Lord Chancellor to set out plan to prevent prisons disaster and save criminal justice from collapse
12 July 2024, 00:01 | Updated: 12 July 2024, 01:18
A series of urgent measures are set to be announced by the justice secretary today in an effort to ease pressure on men's prisons, which now have fewer than 700 available spaces nationally.
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The lack of prison capacity “may impact” the behaviour of criminals, a senior policing source warned, as they blasted a “completely intolerable” situation.
There are fears that the level of occupancy could risk a breakdown of law and order - with no place to send criminals if capacity is not dealt with.
Ministers were also warned prisons are “very vulnerable to shocks” like an outbreak of bedbugs or the 2011 riots.
A senior prisons source said:“ We're very vulnerable to shocks in the estate. That can be big, high profile shocks, like you know about like the 2011 civil disorder, like a prison riot or it could actually be much more mundane things like an outbreak of bedbugs that would require us to close the wing, and fumigate it for two or three weeks. We are very vulnerable to shocks at this level.”
“Prisons have been running at over 99 percent occupancy for the best part of two years”, the senior prisons source said.
The senior prisons source said that if nothing was done, they would be “be professionally very, very worried by the August Bank Holiday”.
The new justice secretary Shabana Mahmood will use a speech inside prison HMP Bedford and HMP Five Wells, in Wellingborough, to announce an earlier automatic release of thousands of prisoners.
Currently, most inmates on a standard determinate sentence - one with an end date - are released on licence after serving 50% of it.
It’s set to be reduced to 40% with an exemption for sexual and serious violent offenders.
The former justice secretary Alex Chalk said that move had been rejected by Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister, over concerns it wouldn’t get support in Parliament.
Another idea, reportedly under consideration, is the repurposing of some of the women’s prison estate to house male offenders.
Prisons staff have warned that capacity will be reached by the end of the August Bank Holiday, unless immediate steps are taken.
Speaking to LBC at the NATO summit in Washington, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said he was frustrated to find the prisons crisis was more critical than he’d expected it to be.
“I can't tell you how shocked I am to be in this position,” he said.
“It's a basic function of the government to have enough prison places for those that the courts are sending to prison and that function was a complete failure under the last government, which they didn't deal with, they didn't address.
“It's worse than I thought it was.”
The Labour leader has been widely praised for hiring James Timpson to the government - a trailblazer for the recruitment of former inmates to his key-cutting business which bears his name.
Others have raised concerns over his previous comments, claiming “only a third” of prisoners should be behind bars, as they attacked Labour's stance on law and order.
