Catch22 supports people in custody, on probation after release, and victims of crime across the UK.
In 2021, we ran a pilot supporting people at risk of recall, and in 2025 we published our Fixing Fixed Term Recall report, which identified why recalls were rising and why we expected the trend to continue. This work gives us a close view of the competing interests the government is trying to balance; victims who need to feel safe and informed, people who need genuine support to rehabilitate, and prisons with no capacity left.
Recall is where those competing demands meet, and the latest figures show recalls rising further. This blog sets out why it is crucial that the 56 days someone now spends on recall are designed properly.
What is recall?
Most people who spend time in prison are released before the end of their sentence, serving the remainder of the sentence in the community on licence. Probation set and monitor conditions, and if those conditions are breached, the person is charged with a further offence, they can be recalled to prison without a court hearing.
The figures
- Licence recalls rose by more than a quarter last year, to over 51,000 – the highest annual figure recorded.
- In the most recent quarter, more people were recalled than released for the first time on record: 13,193 recalls against 12,977 people leaving custody.
More licences are being broken than ever before, which tells us resettlement is not working.
Why we think recall pressure will grow
Factors that will add to this pressure:
- More recalls are fixed term: Fixed periods now make up the majority of recalls. That means more people cycling back onto licence and potentially through recall again. Our own insight found up to 16% of fixed-term recalls were people who had already been recalled in the same licence period.
- More people will be on licence: From October, the Sentencing Act’s progression model means most people serving standard determinate sentences are released earlier and spend more of their sentence supervised in the community.
- Licences will be harder to keep: Releases will come with more intensive supervision – including a presumption of electronic tagging and closer monitoring in the community. More conditions mean breaches are more likely.
These changes attempt to balance public safety and victims’ rights against prison capacity and rehabilitation. But a licence condition someone cannot understand, or cannot meet because they have nowhere stable to live, becomes a route back to prison rather than a safeguard.
What reduces recall
The most recent Offender Management statistics tell us that most recalls are not about new offences. Around 73% involved non-compliance, 38% failure to keep in touch and 24% failure to reside and 22% involved a further charge.
Our own research published in 2025 revealed a similar trend. We also looked at Freedom of Information (FOI) data between 2018 and 2023 and found that 15% of fixed-term recalls were “secondary”, meaning people who had already served a recall during the same licence period.
We see this daily across our rehabilitative services, which support people from the point they leave custody, focusing on wellbeing, financial, or dependency needs:
- People struggling with debt miss appointments they cannot afford to travel to.
- People in active dependency cannot meet a condition without treatment.
- People with no settled address cannot comply with a condition to reside.
These are the barriers that often lead to recall. In our experience, recall usually reflects an unmet need or a breakdown in someone’s relationship with their probation officer – not a refusal to engage.
We designed our Achieving Compliance and Engagement (ACE) pilot around this. ACE ran in London in 2021-23, funded by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and co-designed with people who had experience of recall. Navigator Mentors worked with people identified as being at higher risk of recall, before and after release. Support was most intense in the period right after release, a crucial window, and tapered as things stabilised. Alongside practical resettlement help, mentors supported people to understand their licence conditions and rebuild trust with probation.
The independent evaluation commissioned by the MoJ has not yet been published, however our own monitoring showed that of the 90 people who completed the programme, only 2 had been recalled as of June 2023, and 86% had built new social networks, alongside improvements in housing, employment and access to treatment.
Support at the point of release
Most breaches trace back to an unmet need. Our community rehabilitative services for those on probation work with people to address this, mentoring people through dependency and recovery, helping them manage debt and benefits, supporting their wellbeing and connecting them to specialist services and further support where necessary. Someone whose finances are stable and whose treatment is in place is far better equipped to keep to their licence.
Two things make that support more effective. The first is continuity: the same trusted person staying with someone across the move from custody into the community. Many of our community services already begin in custody, before release, and carry on through the gate, so support isn’t disrupted at a time of instability.
The second is timing. The weeks immediately after release are when risk is highest and stability is thinnest, so support needs to be at its most intensive then front-loaded to the moment it matters most, and easing back as someone finds their feet.
Make the 56 days count
Back in 2025 when we published Fixing Fixed Term Recall, our central finding was that the 14/28-day recalls were too brief to address the housing, substance use or mental health problems behind the breach, but long enough to disrupt a person’s support and stability in the community. 56 days is enough to secure accommodation, explain licence conditions and connect someone with support before release.
What we think a recall pathway needs, drawing on ACE and on what we see across our services:
- Following a recall, intervention needs to start on day one of 56, not at the point of release. Eight weeks is enough time to address what caused the recall and to have support ready for the day someone walks out, if the time is used effectively.
- An address before release. Nobody should leave a recall without somewhere to live. Where housing is in place, a common route back into prison closes.
- People need to understand their licence conditions. Rehabilitation that is imposed upon someone without their input rarely works. People are far more likely to stick to conditions if they understand and feel ownership of them.
- A relationship with probation that has been repaired, rather than just resumed. Our ACE mentors worked hard to achieve this and found that restoring these relationships made a big difference.
- Support that is most intense around release, and tapers as stability returns.
Back in 2025 when we were making these suggestions, the 14/28-day recall period made some of them difficult to achieve. Now that recall lasts 56 days, these options are viable and necessary.
With recalls at a record high and more people heading onto licence this autumn, making those eight weeks count is crucial to protect victims, support people to stay out, and relieve the pressure on our prisons.