Police cells used to house prisoners

The Home Office began placing prisoners in police cells for the first time in seven years yesterday in a desperate response to acute levels of jail overcrowding.

More than 1,000 cells in police stations were allocated to take overspill from the jails as the prison population in England and Wales reached an all-time high of 71,480 yesterday.

The first inmates are due to be placed in police cells later today in the West Midlands and West Yorkshire, where jails are full. Police cells may also have to be made available for prisoners in the north-east and north-west of England.

A Prison Service spokesman said: "Every effort is being made to avoid the use of police cells for women and juveniles. The aim will be to hold individual prisoners for a minimum period and not more than a few days."

The new population total is 173 places short of the Prison Service's "usable capacity" and 14,000 prisoners are already sharing individual cells.

Prison reform campaigners have been outraged at the development, which means inmates will have no access to education or rehabilitation sessions and little chance to mix with other people. Most will not even have access to proper washing facilities.

Frances Crook, director of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said of the announcement: "This is the result of a thoroughly irresponsible government policy which is squandering public money in an unnecessary use of custody for people who have committed nuisance offences and pose no danger to the public."

It is the first time that prisoners have been routinely housed in police stations since 1995, although they have been used as stopgaps in recent months. The Prison Service will pay as yet undisclosed fees to police forces to make use of their cells.

Tony Blair's official spokesman said: "We recognise fully there are difficulties in terms of the prison numbers. We haven't hidden that fact. That is why we are planning to build 2,500 extra places this year. We recognise there is an issue here but we are dealing with it."

Andy Darken, chairman of the Prison Officers Association, described the use of police cells as "panic measures rather than thinking, planning and investing".