Several prisons in the east of England are nearing occupational capacity, as justice secretary Alex Chalk announced this week that prisons would be able to release “low level offenders” up to 35 days early.
Figures released by the Ministry of Justice reveal that all prisons in the east of England were more than 96% full as of February 23, despite measures to increase capacity in the past year.
Within Suffolk, Hollesley Bay Prison in Woodbridge was just 10 prisoners below its capacity of 655, despite the addition of 160 new modular prison cells in the past year.
Warren Hill Prison, near Hollesley, had just six spaces remaining of its 267 capacity, while Highpoint Prison in Newmarket was at 99% of its 1,310 capacity.
Separate figures published on Friday reveal there are just 839 prison spaces left in England and Wales, with Mr Chalk reported in The Times to have warned the Prime Minister the prison system could run out of capacity later this month.
Pia Sinha, chief executive of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “These worrying projections will have alarms bells ringing across the prison service.
"Despite the introduction of emergency measures at the end of last year to reduce demand on the system, the prison population is expected to be 1,800 higher in March 2025 than it was in the previous population projection.
“It seems almost impossible that the prison system will be able to accommodate this increase in numbers without the introduction of more radical measures to reduce demand.
“In the longer term, a prison population which could rise to as high as 114,800 by March 2028 seems simply unsustainable.
"Ministers urgently need to break out of the reactive and dysfunctional debate on prisons and present a positive alternative vision for our criminal justice system. One that is rooted in the things that matter to the communities that they serve - safety, fairness, effectiveness and decency - and which relies on evidence rather than rhetoric.”
Following a written statement to the House of Commons by Mr Chalk on Monday evening, the Ministry of Justice said that prisons would be able to release “low level offenders” up to 35 days before their sentence is due to end, with the potential to extend this to 60 days in the future.
Mr Chalk said it was to “address the unsustainable growth in the remand population” since the coronavirus pandemic, saying those held in remand had increased by more than 6,000 in 2019 to more than 16,000 at present.
But Shabana Mahmood, Labour’s shadow justice secretary, said: “Prisoners are to be released up to two months early because of the government’s capacity crisis.
"The Tories tried to sneak out this announcement following months of secrecy. The public will be rightly alarmed – they deserve answers.”
Meanwhile, Andrea Coomber, KC, writing for the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “For several years now, it has been obvious to any informed observers that the government was heading towards the precipice of a prison overcrowding crisis.
"The Ministry of Justice’s own prison population projections have been predicting that the number of people behind bars in England and Wales will very soon outstrip the supply of prison places, and this is despite a prison building programme costing billions of pounds.
“We need a grown-up debate in this country on how to achieve a fundamental shift in the use of custody and we need it more than ever.”
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