Crowded British prisons for 'serious criminals' only?

By Anna Tomforde Jan 31, 2007, 2:20 GMT

London - Going to jail? - Join the waiting list - could soon be the advice given to British criminals as the country's prisons are full to bursting point with 80,000 inmates.

For now, embattled Home Secretary John Reid has furiously denied leaks of alleged plans to add prisons to the customary waiting lists for hospitals and doctors' surgeries.

But the crisis is such that Reid, whose tough-guy image has projected him to the role of the government's chief trouble shooter, reminded the country's judges that 'prison sentences should be reserved for the most serious, dangerous and persistent offenders.'

The advice misfired. A number of judges, including some of the highest calibre, took the words of the home secretary literally and let convicted criminals off the hook.

One of the first to benefit, only a day after Reid's controversial intervention, was Derek Williams, a notorious sex offender reported to the police by his own wife for endlessly downloading child pornography.

'You can't blame the judge for what he has done, his hands are tied,' the 46-year old said on national television.

The next day, a second judge said the overcrowding warning had forced him to release a man on bail for sex offences against a teenager.

The controversy coincides with the release of new figures showing that the authorities in Britain, except Scotland, lock up more prisoners per head of the population than any other country in western Europe.

The prison total in England and Wales had increased by 18 per cent in the last five years, the report said.

A row ensued between the Labour government and the judiciary, with government officials implying that the judges were staging a 'revolt' to settle old scores with a government that they believe has repeatedly curtailed their independence.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, forced to come to Reid's defence, told journalists: 'Let me make this absolutely clear. If any judge feels that a person is a threat or a danger to the public, then they should put them in custody.'

However, the damage was done and the spotlight had once again been directed on to one of the biggest problems faced by the Labour government - the apparent collapse of the criminal justice system.

When he came to power in 1997, Blair, echoing slogans more commonly heard from Conservatives, promised that he would be 'tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime.'

But today's controversy, and the accompanying statistics showed, that tough policies alone could not root out the social problems Blair had hoped to tackle, commentators said.

Since 1997, Britain's prison population has risen from 61,000 to 80,000, and, staggeringly, the number of young offenders below the age of 18 has risen by 90 per cent since 1993.

The figures also show a re-offending rate of juveniles in custody of up to 90 per cent.

'They come out worse than when they went in. Prison is in effect a finishing school for criminals,' said Jackie Worrall of crime- reduction charity Nacro.

Professor Rod Morgan, who resigned from his post as head of the Youth Justice Board in protest at the overcrowding scandal, said the present system was bound to fail.

Minor offences that used to be dealt with informally or out of court were now being pushed into an over-stretched criminal justice system, while the work to improve regimes in Young Offenders Institutions was being undermined, said Morgan.

He said youths found painting graffiti on walls or 'hanging around a street corner' were being 'labelled with the mark of Cain on their foreheads.'

According to Morgan, the number of juveniles in custody has shot up by 25 per cent to almost 3,000 in the past three years, and doubled since the mid-1990s.

Statistics showed that youth custody had 'a poor chance of stopping criminal behaviour,' said Morgan, which in turn proved that the government's plan to build more prisons was a 'counsel of despair.'

Reid, meanwhile, is continuing to play tough. Two new prison ships, a former Royal Airforce camp and prefabricated housing would provide 8,000 new places by the end of this year, he promised.