Jails in England and Wales 98.3% full as prison crisis continues

Prisons in England and Wales are 98.3% full, despite the population falling slightly since the government accepted recommendations of a recent sentencing review.

There are now 1,448 prison places available - up from 961 last month, when the estate was running at 98.9% capacity.

But HM Prison and Probation Service says it can’t run the estate efficiently at over 95% occupancy.

The UK's prisons estate has been under so much pressure that thousands of inmates have been released early to prevent the system clogging up, a situation that the justice secretary warned could lead to the "break down of law and order".

If prisons are full, police cells would have to be used to house offenders - but when they reach capacity, officers would no longer be able to carry out arrests, Shabana Mahmood said last month.

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We are building new prisons and are on track for 14,000 places by 2031 – the largest expansion since the Victorians.

"Our sentencing reforms will also force prisoners to earn their way to release or face longer in jail for bad behaviour, while ensuring the most dangerous offenders can be kept off the streets.”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced an extra £7 billion to fund 14,000 more prison places in her spending review on Wednesday, and up to £700 million per year into reform of the probation system.

Unveiling the funding in the Commons, she said "must feel safe" in their local community, "safe in the knowledge that when people break the law, they feel the full force of the law".

"But the party opposite left our prisons overflowing and on the brink of collapse, and they left it to us to deal with the consequences."

Unions welcomed the cash but questioned whether it would be enough to fix alleviate pressures on the system.

Rachel Harrison, GMB national secretary, said "fresh money for the police, prisons and probation is something we’ve long called for... but, as ever, the proof will be in the pudding as to whether this is enough money – and if it ends up in the right places.”

The government, which commissioned a review into prisons by Conservative former justice secretary David Gauke, has accepted many of his recommendations.

New policies include allowing well behaved offenders to serve one third of their sentence, rather than half and scrapping short sentences of less than 12 months, apart from in exceptional circumstances such as domestic abuse cases.

There have also been calls to improve rehabilitation inside prisons, given 53% of those released commit crime again within a year, while 80% of offenders are reoffenders.

Is it time for the government to focus more on rehabilitating prisoners?

But the justice secretary said it's much harder to rehabilitate offenders with the prison system "permanently on the point of collapse".

She was asked by Labour MP Clive Efford in the Commons last month how the government would reduce reoffending, which is "costing us £22 billion a year".

Mahmood responded: "One of the problems of running a prison system at absolutely boiling hot, where you're permanently on the point of collapse... it means that within the prison estate you're not able to make much progress on the sorts of programmes that offenders would need to access to begin a rehabilitation journey."

The Gauke review recommended introducing an “earned progression model” inspired by reforms in Texas.

Under the scheme, prisoners could be released earlier for good behaviour and be supervised on licence for a period of their sentence.

They would then remain unsupervised in the community for the final period of their sentence, but could be recalled to prison if they commit another crime.

Violent or sexual offenders who are serving sentences of four years or more could be released into the community on licence after spending half of their sentence behind bars, or longer if they do not comply with prison rules.

The review also suggested for the most dangerous offenders on extended sentences to be eligible for parole at half-way through their sentence, instead of two-thirds, if they earn credits to take part in rehabilitation activities in prison.

They would only be released if the Parole Board decided it was safe to do so.

From Westminster to Washington DC - our political experts are across all the latest key talking points. Listen to the latest episode below...