Overcrowded prisons - must be a slow news day...

Pressure on Falconer as prison population hits all-time high


· Court cells could be full if too many fail to get bail
· Jail system could implode in two weeks, says union

Clare Dyer, legal editor
Wednesday May 30, 2007
The Guardian

The number of prisoners in England and Wales hit an all-time high of 80,846 yesterday, raising fears that the court service could run out of cell space this week if too few remand prisoners succeed in getting bail. The record numbers saw 450 prisoners housed in police and court cells made available for overspill.

At one point yesterday, prison governors estimated that every court cell on standby would be full by tonight, but later they said they expected enough remand prisoners to get bail to leave a few spaces available.

The latest figure means that fewer than 300 spaces are free to house prisoners, even allowing for the 400 police cells being used for emergency occupation under Operation Safeguard.

Only 100 court cells have been made available in London and three other locations. Cells in courts are expensive and difficult to staff and their emergency use for prison overspill makes it hard for prisoners to be brought to court for trials.

The need to get on with court cases means that prisoners in court cells are "hot-celling" with those in prisons, taking their space in prison while the jailed inmate goes to court.

The problem has been exacerbated by the bank holiday, with some probation officers taking an extra day off yesterday and unable to take part in bail applications for people remanded in custody over the weekend.

The crisis is expected to worsen when the smoking ban comes in on July 1, when options to double up in cells will be limited by a new right for non-smoking prisoners to refuse to share a cell with a smoker.

Ministers are pushing for more doubling up of inmates but Phil Wheatley, director general of the prison service, has made it clear that there are limits to the number of places that can be found. "When we are full, we are full," he has said.

Charles Bushell, general secretary of the Prison Governors Association, said there were "large and increasing numbers" of prisoners who could never be locked up with anybody else because they were dangerous or predatory.

Lord Falconer, the justice secretary, announced plans for legislation aimed at reducing the prison population when the new Ministry of Justice took over responsibility for prisons from the Home Office this month. But the latest record increase will bring more pressure on him to come up with a short-term solution.

Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, the probation officers' union, said: "If the current rate continues, within a fortnight the whole system will implode.

"The courts won't be able to function because there will be nowhere to hold prisoners and the police will be in difficulty because there will be nowhere to hold people they arrest on that day. So ministers will have to take short-term action."

He said the most obvious step to ease the crisis would be to permit the 1,500 to 2,000 prisoners who are allowed out of prison daily as a step to rehabilitation, to stay out overnight.

"The minister could argue that if these people are safe enough to be allowed out during the day and public safety isn't compromised, the same rule would apply to letting them out at night," he added.

A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice said: "A new capacity-building programme which will deliver 8,000 new prison places by 2012 was announced in July 2006.

"This comes on top of already planned expansions at existing prisons which will continue and deliver around 700 places during 2007.

"The National Offender Management Service is closely monitoring the prison population and continues to investigate options for providing further increases in capacity."

The shadow home secretary, David Davis, said: "The government have been warned about this impending crisis in our prisons for years. They have recklessly ignored both our advice and their own projections of prison overcrowding.

"Overcrowding means offenders are not sent to prison when they should be, prison rehab and skills courses are disrupted and prisoners are let out early. Ultimately, it is the public who pay the price."