Government takes emergency measures in Cheshire to avoid prison overcrowding

With convictions of rioters increasing, emergency plans have been activated in the north of England to avoid prison overcrowding.

Operation Early Dawn, a long-standing plan that allows defendants to be held in police cells and not summoned to the district court until a place in prison becomes available, was activated on Monday morning, the Justice Department said.

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

Downing Street said the plans could be activated and deactivated several times over the next few weeks as needed.

A spokeswoman said she expected the affected regions to “enter and exit” the emergency plan during “short periods of significant pressure”.

Asked whether the emergency measures posed a risk to public safety, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said during a visit to Belfast that the government was making “really difficult decisions and nobody wants to make them”. At the same time, he repeated criticism that Labour had inherited problems with prisons because the previous Conservative government had “fundamentally failed” to provide enough prison places.

“We have had to cope with this in addition to the unrest of the last few weeks,” he said, adding: “But we have been able to prove that when there is unrest, you can expect to be prosecuted quickly, and that is how we will continue to proceed.”

“But I will not pretend that this is not a challenge. We will make the tough decisions that are necessary, but we should never have found ourselves in the position we are in today.”

Mark Fairhurst, national chairman of the Prison Guards Association, told BBC Breakfast the policy would lead to a “delay in justice”.

He said that while serious criminals would still end up in court and be guaranteed a prison cell, less serious criminals would either spend longer in police cells or be released on bail.

“At the moment it is a case of delayed justice because we are not overloading the police cells, so they may have to postpone some of their operations,” he said.

“When they arrest people, they have to make sure they provide them with a place in police custody because the prisoners' cells may be full. Of course, they have to pay overtime to supervise the prisoners.”

But Mr Fairhurst made it clear that this did not mean that some people who would normally go to prison could avoid it.

Tom Franklin, executive director of the judges' association, said the measures would lead to delays in the trial of the defendants.

“This means that some defendants will face delays in their trial because the prison service cannot guarantee that a place will be available for them if they are remanded in custody,” he told BBC Radio 4's “Today” programme.

“We know that this is not the case in all regions, but in some regions, and we know that this will be reviewed during the working day. We are convinced that this is a temporary measure.”

Nick Emmerson, chairman of the Law Society of England and Wales, which represents lawyers, said the emergency measures taken in prisons “illustrate the consequences of long-term neglect of the criminal justice system” and that a resumption of Operation Early Dawn would have serious consequences for victims, defendants and lawyers.

“In the long term, sustained investment is needed across the criminal justice system to prevent a complete collapse,” he added.

Following the riots that broke out in parts of England following the knife attack on three girls in Southport, 460 people appeared before the magistrates' courts in connection with the riots by the end of Thursday.

Lawyer Claire Anderson, defending 32-year-old Dean Groenewald, who was sentenced to 26 months in prison for throwing a brick at police officers in Sunderland, told Newcastle Crown Court on Monday that prison conditions were “exceptionally difficult at the moment”.

Nev Kemp, deputy chief constable and head of the National Police Chiefs' Council's detention division, said: “Police will continue to arrest anyone who needs to be arrested to ensure public safety. This includes policing protests and events. We want to make sure people are arrested as expected.”

Operation Early Dawn was launched by the Conservative government in May to combat prison overcrowding.

Last month, the Ministry of Justice said violence and self-harm in prisons had reached “unacceptable” levels, with prisons on the “brink of collapse” due to overcrowding.

Justice Minister Shabana Mahmood announced plans to reduce the proportion of prison sentences that prisoners must serve behind bars from 50% to 40%.

This temporary move – which does not apply to people convicted of sexual offences, terrorism, domestic violence or certain violent crimes – is expected to lead to the release of 5,500 offenders in September and October.