A controversial emergency plan to stop prisons being overwhelmed after the UK riots has been triggered.
Ministers this morning activated Operation Early Dawn as hundreds of thugs are jailed for their role in the sickening violence. The plan allows defendants to be held in police cells and not summoned to court until a space in prison is available.
It comes as jails struggle to keep up with the number of people being sentenced after the Tories left behind a crisis in the prison system. The Ministry of Justice announced the operation will be in place in parts of Northern England.
It will cover the North East and Yorkshire; Cumbria and Lancashire; and Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire regions. Prisons and probation minister Lord Timpson said: “We inherited a justice system in crisis and exposed to shocks. As a result, we have been forced into making difficult but necessary decisions to keep it operating.
“However, thanks to the hard work of our dedicated staff and partners, we have brought forward additional prison places and now introduced Operation Early Dawn to manage the pressure felt in some parts of the country.” In a statement the MoJ said the Government had taken “decisive action to tackle violent thuggery on our streets”.
But this “exacerbated” longstanding capacity – with some prisons already operation at “critical levels” for several years. It said: “This action has been taken to ensure that we always have enough prison places to lock up those who choose to break the law.”
The MoJ said it will keep the move “under constant review”. Last week the National Police Chiefs Council said over 1,000 arrests had been made in connection with rioting – with this number expected to rise.
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It has sparked fears that police forces will lead to “justice delayed” – with police operations pushed back because of the crisis.
Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the Prison Officers’ Association (POA), told BBC Breakfast: “It’s justice delayed at the moment, because we’re not clogging up police cells, so they might have to delay some of their operations. When they arrest people they’ve got to make sure they’ve got them a custody space in police custody, because we might have prisoners filling up their cells. Of course, they have got to pay overtime to supervise prisoners.”
However, Mr Fairhurst clarified that this would not mean that some people who would normally go to jail would avoid it. National Police Chiefs’ Council custody lead Deputy Chief Constable Nev Kemp added: “We are working closely with criminal justice system partners to manage demand in the system and ensure that the public are safe.
“Policing will continue to arrest anyone that they need to in order to keep the public safe, including policing protests and events and ensuring that people are arrested as expected.”