Male prisons ‘running out of space’ as only 100 places left

There are just 100 spaces in male prisons across the entirety of England and Wales, the Ministry of Justice has confirmed.

The prison system is already in the midst of an overcrowding crisis, not least after the activation of Operation Early Dawn, where defendants in active court cases are kept in police cells until standard prison spaces open up.

And arrests from country-wide riots and Notting Hill Carnival have soared into the hundreds over recent days and weeks.

The Prime Minister noted earlier today how the Government had to check the number of free prison spaces each day in the wake of the riots to “make sure we could arrest, charge and prosecute people quickly”.

But Ministry of Justice officials have remained bullish they will not be forced to use further emergency measures to accommodate the dwindling number of available cells.

Though the pressure is expected to ease once courts reopen in the wake of the Bank Holiday Weekend, magistrates were told as recently as Friday to delay jailing criminals as the prison population swelled to record levels.

At the end of the week, there were 88,234 men in prison – the highest number since weekly data was first published in 2011.

But the MoJ has said that staff were “working incredibly hard” to solve the crisis – with 500 new prison places understood to be freed up in the coming weeks.

A MoJ spokesman, echoing comments made by the Prime Minister in his address today, laid the blame at the Tory Government’s door.

They said: “The new Government inherited a justice system in crisis, and has been forced into taking difficult but necessary action to ensure we can keep locking up dangerous criminals and protect the public.

“Staff across the whole criminal justice system are working incredibly hard, and the Government will continue to support them before the changes come into effect on September 10.”

On that date, it’s understood that some 5,500 prisoners will be freed 40 per cent of the way through their sentences.

That number is expected to buy the Government precious time to overhaul sentencing across the country – and bring more prisons “online”.

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If that fails, the MoJ, led by Shabana Mahmood, could be forced to activate even more emergency measures – known as Operation Brinker.

Operation Brinker is a never-before-used contingency plan where police forces would be told to hold suspects in their cells for even longer than under Operation Early Dawn, which is already underway in the north of England.

Under it, alleged criminals could potentially be held overnight or for longer than 24 hours while awaiting court dates.

But those measures would only be triggered if the prison service was so close to running out of room that officials did not believe it had sufficient space to take those in police custody.