The Associated Press
LONDON- British Home Secretary John Reid is considering transferring some prisoners to police station cells to stave off an overcrowding crisis in the country’s prisons, his office said Sunday.
Reid is expected to make an announcement within days on deploying emergency measures to ease pressure on the prison system, Britain’s Home Office said.
The prison population in England and Wales stands at a record high of 79,843, leaving only 125 spare places for new inmates, a Home Office spokeswoman said, on condition of anonymity in line with policy.
She said that under emergency measures more inmates would be transferred to low-security open prisons ahead of their release, but only after their risk to the public had been assessed.
Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper reported Sunday that a leaked memo written by a jail governor had warned ministers had conceded that more breakouts would be inevitable under the plans.
The document said ministers had also acknowledged that drug abuse would likely increase in open prisons as a result, the newspaper reported.
A further 500 prison places will be opened next year and the government has previously announced plans to build 8,000 more places, the Home Office spokeswoman said.
The lord chief justice, Baron Nicholas Phillips, said Sunday that prisons were too overcrowded to provide inmates with adequate rehabilitation.
Phillips, the country’s most senior judge, said fewer criminals should be sentenced to jail terms, proposing a greater use of community work programs for nonviolent offenders.
In an interview with Britain’s Observer newspaper he said that “emergency measures of keeping prisoners in police cells are highly undesirable.”