The Government is “considering anything” to alleviate prison overcrowding, a minister has said amid reports some inmates could serve their sentences in Estonia.
Ministers are reported to be considering renting cells in Estonian prisons as a way of increasing capacity in the short term as jails continue to face a shortage of places.
According to reports in The Daily Telegraph, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood is expected to meet her Estonian counterpart Liisa Pakosta next week to discuss the leasing of cells.
Speaking to broadcasters on Friday, Home Office minister Dame Angela Eagle did not deny the reports, but said it was not part of her own ministerial responsibilities.
She said: “The last government closed loads of prison places and didn’t replace any of them, so I think that colleagues in the MoJ (Ministry of Justice) will be considering anything that they can to alleviate the problem.
“What we cannot have is people who are convicted of perhaps violent or serious crimes not being able to be in jail.”
In July, Ms Mahmood announced plans to cut the proportion of sentences inmates must serve behind bars from 50% to 40% as the MoJ said overcrowding had pushed jails to the “point of collapse”.
The temporary move, which will not apply to those convicted of sex offences, terrorism, domestic abuse or some violent offences, will come into effect on September 10 and follows a sharp jump in the prison population in August.
In the longer term, the Government is expected to bring forward plans to build more prison places in the near future.
Official figures published last week showed the number of prisoners in England and Wales increased by almost 1,000 in August, with a total of 88,350 behind bars at the end of the month.
It was the highest end-of-week figure since weekly population data was first published in 2011, according to analysis by the PA news agency.
At last year’s Conservative Party conference, then-justice secretary Alex Chalk said he was in discussions with other European countries about the possibility of renting prison cells for British offenders as a way to ease overcrowding.
Estonia was understood at the time to be one of those countries, while Ms Mahmood – then shadow justice secretary – said the proposal was a “symbol of the way in which the Tories have run our criminal justice system into the ground”.
