalled to prison in the three-month period between July and September 2025. With only 23% of these initiated due to new offending, it is fair to conclude that we increasingly have a system that punishes instability rather than seeking to address it.
The roots of the Sentencing Act lie in the Gauke Review, which was blunt in its assessment that the system was failing, prison was being overused and short custodial sentences were doing more harm than good – a point Revolving Doors have been making for some years. In response, the Sentencing Act has introduced a presumption to suspend short sentences, alongside expanded incentives linked to good behaviour, compliance and engagement with probation and progress against rehabilitative goals. The intention is to encourage stability and desistance, rather than relying primarily on punishment and recall as the main tools of control.
However, given the current issues in the probation service and rising recall rates it seems likely this move will simply delay people going to custody rather than offering an alternative to it, with the causes of licence breaches going unaddressed.
Opportunities, concerns and recommendations
Caseload capacity challenges must be fixed – the voluntary sector and peer support can help
Probation sits at the heart of whether the Sentencing Act succeeds or fails. Yet, the service is widely recognised as being in crisis: workloads are unmanageable, turnover is high and newly qualified staff are carrying complex cases before they have the space to develop professional judgement. For people in the revolving door, the consequences are predictable and damaging. Appointments are brief and compliance driven; support and treatment requirements can take months to begin, and repeated changes of supervising officer undermine trust and engagement.
Without smaller caseloads, better training and improved staff retention, probation will struggle to deliver the intensive, relational work this group needs. In that context, tougher community sentences risk becoming more breach-prone rather than more effective.
Given the absence of a short-term fix to staffing pressures, the voluntary sector, particularly (paid) peer support, has a crucial role to play. Peer support workers can improve engagement among people who distrust statutory services, reduce stigma and isolation and provide consistent support while individuals wait for treatment or interventions to start. This is especially important for those subject to mental health, drug or alcohol requirements, where long delays are common and licence breaches often occur before support is in place. To unlock this potential, vetting barriers must be reviewed so people with lived experience can be employed in meaningful roles.
Confidence in community sentences must be restored
A central aim of the Sentencing Act is to reduce reliance on short custodial sentences by strengthening community alternatives. That will only happen if sentencers have confidence that community sentences are credible, robust and genuinely rehabilitative. Yet that confidence has been steadily eroded. Community orders have fallen sharply over the past decade, even as overall sentencing volumes declined only modestly — a clear shift towards custody and recall, shaped by penal populism and a lack of trust in delivery.
Rebuilding confidence requires improving both the reality and the perception of community sentences. Courts need to see requirements that start promptly, are properly resourced and can address the complex needs that drive repeat offending. Without this, the presumption against short sentences risks becoming symbolic rather than transformative.
Revolving Doors’ work with magistrates shows that many sentencers still lack a practical understanding of community requirements and how they operate in real life, particularly for people with multiple needs. Training must go beyond legal frameworks and include practitioner insight, clear explanations of how requirements fit together, and direct engagement with people who have lived experience. Court clerks and legal advisers also shape decisions and need the same depth of understanding if community sentences are to be used confidently and appropriately.
Pre-sentence reports need to be re-embedded as an essential part of the process
As community sentences become more central to sentencing policy, the quality of pre-sentence advice becomes critical. Detailed, personalised pre-sentence reports help courts understand the person behind the offence, the drivers of their behaviour and what combination of support and supervision is most likely to work.
For people in the revolving door, this is particularly important. Many have overlapping needs relating to substance use, mental health, trauma, housing and poverty. Generic or rushed reports risk setting people up to fail by recommending requirements that cannot be delivered or sustained.
Full pre-sentence reports, written by skilled practitioners, are a key mechanism for ensuring sentences are proportionate, realistic and rehabilitative. This supports accurate risk assessment, appropriate sentencing decisions and the early development of effective working relationships. No abbreviated report or assessment tool provides the same depth of understanding. The decline in full pre-sentence reports has weakened both probation practice and the service’s influence within the courts
Recall can only be reduced by tackling the risk aversive culture
Recall remains one of the biggest threats to the Sentencing Act’s ambitions. The number of recalls has risen dramatically in recent years, largely driven by technical breaches rather than new offences.
For people in the revolving door, frequent recall can be devastating — disrupting housing, treatment, benefits and family relationships, and reinforcing instability. Our research suggests that rising recalls are closely linked to risk-averse practice, driven by high workloads, lack of confidence and fear of blame.
If community sentences are to replace short custody rather than replicate it, recall must be used proportionately and sparingly. This requires:
- Greater confidence and support for probation officers’ professional judgement
- A clear focus on problem-solving responses to non-compliance
- Recognition that instability is often a sign of unmet need, not wilful refusal
Serious Further Offence reviews need to be reframed as learning-focused processes
Serious Further Offence (SFO) reviews are currently perceived by many staff as punitive. This encourages defensive practice, including excessive recording, over-restriction and avoidance of professional judgement, which does not enhance public protection. SFO reviews should prioritise learning, including analysis of systemic pressures such as caseloads, time constraints and resource limitations. A culture of psychological safety is essential if reviews are to generate honest reflection and meaningful improvement.
There needs to be systematic recognition and communication of effective practice
Successes within probation are rarely highlighted, while attention is disproportionately focused on failure and risk. Internally, this affects morale and professional identity; externally, it contributes to a limited and often negative public narrative. Effective practice and positive outcomes occur daily and should be actively recognised and communicated. Doing so would strengthen staff confidence, reinforce professional values and improve public understanding of probation’s role.
It is time to prioritise and protect time spent in direct supervision
Meaningful change occurs through sustained, high-quality engagement with people under supervision. However, face-to-face work is often undervalued relative to administrative and compliance tasks. If this work were genuinely prioritised, unnecessary administrative burdens would be reduced and officers would be trusted to exercise professional judgement. Relational work is central to effective risk management and public protection, not an optional or secondary activity.
Rehabilitation needs to be the core purpose of probation
Probation must be clear and consistent about its primary purpose. While public protection is essential, rehabilitation is the principal means through which it is achieved. Rehabilitation should not be treated as an optional or aspirational element of practice, but as the organising principle shaping caseload design, performance measures, training and practice standards. A clear commitment to rehabilitation supports desistance, reduces reoffending and ultimately enhances community safety.
The revolving door cohort need targeted, consistent support
These groups commit the most crimes, but because most of them are not assessed as high risk of harm resources are not targeted at them. There needs to be a targeted, multi-agency approach to this group, in the style of the current Integrated Offender Management (IOM) approach.
Turning intent into impact
The Sentencing Act 2026 offers a chance to break the revolving door — but only if its implementation is matched by investment, cultural change and a renewed commitment to rehabilitation.
For people with complex needs who cycle through the system, success will depend on whether community sentences are properly resourced, probation is supported to practise relationally and compliance is understood as something to be enabled, not enforced at all costs.
Without that shift, the system risks continuing to punish instability rather than addressing it, and the revolving door will keep turning.
