Prison authorities have been underestimating the scale of overcrowding in jails in England and Wales for six years, the prisons minister has admitted.
Andrew Selous apologised to MPs on Thursday for incorrect statements made by the Ministry of Justice and in written answers to parliament that understated the scale of prison overcrowding every year since 2008-09.
He said the errors in the published figures had arisen because of the way some prisons had counted “doubled-up” cells, where two prisoners are required to share a cell designed for one.
The revised figures now take account of the number of all prisoners affected by overcrowding, showing that 24.5% of inmates in England and Wales were doubled up in 2013-14 compared with the previously published figure of 21.9%.
However, the MoJ said it could not say how many extra prisoners the revised figure represented as being held in overcrowded conditions. Three years ago, unrevised official figures showed that 24.1%, or 21,027 prisoners, were held in overcrowded conditions in 2011-12. This included 20,157 inmates who were doubled up in cells meant for one and a further 870 held three to a cell in accommodation designed only for two.
The prisons minister said: “The public should rightly expect this information to be accurate. Publication of clear, reliable figures on how many prisoners we hold in crowded conditions is an important part of making sure we can be held to account.
“It is therefore unacceptable that these incorrect figures have been published over the last six years and that these errors were not identified sooner,” added Selous. “Since discovering these errors, we have taken urgent steps to ensure that figures will in future be subjected to rigorous quality control.”
Frances Crook, of the Howard League for Penal Reform, welcomed what she called the new culture of honesty and accountability at the ministry.
“Simple logic dictates that if two or three prisoners are sharing a cell designed for one, then all those people are being held in overcrowded conditions,” she said. “We are pleased that the government’s figures will now reflect this, as the Howard League has made this point repeatedly for many years.
“Holding men in overcrowded cells with nothing to do all day is never going to help them become law-abiding citizens on release, and it is important that the true scale of overcrowding will be made known. Only by knowing what the problem is can we work together to find a solution.”
