Britain's Justice Secretary Jack Straw said yesterday the government would spend 1.2 billion pounds ($2.4 bn) to create 10,500 extra jail places by 2014 to help tackle a crisis of overcrowding in prisons.
He said this would increase jail capacity to 96,000 places from around 81,500 now.
Reporting on a review of prisons by life peer Lord Carter, Straw said the government would close some older jails and build up to three large prisons housing up to 2,500 inmates each.
"The measures I have announced ... will fulfil our commitment to provide a modernized prison system which protects the public from the most serious offenders," Straw said.
Legislation on indeterminate sentences - blamed for adding to the overcrowding problem - would be altered so that they could not be given for tariffs of less than two years, he added.
Under these sentences, introduced under the 2003 Criminal Justice Act, offenders are kept in jail until they are no longer deemed to be a risk to the public.
At the end of last week, jails were so full with 81,864 prisoners that 177 offenders were being held in police cells.
The government has been forced to release 11,000 prisoners early since June to cope with the lack of cells.
The prison population has been rising because sentences have grown longer, with average custodial sentences from crown courts rising to over 25 months from 20 months between 2005 and 1995.
Straw said prisoners sentenced before new legislation came into force in April 2005 would now become eligible for automatic release under license half way through their sentence.
At present they are only eligible for consideration for parole at that point.
As well as building new prisons, Straw said the government would convert a former Ministry of Defense site at Coltishall in Norfolk into a low-risk Category C jail.
It would also change the open side of Wealstun prison in West Yorkshire into a closed jail. Straw said the ministry was also "actively looking" at securing a prison ship.
Senior judges have spoken out recently on overcrowding, with the Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips saying: "We simply cannot go on like this."
Lord Carter's report forecasts that prison numbers will rise to nearly 95,500 by 2014 if the government takes action to limit numbers, but could hit 100,000 if no new measures are taken.
The Conservatives say the government left it too late to start building more prisons.
Nick Herbert, Conservative justice spokesman, said last month that the right way to reduce the prison population was to cut the very high reconviction rate.
"The wrong way is to try and manage the prison population downwards by pushing people who should be incarcerated out into weak community sentences," he said.
Source: China Daily/Agencies
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