By Ben Kerrigan-
The Government is turning unused offices, laundry rooms and storage areas inside prisons into cells as it races to create hundreds of new places and prevent the prison system from running out of space.
Justice Secretary Alex Norris(pictured) is announcing £110 million to accelerate the construction of prison places and secure land for future jails, alongside a new contract that will allow work to begin on a 1,700-place prison in Lancashire.
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The measures are part of a Government plan to create 14,000 additional prison places by 2031, after years of mounting pressure on the prison estate. Ministers say more than 3,200 places have already been delivered in the past two years. They now want to accelerate construction while finding additional capacity inside prisons that are already operating under intense pressure.
That means converting space that was never designed to accommodate prisoners. Unused offices, laundry rooms and storage areas are among the spaces being considered for conversion into cells. Mr Norris has insisted the changes will not prevent prisons from functioning properly.
The Government’s immediate problem is simple: new prisons take years to build, but the demand for cells is immediate. The £110 million package is intended to bridge that gap.
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Hundreds of additional places will be created by repurposing existing areas, while money will also be used to acquire land for potential future prisons. Ministers say securing land now will create a pipeline of sites and make it possible to build more capacity in the years ahead.
The Government says the objective is to ensure that Britain never again reaches the point at which there are not enough prison places for people sentenced to custody. The scale of the challenge is reflected in the measures being taken at the same time to reduce the pressure on existing prisons.
Thousands of prisoners are due to be released early under the Government’s overcrowding programme, although ministers have repeatedly revised the scheme following political and public pressure. Around 5,000 prisoners are currently expected to be released early from October, down from an original figure of 6,000 after rapists and serious child sex offenders were excluded.
Further changes are now being announced.Mr Norris is expected to tell Parliament that hundreds more dangerous offenders will be blocked from earlier release under changes to sentencing reforms. The Government is also promising faster removal of foreign national offenders and legislation aimed at addressing the long-running issue of prisoners serving Imprisonment for Public Protection sentences.
IPP sentences were abolished in 2012, but prisoners who received them before abolition can remain subject to restrictions long after their minimum tariff has expired.
Ministers say they want to end what they describe as a historic injustice while maintaining public safety. The Government is therefore attempting to attack the prison-capacity crisis from several directions at once: build more prisons, convert existing space, remove eligible foreign national offenders, change the position of some IPP prisoners and manage the immediate shortage through controlled early release.
But the approach carries its own political risks.Polling has suggested that the public remains deeply opposed to early release. YouGov found that 64% of Britons believed the Government was wrong to allow prisoners to be released early, while 82% opposed proposals to halve the time served by some more serious offenders.
There is considerably greater support for expanding the prison estate. Some 81% of those surveyed backed building more prisons, while 78% supported releasing foreign national prisoners early so they could be deported. The message from the polling is difficult for ministers to ignore. The public appears to want more prison capacity rather than fewer prison sentences.
The Government is now promising to deliver both.Today’s announcement includes the first phase of a new 1,700-place prison in Lancashire. A contract has been signed to allow construction work to move forward, providing a tangible sign that ministers want to turn their prison-building promises into projects on the ground.
The Government says it is spending more than three times as much on building new prisons as was spent during the previous seven years. Mr Norris said the Government was serious about repairing what he described as the “broken prison system” it inherited.
“We’re now investing to boost these efforts further – getting spades in the ground quicker to deliver thousands more places to lock up dangerous criminals and keep the public safe,” he said.
But expanding the prison estate creates another challenge.New cells require staff.
They require healthcare, security, probation services, maintenance and other infrastructure.
The Prison Officers’ Association has already raised concerns about recruitment and staff retention, questioning where the additional workforce needed to operate new prison places will come from. Police forces are also warning about the consequences of early release. Thames Valley Police Chief Constable Jason Hogg has said monitoring prisoners released with electronic tags and other restrictions will place additional demands on forces.
He has warned that police may have to move resources from other areas of work to deal with offenders who breach their release conditions. The Government says victims will be given greater support as the changes take effect.
An additional £18.9 million is being allocated to specialist victim-support services, on top of £550 million already announced for victim services over the next three years. Victims whose offenders are released early are due to be contacted individually by victim liaison officers. They will be told whether an
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