Just 100 places are left in men’s jails, according to reports – marking the closest the prison service has come to running out of space.
Britain’s already crowded prison system has come under even more pressure in recent weeks following the jailing of far-right thugs involved in race riots earlier this month.
A surge of arrests over the Bank Holiday weekend, including 330 at the Notting Hill Carnival in West London, has further worsened the situation.
The Ministry of Justice has already activated Operation Early Dawn, which allows defendants to be held in police cells and not summoned to magistrates’ court until a space in prison is available.
The next step, which has never been used, would be to activate an emergency plan known as Operation Brinker, which would require forces to hold suspects even longer before they reach court – potentially overnight and even beyond 24 hours.
A man is led away in handcuffs by two officers at the Notting Hill Carnival in West London yesterday
Britain’s already crowded prison system has come under even more pressure in recent weeks
But sources suggested MoJ officials are confident they can manage without activating the unprecedented measures, according to the Telegraph – which reported the claim that only 100 male prison spaces remain available.
MailOnline contacted the MOJ for comment.
It comes as Keir Starmer revealed ministers had to check ‘every day’ that there was space to jail race rioters after the Southport tragedy amid a crisis in UK prisons.
The Prime Minister said he had questioned whether the legal system could handle the fallout from the lawlessness that followed the attack in Merseyside that left three children dead.
Sir Keir said that as a former director of public prosecutions he had not wanted to trigger the early release of other prisoners to free up space.
But he suggested he had needed to make an example of those involved in violence and criminal damage in the days after the stabbings.
After a speech in Downing Street this morning he said that in 2011, when he was DPP, he did not doubt that the courts could respond to the riots, but ‘this time, to be honest with you, I genuinely didn’t know’.
‘Every day of that disorder, literally every day, we had to check the precise number of prison places and where those places were to make sure we could arrest, charge and prosecute people quickly,’ he said.
‘Not having enough prison places is about as fundamental a failure as you can get and those people throwing rocks, torching cars, making threats, they didn’t just know the system was broken, they were betting on it, gaming it. They thought ”Ah, they’ll never arrest me and if they do, I won’t be prosecuted, and if I am, I won’t get much of a sentence”.
Dozens of far-right thugs have been jailed following riots earlier this month
‘They saw the cracks in our society after 14 years of failure and they exploited them. That’s what we’ve inherited. Not just an economic black hole, a societal black hole and that’s why we have to take action and do things differently.’
Earlier this month ministers activated ‘Operation Early Dawn’ as they triggered emergency measures to avoid prison overcrowding as more rioters were sentenced.
The long-standing plan, described as a ‘one in, one out’ policy, was implemented in the North of England in the wake of the recent widespread disorder across towns and cities.
It allows defendants to be held in police cells and not summoned to magistrates’ court until a space in prison is available.
In the aftermath of riots that broke out after the Southport stabbing attack on 29 July, hundreds of people appeared in magistrates’ courts in relation to the chaos.
Sir Keir told reporters today: ‘I didn’t want to release prisoners early, I was chief prosecutor for five years, it goes against the grain of everything I’ve ever done, but to be blunt, if we hadn’t taken that difficult decision immediately, we wouldn’t have been able to respond to the riots as we did.
The Prime Minister said he had questioned whether the legal system could handle the fallout from the lawlessness that followed a stabbing on Merseyside that left three children dead.
The Prime Minister drew parallels between the clean-up of the riots, and the work his Government is proposing to improve the country.
Sir Keir Starmer said: ‘We can get through this together, because the riots didn’t just betray the sickness, they also revealed the cure, found not in the cynical conflict of populism, but in the coming together of a country.
‘The people who got together the morning after, all around the country, with their brooms, their shovels, their trowels and cleared up their community, they reminded us who we really are. I felt real pride in those people who cleaned up our streets, rebuilt the walls, repaired the damage.
‘And I couldn’t help thinking about the obvious parallels, because imagine the pride we will feel as a nation when after the hard work of clearing up the mess is done, we have a country that we have built together, built to last, that belongs to every single one of us, and all of us have a stake in it.
‘Our hard work rewarded a dozen times over, because we’ll have an economy that works for everyone, an NHS not just back on its feet, but fit for the future, streets that everyone feels safe in, no longer dependent on foreign dictators, because we’re producing our own clean energy right here and giving every child, wherever they come from, whatever their background, the chance to go as far as their talents will take them.’