Lord Woolf attacks jails' 'cancer of overcrowding'

Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice, attacked the Government's record on prisons last night, calling overcrowding "a cancer eating at the ability of the prison service to deliver".

The country's most senior judge said overcrowding undermined education and training programmes and the ability to tackle offending behaviour. If the Prison Service was not able to fulfil this role, there was little hope of preventing criminals from reoffending, he said.

Speaking to an audience of laywers and judges in Manchester, Lord Woolf said crowding was "a central problem that makes progress virtually impossible". He also blamed the judiciary for jailing more people than any country in Europe except Turkey, pointing to the pressure on sentences from public opinion, the media, Parliament and the Government.

His criticism came as it emerged that more than 600 prisoners are to be released early in an attempt to ease the record jail population ­ 72,551 in England and Wales.

The Home Office said yesterday that from December inmates sentenced to between eight months and four years could be released on an electronic tag a month early. Prisoners sentenced to those terms will have their home detention eligibility increased to 90 days. All eligible prisoners must pass a risk test and anyone convicted of a sex offence is excluded.

The Prison Officers' Association believes last week's riot at Lincoln jail was partly the result of overcrowding. In one prison, Ford open prison in Sussex, inmates are being forced to sleep in a cupboard, a canteen and a waiting room, HM Inspectorate of Prisons has found.

Hilary Benn, the minister with responsibility for prisons, said: "Prison population pressures do have an effect on vital offending behaviour schemes, drug treatment programmes and education and training."

Mr Benn added that more than 59,000 prisoners had been released on electronic tags in the past three years with less than 3 per cent offending during their time under curfew.