The latest prison population figures released by the Prison Service today show the prison population to be at a record high. In response, speaking from the Prison Service conference in Leeds, Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:

The record high prison population for England and Wales of 81,681 has been fuelled in recent weeks by a sharp increase in the numbers of remand and short term prisoners. Despite opening a new prison this week and extra cellblocks wherever space allowed, government attempts to build its way out of this crisis have failed. In recent weeks, the prison population is growing at a rate which even building a new medium-sized prison every week would not match.
 
The managed release of low-risk offenders will, as it has under previous governments, provide a useful temporary safety valve. It is however no substitute for proper planning which recognizes the limitations of imprisonment and provides for substantial investment in community solutions to crime.

Unless, and until, the government gets to grip with the causes of crime it is condemned to go on lurching from crisis to crisis and asking the impossible of our prisons.

Notes
1. Over the course of a year, over 50,000 people are remanded into prison. Many will be back in court in less than two months at which point one in five will be acquitted and over half will receive a community penalty.

2. A parliamentary answer last week revealed that of the 96,017 people sentenced to prison in 2006, 62% received a sentence of six months or less (Hansard, 28 January 2008; column 137w).

3. Last week the Ministry of Justice admitted that the cost of using police cells is £459 per prisoner/per night.

4. The figures can be viewed at the Prison Service website