M
Member
Speaking in the House of Lords on 3 December 2025
Debate
Sentencing BillContribution
One in 10 people in prison is currently serving an extended determinate sentence. The average length of an EDS is nine years, with many serving far longer than that. It is a serious oversight that measures to address overcrowding are ignoring 10% of people in prison—that is nearly 10,000 people who are serving an average of nearly a decade. Furthermore, all the signs point to the contribution of EDS to prison overcrowding only getting worse. There are almost five times as many people in prison serving an EDS as there were a decade ago, when the number was just under 2,000; now it is well on track to reach 10,000. This trend is likely to continue and increase further as a result of the changes in the Bill.
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