Prisons chief warns on effect of crowding

Nick Hardwick said there was a “critical issue” over how fast the population rose before two new prisons open in the next couple of months.

The prison population in England and Wales hit 87,583 on Friday, less than 600 off the all-time high of 88,179 set last December and 98 per cent of the usable operational capacity.

The rise has been fuelled largely by sentences handed out in the wake of last summer’s riots.

Mr Hardwick said: “We are asking prisons to do a very difficult thing.

“On the one hand numbers are going up and money is going down and we’re saying, on top of that, we want you to do more (to prevent reoffending).

“I think that’s actually not an unreasonable ask for a period of time... But I don’t think that can go on indefinitely.”

He went on: “Can the rise be slow enough so that it doesn’t reach 100 per cent before the new (prisons) come on?

“What we don’t know is whether the rise... is a hump that arises from the riots that will work its way through the system... or whether that’s a long-term trend.”