Labour is facing another prisons crisis (Image: Getty)
A record number of prisoners had to be kept in police cells on a single night as the overcrowding crisis behind bars intensified again. Some 124 inmates were held in police cells – at a cost of nearly ￡688 per day – last Monday night as the number of offenders behind bars soared to a six-month high.
Ministers have triggered emergency measures to lock up convicted criminals in custody suites just six months after Labour's controversial decision to release thousands of inmates last year to ease overcrowding. There are fewer than 1,000 spaces left, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has admitted, after a surge in prisoner numbers has pushed male prisons in England and Wales to 99 per cent capacity.
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Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is facing another prison crisis (Image: Getty)
Justice chiefs want to use 200 police cells, it is understood.
The prison population stood at 87,556 as of Monday, according to data published by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).
This is the highest weekly figure since the population climbed to a record 88,521 on September 6 last year, just days ahead of the first wave of early releases which saw thousands of inmates freed on licence to tackle overcrowding.
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Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: “Over the last three months population growth in the prison estate has been high – January saw the highest average monthly prison population growth in almost two years, which has only just begun to slow.
“As of 17 March, there were 824 places remaining in the adult male estate. We are operating at more than 99% occupancy.
“Operating this close to critical capacity increases the risk that prisons do not have sufficient space for a given prisoner entering the system and so an alternative has to be found, which is most frequently in a police cell.
“In recent weeks this has happened hundreds of times, far above the rate seen during normal operations. On the night of 10 March, there were 124 no-space lockouts, which is the highest number of business-as-usual (BAU) lockouts on record.”
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The operation was previously used in February 2023 under the previous government, and was formally deactivated in October last year by this Government, Ms Mahmood added.
Up to 200 police cells will be available at any one time to hold prisoners over a day or overnight while a jail space is found for them.
Ms Mahmood said the plan will be under “constant review” and will stand down police cells as soon as they are not needed.
The move comes as a new 458-capacity houseblock at HMP Rye Hill in Warwickshire was opened, and a new 1,500-space prison HMP Millsike is set to open in North Yorkshire in the coming weeks.
But the Lord Chancellor said she expects prison capacity will “remain tight until the new capacity is fully operational”.
Ministers have promised to find a total of 14,000 cell spaces in jails by 2031 while an independent sentencing review exploring tougher punishments outside of prison is expected to be published in the spring as part of efforts to curb overcrowding.
Some 1,750 convicts were released in both September and October under emergency measures to ease the overcrowding crisis behind bars.
Criminals were let out after 40% of their sentences, rather than halfway through, in a desperate bid to prevent the system collapsing.
Prisons last year had just 80 cells left, meaning police could have been forced to stop arresting offenders.
The Ministry of Justice hopes the opening of a new prison in York will mean Operation Safeguard will only be needed for eight weeks.
Labour is widely expected to introduce new plans to jail far fewer criminals.
Former Tory Justice Secretary David Gauke, who is now leading Labour’s sentencing review, admitted criminals could be “released earlier” if they obey the rules and complete their rehabilitation courses.
Laying the groundwork for a radical new approach to crime, Mr Gauke added “it’s worth looking at other places where this has happened, it’s worked”.
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The former minister said “politicians have operated in a vacuum” by repeatedly calling for more offenders to be locked up.
This, he argued, led to the prison overcrowding crisis.
Mr Gauke has warned the public of a “fundamental shift” in sentencing, adding that justice chiefs have previously believed “the only form of punishment that counts is imprisonment”