The justice secretary has not ruled out shortening the sentences of violent offenders in a drive to create more space in an over-stretched prison system.
Speaking to Sky News, Shabana Mahmood MP said the government wanted to follow the example of Texas in the US, where she said a “good behaviour credit scheme” allows offenders to earn an earlier parole hearing.
When asked how victims of violent offenders would react to such a move, the justice secretary said her message to them was: “We’ve all got an interest in making sure the country does not run out of prison places.
“If you run out of prison places, none of your options are good options, or anything anyone would be happy about.
“So we’ve got to do things differently.”
Ms Mahmood was speaking at the opening of HMP Millsike in East Yorkshire – a brand new nearly 1,500 capacity prison, built as part of a government plan to create 14,000 new prison spaces by 2031.
The new Category C jail is focused on rehabilitation, with skills and training for inmates to try and help them get jobs when they leave prison.
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It also has technology like barless windows and X-ray body scanners to stop drugs and drones getting into the prison.
But, by the Ministry of Justice’s own estimate, their target for new prison spaces will not go far enough to tackle the overcrowding crisis.
Prisons are currently at over 99% capacity – with less than 800 spaces left in jails across England and Wales.
The government recently triggered Operation Safeguard, an emergency measure to hold prisoners in police cells because of a lack of space.
The Lord Chancellor said the government has launched a sentencing review because it “cannot build their way” out of the crisis.
Ms Mahmood added that just focusing on short sentence reviews “would not go far enough”.
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MPs from the Public Accounts Committee warned earlier this month that the plan to deliver the 14,000 new places on time are “still fraught with risk and uncertainty”.
They also said the government is facing a nearly £2.8bn bill to fix disrepair issues across the existing prison estate.
Tom Wheatley, president of the Prison Governors Association, told Sky News the “maintenance crisis” is worsening problems with overcrowding.
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He said many jails built in Victorian times “require an awful lot of money to maintain”.
“And if you don’t maintain them – if you lose a heating system or security systems that are absolutely necessary for the prison to run effectively – you also lose the accommodation. So these things become compound issues.”
