12,000 prisoners should not be in jail

12,000 'should not be in jail'

By Ben Leapman, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 11:56pm BST 07/04/2007

Britain's overflowing jails are holding 12,000 inmates who should not be there, according to a Blairite think-tank.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said that drug addicts, the mentally ill and female convicts on short sentences should not be detained in prisons.

Nick Pearce, the director of the IPPR, also accused Labour of targeting "volume crimes" such as burglary and car theft, while failing to tackle the kind of offending that devastates victims' lives, such as repeat assaults and domestic violence.

The criticism, from one of Tony Blair's favourite think-tanks, will embarrass the Home Office as it struggles to cope with a rapid rise in prisoner numbers.

Jails in England and Wales held 79,900 inmates last week, just a few hundred short of national prison capacity. A further 400 prisoners were being held in police cells because local jails were full.

The IPPR predicted that government plans to "stabilise sentencing", announced last month, would fail to halt the increase in the prison population.

It called for 5,000 prisoners to be transferred to mental hospitals, and 5,000 to residential drug rehabilitation centres. It said a further 2,000 women prisoners, sentenced to less than six months behind bars, should be released on community sentences. It said the cost could be met out of funds earmarked by John Reid, the Home Secretary, for the construction of 8,000 new prison places.

In a collection of essays to mark the 10th anniversary of Labour's election victory, the IPPR will also call for "high-visibility payback" as an alternative to traditional community sentences.

Under current rules, convicts sentenced to do unpaid work in the community cannot be made to work in brightly coloured outfits identifying them as criminals, in case they feel stigmatised.