Prisoners are dying within a day of their release. What’s going wrong?

It’s a twisted version of the movie policeman one day away from retirement. You get out of prison, having finally served your time and looking forward to freedom, but within 24 hours find yourself dead.

This is something which has happened 20 times in the space of two years. Between 2021 and 2023, three of every five deaths within 14 days of release from prison were drug-related.

Prisons are grappling with a new drugs landscape. Drones mean organised criminals have an easier way than ever to get drugs into jails, with a near-ninefold increase in drone sightings around prisons. Super-strength opioids such as nitazenes present a new threat, having been linked to four deaths at HMP Parc in 2024 and leading to warnings prisoners are being used as guinea pigs.

It’s a situation which prompted MPs on the justice select committee to conclude the trade and use of drugs has “reached endemic levels” in prisons, with a culture of acceptance so strong that it is “almost impossible for prisoners to escape the problem”. On one recent visit, the chief inspector of prisons noted more prisoners under the influence than sober.

Are people being set up for failure while they’re in prison?

“The harsh reality is most people go into prison with an existing drug, alcohol or mental health problem, and most people come out with exactly the same problem, probably made worse,” said Mike Trace, CEO of the Forward Trust.

“Most people coming out of prison are just going to go and find their dealer or go to the off license or go round the same cycle of behaviours,” Trace added.

“What we’re meant to be doing in the prisons is diverting a proportion of those off so they come out with a plan.”

Two in five prisoners now say it’s easy to get hold of drugs behind bars. But experts warn that simply looking to cut off the supply won’t solve the problem.

The 2016 ban on novel psychoactive substances such as spice in fact coincided with a 15% rise in self-harm, increased prices and more drug-related violence, researchers at the University of Sussex found.

“If you only target supply and you forget about demand you are missing an important piece of the puzzle, and probably the key piece of the puzzle,” said Dr Rocco d’Este, the researcher behind the study.

An alternative explanation, offered by Trace, is that the ban coincided with the market for spice exploding and the drug becoming more commonplace in prisons.

There have been positive changes recently to ensure those released from prison do not fall back into a cycle. In 2023, Big Issue won a change in the law to ensure prisoners were not let out of prison on Fridays – a day when services can often be closed and it is harder to find support. Trace sayidthere have been positive signs from Labour.

“The speeches are great. As somebody who’s worked around this for 40 years, it’s one of the rare moments when political leaders are trying to do the right thing. What we’re not seeing right now is anything changing on the ground,” he said.

Political pressure, however, can hold reforms back. “Something I call the Jenrick effect, as soon as the government tries to do something that gets out of the cycle of the crisis, then they’re going to be criticised by their political opponents,” said Trace.

For a sign of how stretched prisons are, look to highly-publicised mistaken releases, such as two prisoners wrongly let out early from HMP Wandsworth. In all, there were 262 releases in error in 2025, more than double a year before and more than five times the figure a decade previously.

“The numbers don’t lie,” said Trace, pointing to the number of different schemes managing releases. “It has got a lot more complicated, and as a result of that complexity, very hard-pressed, busy, over-stretched under-staffed departments are making a lot more mistakes.”

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