Red alert for prisons: 20 days countdown 'til full capacity
 
The prison population has risen drastically from 76,950 last week to 77,291 today. At this rate of increase our grossly overcrowded prisons will be completely full in less than three weeks.
 
Figures released by the Home Office today reveal that there are fewer than 1000 places left in jails across the country before the Prison Service reaches the useable limit of its operational capacity which it defines as ‘the total number of prisoners that an establishment can hold without serious risk to good order, security and the proper running of the planned regime’.  
 
 Commenting today, Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:
 
“To avert a crisis the Home Secretary must act now to maintain safety and security by keeping his commitment to reserve prison for serious and violent offenders. It is too late and too expensive for government to build its way out of trouble.
 
Solutions lie in cutting any unnecessary remands and recalls to custody, using fines and supervised community sentences and diverting addicts and the mentally ill into the treatment they need.
 
Other government departments have to shoulder their responsibilities for the most vulnerable and challenging people in our society rather than allowing them to fetch up in the one struggling public service that cannot exclude anyone. No one wants an overcrowded, ineffective prison system which releases people more, not less, likely to offend again.”
 
Pressure of numbers has already led to the reintroduction of sub-standard accommodation in some Victorian jails and reports of prisoners being housed in squalid conditions.
 
There are currently no prisoners recorded as held in police cells but the Home Office could be forced into using this option soon. Consideration may also have to be given to the use of powers of executive release and to postponing the implementation of some of the inflationary measures contained in the Criminal Justice Act 2003.
 
Juliet Lyon said:
 
“It is sad that only a week after the Home Secretary proposed ‘community prisons’ and a serious bid to cut re-offending through training, education, employment and family support, the Prison Service is already mired in another overcrowding crisis. Staff and managers have their time taken up simply finding space to warehouse ever growing prison numbers. Attempting reform in these conditions is like trying to conduct major roadworks on a motorway in the rush hour.”
 
 
 
Notes for editors
 
The Prison population today is 77,291, up from 76,950 last week and 74,649 a year ago. This is an increase of 341 over the last week – 49 a day.
 
There are 4,611 women in prison today and 11,425 prisoners under 21 years old.
 
The total number that the prison system is designed to hold without being overcrowded is 69,528. The total number it can hold without breaking its operational capacity is 79,971, minus an operating margin of 1,700, giving a total limit, the usable operating capacity of 78,271.
 
The number of prisoners in England and Wales has increased by over 25,000 in the last ten years. In 1995, the average prison population was 50,962. When Labour came to Government in May 1997, the prison population was 60,131. Previously it took nearly four decades (1958-1995) for the prison population to rise by 25,000.
 
England and Wales has the highest imprisonment rate in western Europe at 145 per 100,000 of the population. France has an imprisonment rate of 91 per 100,000 and Germany has a rate of 96 per 100,000.
 
Over the last year more than half of all prisons have been overcrowded. At the end of August 2005, 81 of the 142 prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded.
 
At the end of December 2004 around 16,000 prisoners were doubling up in cells designed for one.
 
A study by the Prison Reform Trust and the National Council of Independent Monitoring Boards in September 2002 examined the impact of overcrowding. Of the 103 Independent Monitoring Boards (the watchdogs appointed by the Home Secretary to monitor prison conditions) who responded, 77 expressed concern that overcrowding was threatening prison safety, leading to prisoners being held in inhuman, degrading and unsafe conditions and damaging attempts to maintain family support and reduce re-offending by prisoners.
 
In 2003-2004 it cost an average of £37,305 to keep a person in prison.
 
The average cost of each prison place built since 2000 is £99,839.
 
Research by the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit highlighted in the Carter report (‘Managing Offenders, Reducing Crime’, December 2003) says that a 22 per cent increase in the prison population since 1997 is estimated to have reduced crime by around five per cent during a period when overall crime fell by 30 per cent. The report states: ‘There is no convincing evidence that further increases in the use of custody would significantly reduce crime’.
 
Prison has a poor record for reducing re-offending - three out of five prisoners (61 per cent) are reconvicted within two years of being released -for young men and boys (under 21) it is 73 per cent.