Rapists and burglars will avoid jail because the country is running out of prison places.
Crown court judges have been ordered to delay sentencing hearings from next week because prison populations have reached bursting point.
The Times reports ministers are also considering letting current criminals out of jail early to ease the burden.
A senior Crown Court judge said they have been ‘ordered/strongly encouraged’ not to send to prison a defendant who appears before them on bail so as not to add to the prison population.
‘We have been told that this is a ‘short-term measure’, but nobody knows what that means,’ they said.
The judge said their ‘biggest concern’ was defendants convicted of rape remaining on bail rather than being swiftly jailed.
‘What am I going to do if a jury finds someone guilty [of rape],’ they asked. ‘Do I release that person who is now convicted back into the community, where the victim might see them? What will the victim think?’
As of last Friday, the prison population in England and Wales was 88,016, which is just 654 below the estimated capacity, figures from the Ministry of Justice show.
The government’s pledge to build 20,000 new prison places, which was a key Conservative manifesto pledge at the 2019 election, has been quietly dropped.
Plans for three new prisons in Lancashire, Leicestershire and Buckinghamshire have all been delayed owing to problems gaining planning permission.
A scenario to potentially ease the problem was raised by justice secretary Alex Chalk at last week’s annual Conservative Party Conference.
He suggested changing the law to allow prisoners sentenced in England and Wales to serve their terms overseas.
He said the government was assessing how other countries, including Norway and Belgium, have rented cells abroad in the past.
Chalk said legislation to allow for the transfer of prisoners to overseas jails would be included in next month’s King’s Speech.
Labour has pledged to retain the government’s ambition to build the extra prison cells promised by the government but has not said how it intends to overcome planning obstacles.
Shadow Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood said: ‘Prisons are overcrowded and have become breeding grounds for more crime.
‘The government has been warned time and again about the challenges with prison population and conditions.
‘It is an abject failure on their part that after 13 years in government, they have done nothing to address this problem.’
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: ‘The criminal justice system has seen unprecedented growth in the prison population, following the pandemic and barristers’ strike, particularly among those awaiting trial, with 6,000 more prisoners on remand than pre-pandemic.
‘The prison service has already put in place measures such as rapid deployment cells and doubling up cells to help manage these pressures, and the government is carrying out the biggest prison building campaign since the Victorian era to build 20,000 new places, making sure we always have the places we need.’
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