Do not go to jail?
Updated on 05 December 2007
A review on prison overcrowding is expected to encourage judges to reduce the numbers of offenders they send to custodial sentences in prison.
There is a problem at the heart of our criminal justice system - we are locking up too many people - proportionately the highest numbers in Western Europe - and there just isn't room. 11,000 prisoners have been released early in the last five months as a coping strategy.
Expected recommendations:
- short custodial sentence only if room
- use of community sentences
- limit indeterminate sentences
- build more prisons
Lord Carter's review - to be reported to Parliament this afternoon - is expected to recommend: offenders who would normally be given short custodial sentences of less than 6 months to go to prison only if there is sufficient space; greater use of community sentences to ease overcrowding and the limiting of indeterminate prison sentences introduced 4 years ago.
There's also a suggestion it will recommend building more prisons - financed by selling off inner city jails for redevelopment.
Most controversial though will be the suggestion that a sentence should be determined not by the crime - but by how full our prisons are at a particular time. It's an idea put forward five years ago by the then Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf, ignored by the Government then.
Prison population figures
Jailed:
81,278 in prison
177 in police cells
Sex:
76,944 male
4,511 female
Growth:
1993 Total: 41,600
2014 Projection: 88,800-101,900
(source Ministry of Justice)
Since then, overcrowding has got even worse. Last Friday the total number in jail in the UK was 81,000 - the vast majority held in prison, the vast majority male.
Back in 1993, the number was 41,600. - by 2014, the projected prison population will reportedly be anywhere between 88,800 and 101,900.
The government is expected to approve most of Lord Carter's recommendations - although it will stress heavily that jail is still the only option for violent and dangerous criminals.
