Prison Cells ‘Waiting’ for Far-Right Rioters Despite Major Overcrowding Problem at Most UK Jails

Two-thirds of UK prisons are dangerously overcrowded as the new Government looks to urgently find places for hundreds more people as race riots continue across Britain.

After Labour pledged to find prison spots for the “thuggish minority” involved in far-right, Islamophobic riots that have raged since July 30, Byline Times analysed Government data on prison capacity to find out if the UK’s jails had any space to house them.

Of the country’s 120 prisons, 75 are already exceeding the safe capacity set out by the Ministry of Justice and most of the prisons not already full are only a few inmates away from being so – in some cases they have space for less than ten extra prisoners.

Capacity is so limited that just a few hundred extra detainees would be enough to completely overwhelm the system, the data suggests.

However, Justice Minister Heidi Alexander told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday that “we will make sure that anyone that is given a custodial sentence as a result of the riots and disorder, there will be a prison place waiting for them”.

In response to the disorder sparked by a stabbing attack at a Southport yoga class, the Government introduced 567 additional prison places that were due to come forward at the end of the month, Alexander is reported as saying.

In March, prison governors were told by the justice minister, Alex Chalk, to send prisoners home two months early to free up cells because 99.7% of prisons were full. At that time, the Daily Telegraph reported that male prisons had just 238 spaces left out of an operational capacity of 85,000, while women’s jails were slightly less full (96.9%), but had room for 118 more people.

Byline Times has also learned that ‘urgent notices‘ – a type of very rare intervention where serious concerns are identified – have been issued to more prisons in the last 13 months than in the previous three years combined. 

One of those was HMP Wandsworth in London, the country’s second-largest prison, which houses around 1600 prisoners across five wings.

Inspectors described it as “unsafe and inhumane”, citing dangerous overcrowding, vermin infestations and rising violence. They said without changes the risk of inmate suicides or escapes was “ever present”.

Speaking to openDemocracy in May, former Conservative prisons minister Rory Stewart described the state of the UK’s prisons as “perhaps the most shameful single aspect of society”. Overcrowding is detrimental to prisoners’ physical and mental health, can increase violence, and exacerbates existing problems.

A spokesperson from the Howard League for Penal Reform told Byline Times that when prisons are asked to house more people than it is designed to, “it piles more pressure on people working there and makes it harder to meet the needs of people living there”.

“For many people, this means being locked in an overcrowded cell for 23 hours a day with nothing to do, at a time when the physical state of prisons is getting worse,” the spokesperson added.

In October 2023, the Ministry of Justice confirmed that it had stopped all “non-essential maintenance work” because prisons were simply too crowded to allow for the closure of cells that such work would entail.

The Howard League for Penal Reform noted that this meant rules were being broken in terms of cells being “adequate for health”.

“As overcrowding pressures continue, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that cells are being certified as adequate when they are not.”

This newspaper’s findings come as Labour announced a spate of plans to try and reduce the scale of overcrowding in prisons including releasing certain inmates who have served 40-45% of their sentence, rather than the current 50%.

The strain on the system will be exacerbated by the party’s pledge to find cells for the more than 400 people who have already been arrested since the riots began, a day after a stabbing attack that resulted in the deaths of three children. Five more children and two adults were also critically injured.

Stephen Parkinson, Director of Public Prosecutions, said around 100 charges have been laid so far over the riots, MailOnline reported Tuesday in a piece that ‘named and shamed’ those arrested so far. In measures reminiscent of the 2011 London riots, magistrates courts are operating round the clock to process rioters and releasing mugshots of some suspects after they have been charged, the publication reported.

Neil Basu, who served as Britain’s leading counter-terror officer from 2018 to 2021, called for long sentences for those guilty of the most serious offences during the riots.

“Trying to set ablaze a building with people inside, whom you have made clear you detest, is an act of violence against people and property with a racial cause designed to intimidate a section of the public – be it Muslims or asylum seekers,” he told the Guardian. 

“Not only does it fit the definition of terrorism, it is terrorism. It’s nothing short of an attempt at a modern-day lynching and the people who did it should be facing life imprisonment, not a five-year sentence for violent disorder.”

Basu also called for those organising the violence to face prosecution. 

Reacting to Labour’s new policy announcements, Catherine McGuinness, a member of the Open Justice Initiative campaign group, suggested more support was needed to ensure when people leave prison they’re able to re-enter society and aren’t at risk of immediately being recalled. The reoffending rate is around 25.5% for the overall prison population.

“Where are all these people going to go? Because a lot of those people are going to be released homeless,” McGuinness told Byline Times.

“There’s more of an issue to think about, other than the prisons are overcrowded. They’re overcrowding because the courts are putting people in for ridiculous reasons.”

McGuinness said that at one prison she was in, “there were rats chewing through the walls. The building had been condemned, and the prison paid a fine every year to keep the building open. There was mould growing up the walls and on the windows.

“I was in a room with three beds in it. We were all on top of each other. The room was only big enough for one bed.

“There was another cell I can only describe as a cupboard – you’d have to walk into the room side on to fit past the bed.”

A spokesperson for the MOJ said: “Prisons are in crisis, placing significant pressure on the whole justice system. 

“That’s why the new Lord Chancellor has taken immediate action to put our jails on a more sustainable footing and prevent the breakdown of law and order.”

They stressed that HMP Wandsworth is working on improvements since the urgent notice.