Britain came close to running out of prison places during the summer riots, Keir Starmer has revealed.
Describing his ‘anger’ at the scenes of jubilant prisoners celebrating their early release last week, the Prime Minister said he had been left with no choice but to let out hundreds of criminals.
Around 1,700 prisoners were released early last week, including robbers, drug dealers and even killers. Thousands more are due to be let out early in the coming months to ease prison overcrowding.
In sickening scenes last week, prisoners celebrated outside jails, with some thanking Sir Keir personally for their release.
Speaking to reporters while travelling in Italy the PM said the decision had left him ‘angry’.
‘I spent five years prosecuting and putting people in prison and being forced to release people who should be in prison makes me angry,’ he said.
The Prime Minister said he had been left with no choice but to let out hundreds of criminals. Pictured: Keir Starmer meets with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni
The PM said ministers were now working to accelerate the provision of new prison places – although early releases are expected to continue for at least 18 months (stock image)
‘But the choice was pretty simple. We’d got to the point where prisons were so full we had the choice between releasing people in the way that we’ve done it, or not being able to arrest people and put them in prison.
‘You can imagine the impact on law and order in this country if we’d reached a place where police could not make the necessary arrests day by day, and you’d be having some pretty hard questions for me if we’d got to that stage.’
Sir Keir said that during the summer riots, which led to hundreds of arrests, he had stood in the government’s emergency Cobra room ‘literally having to plot how many prison places we had, in order to assess whether we could contain the disorder’.
He added: ‘No prime minister should be in that position.’
The PM said ministers were now working to accelerate the provision of new prison places – although early releases are expected to continue for at least 18 months.
The Labour government let 1,700 prisoners out early to ease record overcrowding and prevent the criminal justice system from seizing up entirely due to a lack of cells
Prisoners celebrated outside jails, with some thanking Sir Keir personally for their release. Pictured: Jason Hoganson seen outside HM Prison Durham
‘What we’ve got to do about it now, we’ve obviously got to take this measure which I didn’t want to take, we are going to change the planning laws to make sure where we need prisons we can get them built much more quickly,’ he said.
‘We’ve already fast-tracked or tried to move forward some of the projects in play, but we’re doing everything we can to try to make sure we’ve got the capacity, but to be put into a position where it’s a choice because prisons are so overcrowded that it’s a release scheme the likes of which we had to go down, or a point where the police say we cannot carry out our basic functions, is not a position I should have been put in.’
Sir Keir blamed the last Tory government for the crisis, claiming that Rishi Sunak had been warned repeatedly to act on prison overcrowding.
But Tory sources point out that the details of the early release scheme were decided by Labour – and accuse ministers of exaggerating the situation.