Experts keep warning us of the overcrowding crisis in UK jails. Don't switch off - they're right.

People must be sick and tired of hearing about the crisis in our prisons. Many must think that things have been exaggerated, it can't have been that bad for that long, or that the prison service has simply found a way of coping with the pressure it is under, somehow or another it will always manage to keep the lid on. After all, the prison system as a whole has been overcrowded in every year since 1994. Now though, as the Lord Chief Justice has just warned, the social and economic costs are become just too great to bear. It's come to the crunch on prison costs and prison numbers.

When you start talking numbers the scale of the problem quickly becomes evident. Tough political rhetoric, and the failure to take into account the impact
of new legislation and haphazard changes in sentencing policy, has driven the prison population up at a dramatic pace. While the number of people found guilty by the courts has remained largely constant over recent years, many of those who, for a similar offence would have received a fine or a community sentence, are now being sentenced to custody, and for longer and longer terms. Creating new offences, introducing a raft of mandatory penalties and then, under the Criminal Justice Act (2003) bringing in a new indeterminate sentence has led to massive inflation in sentencing.

Consequently the number of prisoners in England and Wales has soared by 25,000 in the last eleven years. In 1996, the mid-year prison population was 55,256. When Labour came to Government in May 1997, the prison population was 60,131. Today there are 81,547 people in custody including 291 held in unsuitable overspill police and court cells. Previously it took nearly four decades (1958-1995) for the prison population to rise by 25,000. Now each year over 132,000 people enter our overcrowded prison system.

Not only are far more people going to jail, they are going for far longer, ensuring that prison overcrowding has become a residual problem. The number of life sentenced and indeterminate sentenced prisoners has increased considerably. According to the Ministry of Justice, there were 9,660 people serving indefinite sentences at the end of July 2007, a rise of 29% on the year before. This compares with fewer than 4,000 in 1998 and 3,000 in 1992. England and Wales has the highest number of life sentenced prisoners in Europe. It has more than Germany, France, Italy and Turkey combined.

People are beginning to question whether we can afford this exceptionally high use of imprisonment. As the Lord Chief Justice pointed out, in his speech to the Howard League for Penal Reform earlier this week, "If you decide to lock up one man for a minimum term of 30 years, you are investing £1 million or more in punishing him". Recent reports by the National Audit Office and by Matrix, and a forthcoming review by the New Economics Foundation, all take an incisive, critical look at the cost benefits and value for money of the current system where each new place costs £100,000 and the annual average cost for each prisoner now exceeds £40,000. Nor has investment been made in increasing staff numbers in prison and probation services or the Parole Board.

It is difficult to estimate the social costs of needlessly high rates of imprisonment. But the impact on families, as well as the cycle of crime, will be immense. Today over 150,000 children have a parent in prison. According to the Department for Children, Schools and Families, during their time at school 7% of children experience their father's imprisonment. Each year almost 18,000 children are separated from their mother by imprisonment. Today, on Prisons Sunday, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor drew attention to overcrowding and the shocking increase in prison suicides as, he said 'the system is stretched to breaking point'.

It simply does not have to be like this. Moves are afoot to drive reform if government can, this time, keep its nerve. The Department of Health is preparing to make court diversion and liaison schemes for the mentally ill a top priority for primary care trusts. Investment in residential treatment for drug and alcohol addictions would pay dividends. The government-commissioned Corston report calls, at last, for a definitive end to the incarceration of huge numbers of vulnerable women, far from their families. A sensible plan for an inter-ministerial group on women at risk, a commissioner for women and the development of local women's centres will bridge the yawning gap between policy and practice. At the Youth Justice Board conference last week, Ed Balls stated his determination to reduce the numbers of children and young people in custody.

Much more still needs to be done to curb runaway sentence inflation. Sponsored and talked up by the government, it has ensured longer prison sentences, but all too often longer sentences in which less is done, thanks to chronic crowding. The forthcoming report by Lord Carter of Coles could advocate for a more sparing use of custody. By re-introducing proportionality in sentencing and reserving prison only for the most serious and violent offenders, government could begin to repair some of the damage caused by an addiction to imprisonment that has cost us dear.

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