Housing inmate costlier than place at Eton

THE cost of housing a convicted criminal in prison in England and Wales has surpassed £50,000 a year, overtaking the annual fees for a pupil at Eton College for the first time.

The sharp rise in the number of offenders being jailed means the annual bill for running prisons in England and Wales has increased to more than £4 billion a year, also unprecedented.

The figures come as the Ministry of Justice is set to run out of space, with internal projections suggesting prisons will be full within weeks. As of last week, there were 2,000 spaces free, out of an operational capacity of 88,890.

The demand for prison places is to rise by up to 25,000 in four years to 114,800 because of longer prison sentences and more criminals being caught as a result of the 20,000 uplift in police officers, according to MoJ forecasts.

MoJ data, obtained by shows the average cost of accommodating a prisoner in England and Wales was £51,724 per prisoner a year in 202223. This was an 11.4 per cent rise on the previous year, nearly four percentage points more than consumer prices inflation of 7.8 per cent for the same period.

By comparison, fees for Eton College – alma mater to politicians Boris Johnson and Lord Cameron and actor Eddie Redmayne – were £16,666 a term, giving an annual total of £49,998.

While prisoners get baked fish and chips with jelly at an average cost of £2.08 a day, Etonians can sample vegan bao buns with pulled jackfruit and sweet celeriac slaw, Dominican chimichurri burgers with smoked mayonnaise in a brioche bun and Vietnamese pork banh mi with sriracha tahini sauce.

Etonians also have access to 29 laboratories for biology, chemistry and physics, a natural history museum with 16,000 objects and a national-standard athletics stadium. Meanwhile, inmates are expected to attend workshops, education classes and play pool or table tennis. The data shows wide variations even between prisons of similar status. HMP Wakefield, a category A high-security jail, cost £40,465 per prisoner a year, while HMP Whitemoor, also category A, was £92,866 per prisoner per year.

Young offender institutions (YOIs) are traditionally the highest-costing per head, with YOI Wetherby spending £159,152 per person each year and YOI Werrington costing £222,911 per inmate.

The figures come after Alex Chalk, the Justice Secretary, introduced measures to reduce the prison population, including the release of prisoners up to 60 days before they are due to be freed.

Labour has pledged to use emergency powers to fast-track planning permission in order to build the 20,000 extra jail places needed.

The Tories are eyeing similar proposals after delaying the construction of mega-prisons because of what Mr Chalk has described as the “sclerotic” planning system.