Number of prisoners in England and Wales hits record high!

11.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 1st Oct 2007

Official figures suggest there were 81,135 people locked up in jails and in police stations in England and Wales on 27 September - a record high. This exceeds the previous record of 81,040 inmates reached at the end of June, when the government's emergency early release scheme came into effect. Of the total, 80,803 are held in prisons and 332 in police cells. There are now just 780 spaces remaining to house new criminals.

Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson Nick Clegg said "The government's handling of the prison crisis has been marked by a mixture of incompetence and panic measures. They should ensure that those that shouldn't be in prison are put where they can be provided with real treatment in secure mental institutions or drug rehabilitation centres. Unless the government is serious about breaking the cycle of reoffending, in which prisons act increasingly as a revolving door for repeat offenders, our overburdened prison system will remain under severe strain and we will not be able to cut crime."