Commenting on reports that Home Secretary John Reid, Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer and Attorney General Lord Goldsmith wrote to judges and magistrates in a bid to try to relieve some of the pressure on Britain's overcrowded jails, PRT director Juliet Lyon said:

"Ministers are right to call at last for jails to be used more sparingly, not because they are full to bursting, but because the government's own scaremongering tactics have blocked prison beds with petty offenders, vulnerable women and children, addicts and the mentally ill," she said. "The government has been guilty of criminal negligence to allow prisons to get into such a terrible mess without intervening earlier in a planned way."

Juliet Lyon also supported attempts to reduce the numbers of people held on remand:

"Within a ragbag of desperate measures some longstanding wrongs may be put right. Each year around 55,000 people are remanded to await trial and, although innocent until proven guilty, are held in the very worst conditions in overcrowded local jails," she said. "Once in court, one in five is acquitted and just over half will be given a community penalty. Overuse of custodial remand represents a gross miscarriage of justice which up to now has been ignored."

• England and Wales had the highest imprisonment rate in western Europe at 148 per 100,000 of the population compared with France where the rate is 85 per 100,000 and Germany 94 per 100,000.
• 132,000 people were received into prison for the first time in 2005 in England and Wales either for a prison sentence or on remand.
• The Home Office confirmed that a wing with 176 places at Norwich Prison declared "unfit" by inspectors is to brought back into use from today because of cell shortages.
• The BBC has also reported that prison spaces are in such short supply that about 480 people stayed in police cells on Monday and cells in the Old Bailey were also made available this week.