Recommendation 23

Rising demand for prison places, places being taken out of use and delays in building new prisons have put significant pressure on the capacity of the prison estate. At December 2019, the prison population had reached 98% of the usable capacity of the estate. 60% of adult prisons are crowded, meaning prisoners are sharing prison cells designed for fewer prisoners. The NAO found that the top ten most crowded prisons were operating at between 147% and 163% of their uncrowded capacity.50 Some prisons, such as Wandsworth and Durham, were hugely over capacity, at 152% and 157% respectively.51 Population pressures mean that prisoners are not always held in prisons that meet their needs. As at November 2018, there was a surplus of 18,700 places in local prisons serving local courts, and a shortfall of 15,000 places in prisons which provide training and resettlement support. This means that many prisoners live in unnecessarily stringent security conditions while others live in low-security environments relative to their higher risks.52 We received written evidence from Middlesex University, which told us that this lack of capacity resulted in prisoners “becoming trapped within a prison unable to meet their needs and denied a sense of progression to a lower security facility, cementing individuals into the local prison system”.53