A prisoner escaping from London hospitals twice in a week makes front-page news. But the bigger prison story is happening in places that barely make the local paper — and it's the opposite of what you'd expect.

Take Preston. In 2000, the town's prison held 680 inmates. By this year, that number had crashed to just 426 — a drop of 37.4%. That's 254 fewer prisoners behind bars, despite 25 years of tough-on-crime rhetoric from politicians of every stripe.

The timeline tells a story that doesn't fit the narrative. In 2000, Tony Blair's government was still promising to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime." Prison numbers were climbing everywhere. Preston was no exception — nearly 700 inmates packed into a Victorian jail built for fewer.

Then something shifted. The financial crisis hit in 2008, and suddenly locking people up became an expensive luxury councils couldn't afford. Rehabilitation programmes got funding. Community sentences became fashionable. Drug courts started appearing.

By 2015, Preston's prison population had begun its steady decline. Not because crime was falling — though it was — but because the system was finally asking whether prison actually worked for most offences. Turns out, for many crimes, it didn't.

The 2020s accelerated everything. COVID emptied cells as courts closed and early releases sped up. But even as restrictions lifted, the numbers didn't bounce back. Preston's prison population kept falling, month after month, year after year.

This isn't unique to Preston. Across England's smaller prisons, the same pattern emerges: fewer inmates, less overcrowding, lower reoffending rates. The places that don't make headlines are quietly proving that you don't need to lock up half the population to keep communities safe.

Meanwhile, London's overcrowded prisons still dominate the news cycle. Every escape, every riot, every scandal reinforces the same tired narrative: we're soft on crime, prisons are holiday camps, we need more cells. The politicians promise tougher sentences. The tabloids cheer. The cycle continues.

But Preston's empty cells tell a different story. They suggest that maybe — just maybe — we've been asking the wrong questions about crime and punishment. Not "how do we lock up more people?" but "how do we lock up the right people?"

Twenty-five years of data from one Lancashire prison won't change government policy overnight. But it should change how we talk about crime. Because while London prisoners escape and politicians grandstand, places like Preston are quietly getting on with the business of actually reducing crime.

(Source: Ministry of Justice, Prison Population -- prison-pop-december-2025 -- MonthlyBulletin)