# Understaffed and Overcrowded Prisons: Where do we go from here? Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/law-and-disorder-news-politics-and-more-from-a-legal-perspective-6759162/understaffed-and-overcrowded-prisons-where-do-we-go-from-here Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/law-and-disorder-news-politics-and-more-from-a-legal-perspective-6759162/understaffed-and-overcrowded-prisons-where-do-we-go-from-here.md Podcast: [Law and Disorder: News, politics and more, from a legal perspective](https://stenobird.com/podcast/law-and-disorder-news-politics-and-more-from-a-legal-perspective-6759162) Published: 2026-07-22T05:00:00+00:00 Episode link: https://shows.acast.com/law-and-disorder-2/episodes/the-state-of-our-prisons Audio file: https://sphinx.acast.com/p/open/s/65aa5c04a3555100168f5eec/e/6a5faa3cbfcc3b29ae0fb066/media.mp3 Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/law-and-disorder-news-politics-and-more-from-a-legal-perspective-6759162/episodes/understaffed-and-overcrowded-prisons-where-do-we-go-from-here Duration seconds: 2183 ## Resource What state are our prisons really in? At 98% capacity but with a 68% reoffending rate (for shorter sentences), it seems punishment we're good at, but rehabilitation we are not, nor are we freeing up space for other convicts, which in turn would help tackle the great criminal court backlog. To help us understand where we're headed - or where we'd like to be - we're joined this week by the head of the Howard League for Penal Reform. Andrea Coomber KC. Law and Disorder is a Podot podcast. Hosted by: Charlie Falconer, Helena Kennedy, Nicholas Mostyn. Executive Producer and editor: Nick Hilton. Associate Producers: Lulu Goad Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/law-and-disorder-news-politics-and-more-from-a-legal-perspective-6759162/episodes/understaffed-and-overcrowded-prisons-where-do-we-go-from-here/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/law-and-disorder-news-politics-and-more-from-a-legal-perspective-6759162/understaffed-and-overcrowded-prisons-where-do-we-go-from-here.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.