Prisons do not solve the crime problem

Frances Crook

They argued that jail was both a costly and ineffective punishment.

A Prison Service spokesman said the jail population reached 66,611 today, 95 higher than the previous record set in July 1998.

Howard League for Penal Reform director Frances Crook said: "Prisons do not solve the crime problem - in fact, locking someone up tends to make their problems worse."

And she challenged new Home Secretary David Blunkett, saying: "There are numerous safe, cheap and successful alternatives to custody which exist in the community, but the political climate makes it very difficult for judges and magistrates to make use of them."

Blunkett: Under pressure over prison numbers

Ms Crook said it was the responsibility of politicians to "tell the truth" about crime and prisons.

She said that locking up a non-violent offender wasted �27,000 of taxpayers' money and did nothing to actually deal with the causes of the criminal's behaviour.

"Only 16% of the people sent to prison in 1999 were for violent or sexual offences," she said.

The Howard League believes that prison numbers have been on the up since 1992 when the then Conservative home secretary Michael Howard declared "prison works".

Condemnation

Director of the Prison Reform Trust, Juliet Lyon, also condemned the figures.

"No-one in a civilised society should stand by as prison numbers spiral out of control," she said.

"Prison overcrowding threatens to undermine any attempts to reform this most neglected and least effective of our public services."

"There is a simple equation: the higher the prison population, the more overcrowded and less effective the prisons, the lower the chances of reducing offending and the more ashamed we should be of our failure to use prison as a place of last resort."

Since Mr Howard advocated growing use of jail sentences in December 1992, the number of inmates has grown by 64% from 40,600, said the Howard League.

The peak in July 1998 stabilised after the introduction of the early release scheme and electronic tagging.