CHRONIC overcrowding IN OUR PRISONS
FOR EIGHT YEARS IN A ROW, MORE THAN ONE IN FIVE PRISONERS HAVE BEEN KEPT IN CROWDED CELLS
ROUGHLY a quarter of prisoners are held in crowded conditions - and the situation has been going on for years.
Ministry of Justice data for 2016/17 showed 20,928 prisoners in England and Wales were held in crowded cells.
That accounted for 24.5 per cent of the total prison population of 85,645.
Cells are defined as “crowded” if they were designed to hold fewer people than they actually do. For example, four prisoners sharing a three-person cell would be classed as crowding. Records go back as early as 1998/99 - when some 20 per cent of prisoners were in crowded accommodation. Since then it has never been lower than 18.2 per cent, which was the figure for 2000/01. It was highest in 2008/09 when it stood at 25.3 per cent. The data shows crowding rates are highest in male local prisons, where men are detained before a trial or directly after conviction.
Some 48 per cent of prisoners in those jails were in crowded conditions in 2016/17.
The figures also reveal the proportion of prisoners held in “doubled” accommodation.
“Doubling” is the term used by the MoJ to describe holding two people in a cell designed for one.
The figure stood at 23.6 per cent of prisoners in 2016/17.
That is down slightly on the previous year, when it stood at 24.5 per cent.
Justice secretary David Gauke said earlier this year that it was clear “prisons don’t always achieve what they are there to do”.
He added: “We need to create prisons that are decent, with clean wings and humane living conditions.
“It is clear that some of our prisons have, frankly, fallen below the standards that we expect.”
Peter Dawson, director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: “The Justice secretary set out an ambitious programme of reform for our prisons.
“Reducing reoffending, while a welcome ambition, will not make any significant dent in the size of the prison population. “It is only by stemming the flow of people into prison and reversing sentence inflation that the government can begin to reduce chronic levels of overcrowding and get a grip on declining standards of safety and purposeful activity in our prisons. “Anything else is wishful thinking.”