'Building alone' will not be enough for prison overcrowding crisis as government promises 14,000 new cells by 2031

11 December 2024, 05:15 | Updated: 11 December 2024, 06:31

The Government has said it will build four new prisons within the next seven years in a bid to grip the overcrowding crisis.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) promised to find a total of 14,000 cell spaces in jails by 2031.

Some 6,400 of these will be at newly built prisons, with £2.3 billion towards the cost over the next two years.

The remaining places will be found by measures including building new wings at existing jails, or by refurbishing cells currently out of action, and an extra £500 million will go towards "vital building maintenance", the department said on Wednesday.

The move is part of a 10-year plan to "make sure we can always lock up dangerous criminals".

Prisons will be deemed sites of "national importance" amid efforts to prevent lengthy planning delays, and new land will be bought for future prisons, the MoJ added.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: "The last Government pretended they could send people away for longer and longer without building the prisons they promised.

"This strategy reveals that their prison building plans were years delayed and nearly £5 billion over budget. They left our prisons in crisis, on the edge of collapse.

"Part of our plan for change, this capacity strategy, alongside an independent review of sentencing policy, will keep our streets safe and ensure no government runs out of prison places again."

Ms Mahmood said "building alone" will not be enough to deal with the overcrowding crisis.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme being broadcast on Wednesday, she said: "Demand is still rising faster than any supply could possibly catch up with.

"We're very honest and transparent in the strategy itself that building alone is not enough because the demand is rising more quickly."

The full details of the plan are expected to be published later. The announcement comes after government estimates published last week indicated more than 100,000 prisoners could be held in jails in England and Wales by 2029.

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This followed warnings from Whitehall's spending watchdog that Government plans to boost prison capacity could fall short by thousands of cell spaces within two years, and cost the taxpayer billions of pounds more than anticipated.

Since September thousands of inmates have been freed early in a bid to cut jail overcrowding, by temporarily reducing the proportion of sentences which some prisoners must serve behind bars in England and Wales, from 50% to 40%.

But prisons are still expected to reach critical capacity again by July.

MoJ figures show there were 86,089 adult prisoners behind bars in England and Wales on Monday.

The so-called operational capacity for English and Welsh men's and women's prisons is 88,822, indicating there is now cell space for 2,733 criminals.

Meanwhile a watchdog found that at HMP Kirkham, in Lancashire, boredom was contributing to the highest drug use among open jails in England and Wales - category prisons with the lowest level of security.

The men serving time there said they were "frustrated and bored" and many were using drugs, according to chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor.

The positive mandatory drug test rate at the prison was 25% of inmates, the highest level in the open estate, and inspectors "frequently smelt cannabis as they walked around the jail", his findings said.

In response, the MoJ said the new Government "inherited a prison system in crisis", adding: "Reports like these demonstrate the need for robust action to get the situation back under control.

"We have zero tolerance towards drugs and will continue the hard work of ensuring prisons like HMP Kirkham become places where offenders can turn their backs on crime for good."

Labour said "gross negligence" of prisons by the Tories was "unforgivable" as it said the Government was taking action.

But shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick accused Chancellor Rachel Reeves of funding "inflation-busting pay rises for her trade union paymasters, but not new prisons to keep the public safe".

Pavan Dhaliwal, chief executive of charity Revolving Doors, said: "We cannot simply build our way out of this crisis, increasing prison capacity and improving the condition of the estate is necessary but must come hand in hand with the commitment to exploring alternatives to custody which the Government is examining via its sentencing review."

Andrea Coomber, chief executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform, said the money earmarked for opening new jails "would be better invested in securing an effective and responsive probation service, working to cut crime in the community".

The Law Society of England and Wales repeated calls for the plans to be matched by investment in legal aid, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts, and urged a focus on the "rehabilitation for prisoners to reduce reoffending rates and tackle the courts backlogs to help bring down the remand population".