Two-thirds of prisons in England and Wales are officially overcrowded, with HMP Wandsworth holding more extra prisoners than any other jail despite the alleged escape of a terror suspect last month.
In September there were 663 more men in Wandsworth than the 950 the south London prison has “good, decent” accommodation for, under the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) definition. That means prisoners sharing cells designed for one, often with a toilet in the middle shielded by a curtain.
Normally when a prison is in crisis – for example, suffering a high-profile escape or scathing inspection report, both of which happened at Wandsworth in the space of the past six weeks – the Prison Service will move inmates to other jails to ease pressure.
But on the last Friday in September, three weeks after Daniel Khalife allegedly escaped from Wandsworth clinging to the bottom of a food delivery truck, there were just four fewer prisoners than at the time of the escape, MoJ figures show.
This is despite the UK justice secretary, Alex Chalk, saying that 40 prisoners had been transferred from Wandsworth “out of an abundance of caution” after Khalife’s disappearance.
A report last week from the independent monitoring board of Wandsworth found it was “dangerously overcrowded” with men kept in “inhumane conditions”.
Last week the prison population of England and Wales reached an all-time high of 88,225, with judges told to delay the sentencing of convicted criminals now on bail – including rapists and burglars – because prisons are full.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph on Sunday, Chalk outlined plans to “manage population pressures” by “moving away from short-term prison sentences that make hardened criminals rather than rehabilitated offenders”.
In its latest bulletin, the MoJ says the prison estate in England and Wales is not quite full, with 557 “operational, usable” places left across its 120 jails.
But the figures for certified normal accommodation (CNA) reveal that most prisons are overcrowded, with 9,714 more prisoners in the system than the CNA figure of 78,511 in late September.
CNA represents the “good, decent standard of accommodation” that the Prison Service says it aspires to provide to all inmates. Two-thirds (80) of jails in England and Wales are holding more prisoners than their CNA.
In terms of the number of extra prisoners, Oakwood in Staffordshire is the next most overcrowded after Wandsworth. The biggest jail in England, it is holding 2,114 men – 514 more than its CNA of 1,600.
The third most overcrowded is HMP Leeds, which has 1,109 men, 468 more than its CNA of 641.
Rob Preece, a spokesperson for the Howard League for Penal Reform, said: “The latest figures show the government has next to no room for manoeuvre when it comes to dealing with the problem of overcrowding. Not only are two-thirds of prisons overcrowded by the MoJ’s own definition, but if you look at those which actually have capacity, they are almost all women’s prisons, young offender institutions (YOIs) or high-security (category A) prisons, which can’t accept most transfers.”
None of the five YOIs in England are over capacity, and three women-only prisons are overcrowded.
The two least crowded prisons in England and Wales are the newest: Fosse Way, a private jail operated by Serco that only started accepting prisoners in May and has 137 spaces, and Five Wells in Northamptonshire, privately operated by G4S since it opened last year, which has 124 spaces.
The MoJ said it had toughened penalties by ending automatic halfway release for serious sexual and violent crimes and increasing the average time spent in prison by three years.
A statement blamed “unprecedented growth in the prison population” on “the pandemic and barristers’ strike, particularly among those awaiting trial, with 6,000 more prisoners on remand than pre-pandemic”.
The statement added: “The Prison Service has already put in place measures such as rapid deployment cells and doubling up cells to help manage these pressures, and the government is carrying out the biggest prison building campaign since the Victorian era to create 20,000 new places, making sure we always have the places we need.”
