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| Britain's Jail Numbers to Top 80,000 |
| By The Guardian |
| Published: 07/28/2003 |
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The already overcrowded British prison population is set to go on rising and will top 80,000 within the next three years, a senior Home Office civil servant warned. Martin Narey, commissioner for the correctional services, also confirmed that the prison service may soon have to use police cells to house inmates, especially in the north-west where the overcrowding pressures are greatest. Prison suicides, which reached a record 105 during the 2002 calendar year, have continued to rise this year. The prison service's annual report published yesterday also confirms that the growth in prison population is making it far harder to maintain control and order inside prisons in England and Wales. It says that the Gold incident command suite at prison service headquarters, which manages major disruption in prisons in England and Wales, was officially opened 62 times during 2002-3 - a 27% increase. In contrast the annual report of the youth justice board published last night shows that more intensive community punishments have helped cut the number of young people in custody by 9% in the past year. The fall has reduced overcrowding and allowed for better work with the young offenders who are locked up. Prison numbers in England and Wales passed the record 74,000 mark last Friday and Mr. Narey, who oversees the prisons, probation and youth justice services, revealed that overcrowding - with 14,000 prisoners, 1 in 5 of the total, having to 'double up' in cells designed for one - is not going to get any better over the next three years. Mr Narey the chairman of the Commons home affairs committee that suicide rates had 'exploded' with 54 self-inflicted deaths so far this year. 'I thought we had cracked this problem three years ago,' said Mr Narey. 'We have poured money into the problem to create 'safer cells', we have trained many more officers in suicide prevention and we have had tremendous support from the Samaritans, but the number of deaths continues to climb,' he said. The commissioner for corrections said that new forecasts for the prison population were being drawn up and despite the recent surges the jail numbers were actually rising about 1,000 below their previous official projection. 'We are just waiting for the new projections to be worked on at the moment. There is every sign that the population will reach in the region of 80,000 by about 2005-6. He said that the 'operational capacity' of the system was due to rise to 81,000 by March 2006 but admitted that included a built-in overcrowding factor. The uncrowded capacity of prisons in England and Wales would be just 70,000 by that date, he said. He said he hoped an expansion of the early release electronic tagging scheme would mean that daily prison numbers would fall by 1,000 over the next three months. Police cells might have to be used in the hard-pressed north-west where it was impossible to move prisoners around but he did not expect that they would be used on a national scale before the autumn. Despite the bad news on suicides and overcrowding, performance on a number of targets was 'hugely impressive', particularly in exceeding education and basic skills targets, the prison service report said. Eight out of 15 targets were met by the service, which cost taxpayers £2bn during the year. However, it recorded 11.7% positive drug tests versus a target of 10%, suicides rose markedly, and purposeful activity was below target. The average staff sickness rate was nearly 6% above a 9% target. |
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