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The information on this page is based on the law in England & Wales. If you’re in Scotland or Northern Ireland, click here for the guide for your jurisdiction.
In prison, almost everybody you meet will claim to be a legal eagle, or to know one. Treat all these well-intentioned helpers with a healthy dose of scepticism – there’s an old prison saying: “believe nothing you hear, and only 25% of what you see”.
Your treatment in prison follows the current legal and policy framework. Some cases get media coverage – prisoners’ voting rights, for example – but for the vast majority of serving prisoners, day-to-day life is governed by the operating instructions the Ministry of Justice issues to prison governors.
These used to be called PSIs and PSOs – Prison Service Instructions and Prison Service Orders – and you’ll still hear those terms used, and still find plenty of older PSIs technically in force. Since 2019, though, new operational policy has been published as “Policy Frameworks” instead, covering everything from searching and safety to visits and incentives. All of these, old and new, allow prison governors some limited local discretion in how they’re applied, but there’s rarely much real difference in interpretation between prisons. They cover every aspect of day-to-day prison life, which is why there are lawyers who specialise purely in prison law, and you’ll find them all published on the gov.uk website if you want to check the detail for yourself.
One particularly important piece of legislation deals with the need for people with criminal convictions – including those where no custodial sentence was given – to disclose this to potential employers and other interested parties. This is the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, and although it’s over 50 years old, the rules around it were significantly overhauled in 2023 to make rehabilitation periods considerably shorter than they used to be.
Once a conviction is “spent”, in most circumstances you don’t have to disclose it, even if asked directly, and it’s unlawful for most employers to turn you down because of it. Until it’s spent, though, you generally must disclose it if asked by a prospective employer or other interested party – not doing so can itself be a criminal act. For example, if you took out a mortgage and didn’t properly disclose unspent convictions, you could be guilty of mortgage fraud; if you didn’t disclose them when taking out car insurance, the policy could be voided if you made a claim. If you have trouble getting car or house insurance because of your convictions, speak to a specialist brokerage such as OnTheOut who will be able to help.
If you got a job and didn’t disclose a conviction when asked during recruitment, you could be dismissed without notice and without a right to compensation. If the employer never asked, though, you’re under no obligation to volunteer it (unless it’s a job with its own specific disclosure rules, such as taxi driving or working with children), and they can’t simply dismiss you later just because they’ve found out. How long you have to disclose a conviction runs from the end of your sentence, including any time on licence, not from the date you were sentenced – and the periods are now considerably shorter than they once were:
| Sentence | Rehabilitation period (aged 18+ when convicted) |
| Custodial sentence of more than 4 years | 7 years from end of sentence (certain serious violent, sexual or terrorism offences never become spent) |
| Custodial sentence of more than 1 year up to 4 years | 4 years from end of sentence |
| Custodial sentence of 1 year or less | 1 year from end of sentence |
| Suspended sentence | Treated the same as the equivalent custodial sentence, based on the length imposed |
| Community or youth rehabilitation order | End of the order, or 2 years from conviction if earlier |
| Fine | 1 year |
| Conditional caution | 3 months, or when the caution ends if sooner |
| Simple caution | Spent immediately |
| Compensation order | On the date it’s paid in full |
Shorter periods apply if you were under 18 at the time. It gets more complicated if you’re sentenced for two or more offences at once: if the sentences run concurrently (at the same time), the length of the longest sentence is what counts; if they run consecutively, you add them together. As with everything in this area, there are legal firms who specialise in exactly this, so if in doubt, ask one.
Separately from all this, the police keep their own records. Since 2006, the general rule has been that details of any recordable offence stay on the Police National Computer until you turn 100 – there’s no longer a simple 10-year or 20-year cut-off. What that retention means in practice for you, though, depends on a different set of rules about “filtering”, which decide whether an old, minor conviction or caution needs to show up on a standard or enhanced DBS (background) check once enough time has passed with no further offending. Serious, violent, sexual and safeguarding-related offences are generally never filtered and stay disclosable for life. Criminal records themselves are treated as confidential and are only released where there’s a proper reason – typically safeguarding, the administration of justice, or national security – and certain jobs, such as taxi driving or driving heavy goods or passenger vehicles, will usually involve a check of your record regardless. If any of this affects you, it really is worth getting proper advice, because the rules are detailed and it’s easy to get wrong.
How long you actually spend in prison depends on the terms of your sentence, and this is an area that has changed a lot recently – and is still changing – so treat any timescales here as a general guide rather than gospel, and check with your solicitor or Prison Offender Manager for your own situation. For most cases the court sets a fixed (“determinate”) sentence – for example, four years – which is the maximum time you could spend in prison for that offence, though you won’t usually serve all of it inside.
Historically, most people serving a standard determinate sentence were released automatically at the halfway point, then supervised in the community on licence for the rest of the sentence. Prison overcrowding led the government to bring in a temporary emergency scheme in September 2024 that moved the release point to 40% of the sentence for many offenders. From September 2026, that’s being replaced again, under the Sentencing Act 2026, by a new system being phased in gradually by sentence length over roughly the following year: most people serving a standard determinate sentence will now be released at the one-third point, while those convicted of the most serious violent or sexual offences will move from release at two-thirds to release at the halfway point instead. Whichever point applies, the rest of the sentence is served in the community under probation supervision, with licence conditions attached, and if you breach those conditions you can be recalled to prison to serve the remainder.
The old Home Detention Curfew (HDC) scheme, which let some prisoners finish the last part of a short-to-medium sentence at home on an electronic tag, is being phased out for adults on standard sentences as part of these changes, and replaced with a three-stage “earned progression” model: time in custody (where breaking prison rules can add extra days to be served), followed by a period of intensive supervision after release, and then a lighter-touch final stage. Because this is being rolled out in stages, with different start dates depending on the length of sentence, exactly how – and when – it applies to you or your loved one is genuinely something only your solicitor, the sentencing court, or the Prison Offender Manager can confirm.
| Just been arrested | Going to Court |
| Legal Aid | Before sentencing |