The prison population boom has put our justice system at a crisis point

Overcrowding is making our prisons and our communities less safe, writes chief prisons inspector Charlie Taylor. We need to have a national conversation about who we lock up, and for how long

In the last few years, the number of remanded prisoners has risen to 18 per cent of the total population (iStock/Getty)

At almost 89,000, our prison population is now the largest it has ever been. There’s a serious risk that we will soon run out of space. This crisis has prompted ministers to bring in an early release scheme to let some prisoners out up to 18 days early and a new presumption against sentences of under 12 months,

In the last two years, two new prisons have opened in the East Midlands and another is being built in Yorkshire, providing another 5,000 spaces. The Ministry of Justice is even looking at buying prison places abroad to house the growing number of men who are ending up in jail.

Whether these measures are enough to accommodate the growing population is unclear. Projections from the prison service suggest that the population will top 100,000 by the end of the decade. This should not come as a surprise. This was predicted as far back as 2018, and had it not been for the slowdown during the pandemic, we may have reached this state even sooner.