The prison population could pass 100,000 in three years time, the government has said, paving the way for a further overcrowding crisis in the crumbling prison estate.
New forecasts from the Ministry of Justice show that, assuming there is a high demand for prison spaces in the next three years, there will be 100,000 inmates by September 2027.
MoJ figures show there were 86,059 adult prisoners behind bars in England and Wales on Monday. The so-called operational capacity for English and Welsh men and women’s prisons is 88,852, indicating there is now cell space for 2,793 criminals.
Under the medium estimates for demand, which assume a 5 per cent increase in cases in the courts, the prison population will pass 100,000 by March 2029.
In a speech on Thursday, Sir Keir Starmer said that public services and Britain’s social contract are “broken”, with the state “unable to perform basic functions”.
Plans started under the Tory government to urgently expand the prison estate are running five years behind schedule and will cost £4.2bn more than first forecast, the spending watchdog revealed this week.
The National Audit Office predicted that there will still be a shortage of 12,400 places by 2027.
The Ministry of Justice has said that the rise in prison population over the next few years will be driven by a continued rise in suspects being charged and prosecuted, more cases coming to court, and changes in sentencing to keep serious offenders in prison for longer.
Since September the government has been freeing thousands of inmates early in a bid to cut jail overcrowding. Ministers have temporarily reduced the length of sentences that some prisoners must serve behind bars in England and Wales from 50 per cent to 40 per cent.
However prisons are still expected to reach critical capacity by next July.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper has suggested that Labour will increase the use of ankle tagging and curfews as punishments for criminals.
She said this week: “We obviously inherited a complete prison crisis from the Conservative government. The state of things was just shocking, and they hadn’t built the prisons that were promised, the prison places that were needed.”
The government announced a sentencing review in October, which will be headed by former Tory justice secretary David Gauke and will look at long-term solutions to prison overcrowding.
It is expected to consider scrapping short-term custodial sentences in favour of community sentences.
Labour has also pledged to recruit 13,000 new neighbourhood police officers, something that could have a knock-on impact on the number of people sent to prison in the future.
