Prison places in England and Wales are ‘bust’, says governors’ union chief

Prison places in England and Wales are “bust” because of a lurch to the right by ministers, the president of the Prison Governors Association (PGA) will say in her annual conference speech.

Andrea Albutt will use her valedictory conference address on Tuesday to berate politicians for reducing the Prison Service to “lunacy”, prioritising an ever greater need for spaces over the health and safety of people living and working in jails.

The prison population rose to 88,016 last week, an increase of more than 6,500 in a year and almost 10,000 up on two years ago.

Describing those numbers as “mind-boggling”, Albutt will say: “We have a government intent on locking up more people for longer and making it more difficult for them to be released. It feels like monthly a minister is telling the media that some crime will now face a prison sentence, or another will see an increase in sentence, or more people will receive a whole-life tariff.”

She will add that the likes of David Gauke and Rory Stewart, when justice secretary and prisons minister respectively, made the “brave decision” to end short-term sentences, but did not last in their posts. “The rightwing lurch by government has resulted in a populist rhetoric on prisons and we are now bust on prison places,” she will say.

Her speech will also touch on how she was “astonished” by the plan to rent cells abroad, describing it as “a headline-grabbing piece of nonsense” and “admission of abject failure” that will do nothing to fix the capacity crisis in the short term.

Albutt will stress that the PGA is apolitical, and her ire is not reserved for the Conservatives. “I listen to the rhetoric of other parties and unfortunately, the tough-on-crime mantra follows the same pattern,” she will say. “We are on our own to make a difference in what is the most challenging of times regardless of who governs the country.”

While the government plans to build 20,000 new prison spaces, Albutt says it cannot recruit enough staff for the current capacity and that older jails are not fit for purpose.

“At the time of writing this speech, we have but a few hundred male adult spaces left and this figure includes Cat D [open prison] places, not easily accessed,” she will say, suggesting that operational capacity of some prisons may already be too high.

Albutt will add that underfunded, full prisons “are not calm, safe or decent places” and say: “The health and safety of those living and working in these prisons is secondary to the need for spaces.”

The speech will also mention her “very real fear” of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac). “If found and we need to decant, we have literally nowhere to put prisoners because all our prisons are full to bursting every day” she will warn. “Although this may be a blessing in disguise by bringing the population crisis to a head.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “We have been bringing on an unprecedented 100 prison places a week by taking decisive and immediate action to expand capacity, and pressing ahead with the biggest expansion of prison places in over a century.

“This includes the £4bn we are investing to deliver 20,000 extra places – over a quarter of which we have already delivered – plus a further 2,600 places in the immediate term.”