Only a few hundred spaces left in adult male prisons in England and Wales, governors’ chief will warn

‘Right-wing lurch’ by government ‘has resulted in populist rhetoric on prisons’, governor’s chair to say

There are only a “few hundred” spaces left in the adult male prisons in England and Wales meaning “we are now bust on prison places”, the chair of the Prison Governor’s Association will warn in her annual conference speech.

Andrea Albutt will tell the Prison Governor’s annual conference on Tuesday that a “right-wing lurch” by the government “has resulted in a populist rhetoric on prisons”, leading to unsustainable overcrowding.

“We have a government intent on locking up more people for longer and making it more difficult for them to be released”, she will say in her final conference speech before her retirement from the Prison Service. She will say that previous ministers David Gawke and Rory Stewart had a “will to change our sentencing policies” but these plans have been abandoned under the current government, which wants to act tough on crime.

The prison population is currently at 88,016 people, only 768 free spaces away from capacity.

Justice secretary Alex Chalk recently floated the idea of sending prisoners abroad in his Tory conference speech, an idea Ms Albutt will say was “an admission of abject failure”.

Ms Albutt will warn about the dangers of overcrowding, saying: “We stumble through each week in the hope that accommodation from new prisons, opening of refurbished wings and rapid deployment units will save us for another couple of weeks.

“We sit with our fingers crossed, hoping we will have seasonal dips in population to survive another spike.

“We have a buffer zone of approximately 1400 spaces to allow for unexpected accommodation issues which is now used as business as usual; at the time of writing this speech, we have but a few hundred male adult spaces left and this figure includes Cat D places, not easily accessed.”

Justice Secretary Alex Chalk said he will explore renting prison space abroad (PA Wire)

Ms Albutt will also say that if the crumbling concrete, RAAC, is found in the prison estate there will be nowhere to move prisoners to during emergency renovations.

“If found and we need to decant, we have literally nowhere to put prisoners because all our prisons are full to bursting every day,” she will say.

Her comments come as HM Inspectorate of prisons found that HMP Dartmoor was packing in two prisoners per cell despite needing building repairs.

HMP Dartmoor is being kept open to ease overcrowding pressures (PA)

HMP Dartmoor, one of the oldest prisons in the UK, was due to be closed but was kept open in 2021 due to population pressures. The inspectorate found that the prison had increased its population to 684 people by overcrowding 49 cells, meaning 98 prisoners were living in cramped conditions.

Prisoners often missed showers, telephone calls, and exercise sessions because staff shortages meant they couldn’t happen. With many prisoners serving long sentences, the inspectorate said they would be very concerned if the number of inmates increased further.

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “We are pressing ahead with the biggest expansion of prison places in over a century – investing £4 billion to deliver 20,000 extra places.

“We have already delivered 5,500 of these places and have also taken decisive action to bring on a further 2,600 places in the immediate term.”