Justice Secretary to reveal plan to deal with ‘catastrophic’ prison overcrowding

Sources suggested there were only 700 places free in men’s prisons – less than half the buffer thought to be necessary.

The Justice Secretary will see conditions in two prisons for herself before setting out the Government’s plans. (Lucy North/PA) (PA Wire)

The Justice Secretary is set to announce plans on Friday to address prison overcrowding amid fears jails will run out of space within weeks.

Shabana Mahmood is expected to set out emergency measures that could include reducing the time before some prisoners are automatically released, following a tour of HMP Bedford and HMP Five Wells, in Northamptonshire.

She is expected to argue that the level of overcrowding, described by the Ministry of Justice as “catastrophic”, requires “immediate action” to “pull the justice system back from the brink of total collapse”.

The emergency measures are a bid to prevent the situation from becoming so bad that it leads to a breakdown in law and order, amid fears that if no action is taken this could see a scenario where criminals believe they can act with impunity and turn to opportunistic crimes like lootings if police officers cannot use their powers to detain dangerous offenders because they have nowhere to hold them.

The Justice Secretary will set out her plans following a visit to HMP Five Wells, in Northamptonshire (Joe Giddens/PA) (PA Archive)

For the prison system to run smoothly and effectively, officials ideally want to keep a buffer of 1,425 cell spaces free in men’s prisons at all times to make sure there is enough space to hold sudden influxes of inmates.

According to sources, just 700 are now free. It is understood the latest figures show 83,380 inmates are currently being held in the adult male estate.

A senior prison source warned: “If nothing was done, I would be professionally very, very worried by the August Bank Holiday.”

“You can’t leave an announcement much later than tomorrow because if you do, we’re not going to have sufficient time to do the checks before we get into a headroom problem.

“We’re operationally in trouble at less than 300 spaces left.”

On Thursday, the Prime Minister said the scale of the problem was “worse than I thought” and expressed anger at being faced with taking emergency measures so early in his premiership.

If nothing was done, I would be professionally very, very worried by the August Bank Holiday

Senior prison source

Responding to a question at the Nato summit, Sir Keir called the crisis “unforgivable” and showed “gross irresponsibility” from the previous government.

One of the moves expected to be announced on Friday is a reduction in the amount of a sentence a prisoner must serve before being automatically released.

Most prisoners currently serve 50% of their sentence in jail, with the remaining 50% being served on licence and under threat of being returned to prison if they break their parole conditions.

But Friday’s announcement could see that reduced to 40%, a move the former Conservative justice secretary Alex Chalk reportedly pressed Rishi Sunak to make before the election.

Justice officials are thought to have been keen for further measures to ease the pressure on jail cell space to have been introduced earlier.

Conservative former justice secretary Alex Chalk reportedly urged Rishi Sunak to take action on prison overcrowding before the election (Lucy North/PA) (PA Wire)

The senior prison source added: “We have been running at over 99% occupancy for the best part of two years.

“That puts huge pressure on our ability to reduce re-offending, to deliver purposeful activity, and obviously on our staff. It definitely exacerbates issues like safety in terms of violence, it makes the estate much more tricky for us to run.

“We’re very vulnerable to shocks in the estate. That can be big, high profile shocks, like the 2011 civil disorder, like a prison riot or it could actually be much more mundane things like an outbreak of bedbugs that would require us to close the wing, and fumigate it for two or three weeks. We are very vulnerable to shocks at this level.”

They also stressed that probation officers need sufficient time to plan for an offender’s release to make sure victims are protected.

“Those are the things that probation officers would need to do and there is a minimum amount of time you need to do that. The longer the better. We think a reasonable time is six weeks,” the source said.

Overcrowded prisons can then have a knock-on effect across the justice system with police warning, without urgent action being taken, they could run out of space in custody to hold criminals.

A senior police source said: “If those prisoners aren’t collected, we very quickly will run out of space in police cells.

“So many forces we estimated we would run out of space in about three days or less. And clearly that is a situation that is completely intolerable, because you would get to the point where arresting officers wouldn’t have anywhere to take people they’re arresting.

“That would very quickly become evident. And of course, then that in itself may impact on behaviour of the public and particularly criminals. So that would be a very serious situation to get into and uncharted territory and we need to avoid that at all costs.”

The Prison Governors’ Association (PGA) said it welcomed the speed with which the new measures were being announced and called for a “full review” of the crisis, saying: “The public must never be placed in this position again.”

The previous government expanded measures by which some inmates could be released from jail up to 70 days early, in a bid to free up cells, but concerns were raised that dangerous criminals could end up being eligible despite officials insisting offenders would continue to be supervised under strict conditions.

The Ministry of Justice is already building six new prisons to create an extra 20,000 places as demand grows for cell spaces, partially because of the Government’s campaign to hire 20,000 more police officers.

About 6,000 spaces have been created already and about 10,000 will be built by the end of 2025.