Commenting today on the Chief Inspector’s report on Wandsworth prison, Juliet Lyon, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said:

“We now know that overcrowding has put paid to efforts to improve conditions in the three largest jails in the country. According to the Chief Inspector, Wandsworth, Liverpool and Pentonville are all failing to meet basic standards of activity and decency. There is a stark choice to be made: either we accept that jails in England and Wales operate as social dustbins in which every petty offender in need of mental health or drug treatment is tipped or we reserve prison for serious and violent offenders only.

We are all paying too high a price for the Government’s failure to rebalance the criminal justice system, whether its prisoners locked in cramped cells for up to 23 hours a day or their families traveling vast distances for a short visit, stressed staff having to work in these transit camps or the general public on the receiving end of appalling reconviction rates.

Our jails cannot cope with these numbers. If we are serious about preventing re-offending its time we kicked the prisons habit and invested instead in tough community penalties and effective drug treatment for offenders.”

NOTES TO EDITORS:

1. At the end of April 2003 Wandsworth was the largest prison in England and Wales with a population of 1,470. It was overcrowded by 31 per cent, with the 1,470 prisoners being held in accommodation intended for 1,124. The next largest prison was Liverpool, followed by Pentonville.

2. On 30 May 2003 the prison population in England and Wales stood at 72,993.  This is an increase of 2,288  in the last 12 months. In the last two years the prison population has increased by nearly 7,000 (The current maximum capacity is 75,852).  Last month the prison population reached its  highest ever recorded level of 73,25

3. 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. Compared to our nearest neighbours we actually keep in prison some 40 to 65 per cent more of our citizens. Our prison population rate is 45 per cent higher than Germany (96 per 100,000), 62 per cent higher than Ireland (86 per 100,000) and 63 per cent higher than France and Belgium (both 85 per 100,000). It has risen dramatically over the last four years from 125 per 100,000 in 1999.

4. 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.

5. Over the last year prison overcrowding has been at its highest recorded level. At the end of April 2003, 90 of the 138 prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded. 

6. 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.

7. Building new prisons has not been a solution to prison overcrowding.  In the last ten years 13 new prisons have been opened.  Of these, 9 were overcrowded at the end of April.

8. 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.

9. By the end of the decade Home Office projections predict a prison population of anything between 91,400 and 109,600.