Jails to run out of room by April despite early releases

PRISONS are on course to run out of space by spring despite the early release of hundreds of offenders, ministers have been warned.

Figures seen by The Telegraph show that only 550 spaces remain in male prisons, with 99.35 per cent of jail cells full to capacity, while 113 spaces are left in the women’s estate at 97 per cent of capacity.

The number of spare places has fallen by about 200 in a week with governors forced to ramp up the early release of prisoners under a scheme that allows them to let out inmates up to 18 days before the date they were due to go free.

Officials are also looking at the possibility of reactivating the scheme under which the Ministry of Justice pays police forces to use their cells to accommodate the overflow of prisoners.

The looming overcrowding crisis comes despite a package of measures announced last year by Alex Chalk, the Justice Secretary, when the prison service came within 150 places of running out of space. These included releasing offenders such as burglars serving up to fours in jail a quarter of the way through their sentences.

“It is starting to get very tight again,” said a prison service source. “They are looking at April as the point when they expect to be looking at numbers similar to last October when it was down to just a few hundred spaces left.”

There are 88,203 prisoners in jails in England and Wales but the numbers are projected to rise to up to 106,300 in March 2027 as a result of court backlogs being cleared, longer sentences and more offenders being convicted after the 20,000 increase in police numbers.

The Conservatives pledged to build 20,000 more cells by the mid-2020s and two new jails have been opened. They are now understood to be at close to capacity while plans for three prisons in Lancashire, Leicestershire and Buckinghamshire have all been delayed by problems gaining planning permission.

Changes in the Government’s new sentencing Bill have yet to receive legislative approval from Parliament. These include reducing the number of offenders sent to prison for under 12 months under a presumption on judges and magistrates that they should instead be punished in the community.