How many prisons and prisoners will there be when the overcrowding emergency plan comes into effect?

An emergency programme has been launched in the north of England to avoid prison overcrowding as hundreds of rioters have been charged with offences related to the unrest of recent weeks.

Operation Early Dawn is a long-standing plan to hold defendants in police cells and only summon them to appear before the district court when there is a vacancy in prison.

The measure will be enforced in the North East and Yorkshire, Cumbria and Lancashire, as well as Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire.

What is the current capacity of prisons?

The maximum prison capacity in England and Wales is 89,191.

“We have inherited a justice system that is in crisis and facing shocks,” said Lord Timpson, Minister for Prisons and Probation. “As a result, we have been forced to take difficult but necessary decisions to keep the system running.”

“However, thanks to the hard work of our dedicated staff and partners, we have been able to create additional places in prisons and are now launching Operation Early Dawn to address the pressures being felt in some parts of the country.”

How many people are in prison?

The total number of prisoners in England and Wales is currently 87,893according to government data.

This means that prisons now only 1,298 places not fully occupied.

The total number of inmates in men's prisons is 84,283, while there are 3,610 offenders in women's prisons.

According to the latest official figures, the majority of prisoners are aged 30-39 (29,306), followed by the 40-49 age group (18,277) and 25-29 (13,076).

There are 9,361 prisoners aged 50-59, 8,046 aged 21-24, 4,292 aged 60-69 and 3,063 aged 18-20.

2,023 of the prison inmates are 70 years old and older, 282 are between 15 and 17 years old.

How many people were arrested during the riots?

In total 1.117 Several people have been arrested in connection with the violent unrest of the last few weeks. 677 Charges have been filed, the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) said on Friday.

At least 460 People have appeared before the district court because of the unrest.

How are overcrowding emergency plans implemented?

Assistant Chief Constable Nev Kemp, NPCC’s head of detention, said: “We are working closely with partners in the criminal justice system to manage demand in the system and keep the public safe.

“The police will continue to arrest anyone they need to arrest to ensure public safety, including policing protests and events. They will make sure people are arrested as expected.”

Read more

A “one in, one out” system means that those detained in police cells are brought to court when prison places become available.

“We will ensure that the people who need to go to prison are in prison. Not necessarily in the area where they live, but we will guarantee people a prison cell,” said Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the Prison Officers' Association.

“The easiest way to describe it is one in, one out. So when someone is released, we can take them out of the police cells and bring them to court. We do this three times a day.”

Mr Fairhurst added that police forces may have to postpone operations while their cells are “overcrowded” and that they may also have to “pay overtime to supervise prisoners”.

He said: “At the moment it is justice delayed because we are clogging up the police cells so they may have to postpone some of their operations.

“When they arrest people, they have to make sure they are assigned a place in police custody because the prisoners' cells may be full. And of course they have to pay overtime to supervise the prisoners.”

Prosecutors are trying to speed up proceedings against those accused of rioting.

How many prisons are overcrowded?

HM Prison Service operates 105 establishments in England and Wales, including men's prisons, women's prisons and young offenders' institutions.

The capacity of each prison is between 160 and 1,600 prisoners. Information on gender is available for 374 of the adults charged so far, with 393 (95 percent) being male and 19 (5 percent) being female.

From May 60 percent of prison facilities were classified as ‘overcrowded’, exceeding the ‘adequate accommodation standard’ set by the Prison Service itself.

According to Mr Fairhurst, 340 parking spaces are left in adult male prisons where rioters can be housed.

“The prison population has increased massively week on week, it is one of the largest I have ever seen,” he said. The Guardian.

“The northwest and northeast are the trouble spots, that's where the unrest was worst, so it's possible that the rioters will end up in the southwest or southeast. The rioters shouldn't expect to find a prison cell on their doorstep, they'll go wherever there's space, and if they don't like that – tough luck.”

In response to the violent unrest, the Government has already taken steps to increase prison capacity, making hundreds of places available, including in a new accommodation block at HMP Stocken in Rutland and the remodelled HMP Cookham Wood in Borstal, Kent. Accelerated maintenance work has also been carried out in other prisons.

As part of its long-term plan to address the capacity crisis, the government will temporarily reduce the proportion of certain sentences served in prison from 50 percent to 40 percent.

These measures will come into force in early September and October respectively. Prison sentences for terrorism, sexual offences and serious violent crimes with a prison sentence of four years or more are automatically excluded from the plan.