Prisons days away from collapse under Tories, claims Labour-backed report

Telegraph

2 days ago

The prison system was 'within days of collapse' on several occasions under the Tories and ministers feared riots on the streets, a review commissioned by the Government has claimed.
Dame Anne Owers, a former chief inspector of prisons during the New Labour years, found spare prison capacity in England and Wales fell to fewer than 100 cells at one point in 2023, and that the then government was days away from telling police to stop arresting criminals.
Her independent review into prison capacity, commissioned by Shabana Mahmood, the Justice Secretary, and published on Tuesday, criticised Rishi Sunak's administration for presiding over a 'permacrisis' on the prison estate.
But a Conservative source dismissed the report as a 'hoax' and said it was a 'politically motivated smear written by a Leftie bureaucrat'.
The review says officials discussed invoking emergency powers during last year's election to release prisoners and free up space, because ministers were unable to act during the campaign.
Civil servants convened Cobra, the Government's emergency committee, and planned to use civil contingencies legislation to release prisoners during the campaign, 'in order to avert the risk of public disorder', Dame Anne reports.
Sources told The Telegraph that officials were concerned that a prison riot, fire, or even an outbreak of bed bugs could be enough to tip the system into collapse.
That would have resulted in rioting on the street, civil servants believed, because the public would no longer have trusted the justice system.
The report was commissioned in February and is designed to explain why prison capacity has reached critical levels so often in the last two years.
It acknowledges that much of the overcrowding in prisons is a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, which put additional pressure on courts and left alleged offenders on remand for longer, awaiting trial.
But it also criticises Mr Sunak's Downing Street team for refusing to agree to a structured early release scheme for prisoners in late 2023 and early 2024, despite pleas from Alex Chalk, the former justice secretary.
Dame Anne wrote: 'From 2023 onwards, prisons were running very close to the edge of capacity.
'On three occasions, this was only pulled back at the last minute by the use of early release schemes, gradually decreasing the amount of time many prisoners spent in custody, using powers designed to allow release on compassionate grounds.'
She said that Mr Chalk had 'energetically but unsuccessfully' tried to persuade Mr Sunak to reduce the custodial segment of most sentences from 50 per cent, but Downing Street refused. That policy was ultimately put in place by Ms Mahmood when she took office in July.
Instead, the previous government released prisoners only when the system was within days of collapse, which Dame Anne said was 'just enough to avert breakdown and buy time until the next predictable cliff edge was reached'.
Labour's decision to allow most prisoners to serve just 40 per cent of their sentence behind bars has been criticised by the Conservatives, who argue it will increase the number of dangerous criminals on the street.
Although the Government has excluded those convicted of sexual offences, terrorism and serious violent crimes carrying more than four years' imprisonment from the scheme, lower-level violent criminals have already been released back into communities.
The Telegraph previously reported that under plans being examined by David Gauke, a former Tory justice secretary and lord chancellor tasked by Sir Keir Starmer with reviewing prison overcrowding, the proportion of sentences served behind bars could be reduced to one third.
'Danger to the public'
Robert Jenrick, the shadow justice secretary, has said the plan would 'put the public in danger and victims in jeopardy' and argued for emergency powers to deport foreign nationals instead.
Dame Anne said the early release scheme had provided 'breathing space, but not a solution' to overcrowding, pointing to the fact that prisons became almost full again by the spring of 2025.
A Conservative source told The Telegraph: 'This report is a hoax – a politically motivated smear written by a Leftie bureaucrat and designed to distract from Labour's dismal record on law and order.
'It was this Labour Government that let out violent criminals early, only for them to go on and commit more crimes, and nothing will absolve them of that.'