Straw to unveil prison reform plan

LONDON - Justice Secretary Jack Straw will reveal on Wednesday how the government plans to deal with the crisis of overcrowding in prisons.

He will publish the findings of a review by life peer Lord Carter which newspapers report may controversially recommend keeping convicted offenders out of jail when there is not enough space to lock them up.

The review may also propose selling off inner-city jails on prime development land and using the proceeds to build more prison space elsewhere to hold high-risk inmates.

At the end of last week, jails were so full with 81,864 prisoners that 177 offenders were being held in police cells.

The government has been forced to release 11,000 prisoners early since June to cope with the lack of cells.

Straw has indicated in recent speeches that he favours a greater use of non-custodial sentences, especially for those given sentences of less than a year.

The prison population has been rising because sentences have grown longer, with average custodial sentences from crown courts rising to over 25 months from 20 months between 2005 and 1995.

Straw is also expected to report back on a review of the use of indeterminate sentences, introduced in 2003, which he says have added to the overcrowding problem.

Under these sentences, serious offenders are kept in jail until they are no longer deemed to be a risk to the public.

Senior judges have also spoken out recently on overcrowding, with the Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips saying: "We simply cannot go on like this."

The Conservatives say the government left it too late to start building more prisons.

The government plans to add an extra 9,500 prison places by 2012 but even that will be too few, the Conservatives say.

Home Office projections forecast prison numbers rising to as many as 121,000 by 2014 if sentencing policy continues to favour stiffer penalties.

Nick Herbert, Conservative justice spokesman, told Reuters last month that the right way to reduce the prison population was to cut the very high reconviction rate.

"The wrong way is to try and manage the prison population downwards by pushing people who should be incarcerated out into weak community sentences," he said.