Prisons drop plan to ease overcrowding

The Government is set to abandon some of its basic standards of care for prisoners as governors struggle with record numbers of inmates and shrinking budgets.

An internal Prison Service document reveals that the service is to jettison its policy on reducing cell overcrowding and is set to reduce the number of hours that inmates are allowed to spend out of cells.

To save more money, the service is also considering closing up to three low-security jails, a move likely to place even greater strains on the service. Those which Home Office sources have identified for possible closure at a saving of around pounds 7m are Blantyre House, Kent, which holds 100 prisoners, Kirklevington, Cleveland, with 75 prisoners and North Sea Camp, Lincolnshire, an open jail holding 200.

Staff, probation officers and reform groups have warned of the risk of riot as pressure on the service grows. Work, education, probation and welfare services for inmates have already been cut in many jails as governors implement cuts of more than 13 per cent in the pounds 1.6bn prison budget over the next three years. An increasing prison population, which soared to 52,700 earlier this month, has led to inmates being "doubled up" in single cells and locked up for prolonged periods.

Coming so soon after the prison inspectors' walk-out highlighted squalid conditions in Holloway prison, the threat to abandon basic standards has alarmed reformers. They say jail conditions are deteriorating to levels of the late 1980s, identified by Lord Woolf as a trigger for the Strangeways riot.

The inspectors at Holloway were said last week to have been ashamed at the filth and lack of care for vulnerable prisoners - the mentally ill, the abused, foreign nationals and pregnant women - while the prison operated an "overzealous security" regime that included chaining women on hospital visits.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary for the National Association of Probation Officers, said Lord Woolf's agenda has now been all but abandoned: "1996 looks like being one of the grimmest in penal history. What is happening at Holloway should make the Prison Service rethink its decision to drop minimum hours out of cells from 12 to eight hours and avoiding doubling up as jail's key performance indicators."

Instead the Prison Service ought to use training and drug testing as indicators of a jail's performance, key recommendations of the recent Learmont inquiry into prison security and the escape from Parkhurst.

But overcrowding and the cash crisis facing the country's 134 jails places a question mark on many of the 127 recommendations. Officials have already decided the key proposal, to build a super-secure prison for the country's most dangerous inmates, is too costly.