As the country prepares to go to the polls, figures released by the Prison Service last week show that the prison population for England and Wales has exceeded 85,000 for the first time, with 85,076 men, women and children in custody. At the same time last year there were 82,773 people in prison, representing an increase in the last 12 months of almost three per cent.

With a government of any stripe facing tough choices after the election, the cost of sustaining our out of control prison population has gone beyond affordable bounds. Each new prison place costs £170,000 to build and maintain, and the cost per prisoner per year is £41,000.

Reversing the unsustainable trend in ever expanding prison numbers should be an urgent priority for all political parties after 6 May. Building more prisons, without tackling the underlying causes of rising numbers, would be like adding another lane to an overcrowded motorway. As the prison population accelerated after 1993, reoffending rates worsened – two-thirds of people are now reconvicted within two years of leaving prison. The National Audit Office estimate that re-offending by all recent ex-prisoners cost the economy between £9.5 billion and £13 billion.
 
Investing in preventative work with children in trouble and diverting vulnerable women, drug addicts and binge drinkers, the mentally ill and people with learning disabilities into the care or treatment they need would cut crime and improve public health at a fraction of the cost of vacuous prison building. Politicians from all three main political parties (Maria Eagle, Dominic Grieve, and Chris Huhne) accept that community sentences are far more effective than prison in reducing petty repeat offending but these, too, have remained under-resourced.
 
With polls predicting a tight election race your vote will count in deciding how the crisis in our prison population is resolved. Here we publish a summary of Labour’s, the Conservatives’ and Liberal Democrats’ proposals on criminal justice taken from their election manifestos. To help you compare the parties’ positions we have grouped the proposals, some fuller than others, according to the following policy areas:

1. Prison numbers and overcrowding
2. Custodial sentences
3. Resettlement and rehabilitation
4. Restorative justice and community sentencing
5. Youth justice
6. Anti-social behaviour
7. Drugs and alcohol
8. Crime reduction
9. Prisoners’ earnings and compensation
10. Police and courts
11. Other.
 
At a time of real uncertainty, one thing we need to be sure of is that whoever becomes Secretary of State for Justice will act decisively to bring prison numbers under control and then work hard to develop a fair, proportionate and effective justice system.