Justice Secretary announces ‘record prison expansion’ to tackle overcrowding
Ms Mahmood also announced a shake-up of prison recall measures.
Three new prisons will be built starting this year, as part of a “record prison expansion”, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said, as the Government grapples with near-full jails.
Ms Mahmood also announced a shake-up of prison recall measures which means prisoners serving between one and four years’ jail time can be returned to prison only for “a fixed 28-day period”.
Offenders are recalled to prison if they commit another offence when they are released early but remain on licence.
A standard recall currently results in offenders being taken back to prison for the remainder of their sentence, but this can be for shorter fixed-terms in some circumstances.
The latest measures are aimed at dealing with the scale of the continuing crisis in prisons, as the latest weekly prison population in England and Wales stands at 88,087.
This is 434 below the last peak in the prison population of 88,521 inmates on September 6, recorded just before the Government began freeing thousands of prisoners early as part of efforts to curb jail overcrowding.
Amy Rees, the MoJ’s interim permanent secretary, said the Government would “run out of prison places in just five months’ time”, if further measures were not taken.
“On our current trajectory, the prison population rises by 3,000, and now we expect to hit zero capacity, to entirely run out of prison places for adult men, in November of this year,” the top civil servant added.
Early release measures have “only bought the service time”, Ms Rees said, including the Government’s decision to reduce early release to 40% of sentences.
Justice Secretary Ms Mahmood said the latest prison-building initiative would be funded by a capital investment of £4.7 billion.
Three new prisons will be build as a result of the cash, Ms Mahmood said, including “breaking ground” on a site near HMP Gartree in Leicestershire “later this year”.
She added: “This is a record prison expansion, and after the long delays under the last government, who allowed their backbenchers to block every project, we are building at breakneck pace.”
The Justice Secretary also warned the recall population in prisons had “more than doubled” in seven years, as she set out the latest measure to ease prison capacity.
Some will be excluded from the scheme, “including any offender who has been recalled for committing a serious further offence”, according to Ms Mahmood.
“We also will exclude those who are subject to higher levels of risk management by multiple agencies where the police, prisons and probation services work together,” the Justice Secretary said.
The fixed-term recall measures announced are expected to free up around 1,400 prison places, Ms Mahmood indicated.
