‘PRISONS IN CRISIS’

As the prison population in England and Wales reaches a new record of 73,379 the Prison Reform Trust is warning of a serious crisis unfolding in jails across the country due to unprecedented levels of overcrowding. 

PRT is also predicting that the new Criminal Justice Bill which begins its second reading in the Lords today will lead to a further unsustainable rise in prison numbers over the next ten years. It supports concerns expressed by the  Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, that the new legislation will result in 14,000 more prisoners within a decade.

According to the latest Home Office figures, at the end of May, 90 of the 138 prisons were overcrowded. The top ten overcrowded prisons were:

Preston, Shrewsbury, Leicester, Exeter, Dorchester, Cardiff, Swansea, Canterbury, Winchester, Leeds

Prison overcrowding has resulted in an alarming increase in the number of suicides.  Last year there were 94 deaths by suicide in prison custody, compared to 72 in 2001. Since January nearly 50 prisoners have killed themselves.

Educational activities and offending behaviour programmes designed to prevent re-offending are being cut back and more than 17,000 prisoners are having to double up in cells designed for one person.

Locking up record numbers of people is not working - 59 per cent of all prisoners are reconvicted within two years of release and three quarters of young male offenders will be reconvicted in this period.

Speaking today, the Director of the Prison Reform Trust, Juliet Lyon, said:

“At a time when the Criminal Justice Bill threatens to exert a tidal pull on the severity of sentencing, the prison population reaches its highest ever recorded level. Prison overcrowding is at crisis point, putting intolerable pressure on prison staff, harming resettlement hopes for prisoners, damaging family ties and threatening public safety. The Prison Reform Trust calls on government, not to wait for the next suicide or disturbance in a jail, but to act now to reduce prison numbers”.

Notes to Editors

1. On June 13th 2003 the prison population reached a new record of  73,379, surpassing the previous highest ever recorded level of 73,251.

2. The UK now has the highest imprisonment rate in the European Union at 139 per 100,000, taking over from Portugal which has an imprisonment rate of 131 per 100,000.

3. The number of prisoners in England and Wales has increased by over 25,000 in the last ten years.  In 1993, the average prison population was 44,566.  When Labour came to Government in May 1997 the prison population was 60,131.  This continued to increase, and stood at 66,105 when David Blunkett became Home Secretary on 8 June 2001.

4. Since 1996, over 18,500 additional prison places have been provided at a cost of more than £1.5 billion – an average of £100,000 a prison place.

5. Building new prisons has not been a solution to prison overcrowding.  In the last ten years 13 new prisons have been opened. Of these, nine were overcrowded at the end of April.

6. Prison has a poor record in reducing re-offending – 59 per cent  of prisoners are reconvicted within 2 years of being released. The reconviction rate for male young adults (under 21 )over the same period is 74 per cent.  For prisoners who are sentenced for burglary, one of the most common offences, the reconviction rate is about 75 per cent.

7.  The Government’s Social Exclusion Unit has concluded that re-offending by ex-prisoners costs society at least £11 billion per year. Ex-prisoners are responsible for about one in five of all recorded crimes.

8. At the end of last year Home Office projections predicted a prison population of anything between 91,400 and 109,600 by the end of the decade.

9. Home Office research highlighted in the Halliday report (Making Punishments Work, July 2001) indicates that it would take around a 15 per cent increase in the prison population to result in a short term reduction of crime of just one per cent.