New prison anti-overcrowding measures seem to have failed early, with a plea for magistrates courts to delay sentencing criminals currently on bail to prison because there are no places for them.

Only on Monday, This Site reported that

The government has triggered emergency prison anti-overcrowding measures after more than 1,000 people were arrested for participating in riots across the UK.

They mean defendants waiting for a court appearance – who are considered too dangerous to be bailed – will be kept in police cells until prison space is available.

The new plea extends the demand for defendants to be kept out of prison, so we may infer from it that the overcrowding problem has worsened rather than improved.

Here‘s the BBC:

Official figures show that the number of prison beds available across England and Wales has fallen to the point where there are now only a few available in each institution.

As of Friday morning, there were 88,234 people in jails. The population had risen by 738 the past fortnight, leaving about 1,100 spare beds.

The direction to magistrates’ courts managers, sent on Wednesday, came from Lord Justice Green, a senior judge who overseas the workload of the courts.

He asked local officials to carefully consider how they were scheduling cases ahead of the Ministry of Justice’s plan for more early releases, which is set to come into force on 10 September.

The judge wrote that local court managers should review all cases listed for sentence up to and including 6 September where the defendant is currently on bail. If a jail sentence is a possible outcome, consideration should be given to rescheduling the hearing as soon as possible, but not earlier than 10 September.

The wording of the direction is not a blanket order to delay the sentencing of every offender who may be jailed – and it only affects those who would face a maximum of six months – but it is the second emergency measure in a week aimed at managing the crisis in jails.

Serious criminals are still being banged up, then.

But this is another example of “sticking plaster” politics that Keir Starmer criticised so strongly when he was in Opposition. Now he is prime minister and has wholeheartedly adopted that behaviour.

Meanwhile, worrying suggestions are being made about the future of the prison system.

Tom Franklin, head of the Magistrates Association, said

“We also need a grown-up discussion about the purpose of prison, and indeed other types of sentences such as community sentences.”

Is this another incitement to put criminals back on the streets rather than out of mischief?

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