'Half-baked' plan could see UK convicts sent to Estonia

Prison officers deride scheme as jails house record numbers

- JOE MIDDLETON AND ARCHIE MITCHELL

The prison population in England and Wales has reached a new record high as a scheme to house UK prisoners in Estonia to solve Britain's jail overcrowding crisis has been branded half-baked and unworkable.

Official figures showed there were 88,521 people behind bars yesterday, 171 more than the record set at the end of the previous week. The prison population has risen by 1,025 people over the past four weeks and now stands at its highest level since weekly population data was first published in 2011.

Dame Angela Eagle, the Home Office minister, refused to deny reports that some inmates could serve their sentences in the eastern European country, and admitted there were too few places in UK prisons. “The last government closed loads of prison places and didn’t replace any of them, so I think that colleagues in the MoJ (Ministry of Justice) will be considering anything that they can to alleviate the problem,” she said yesterday. “What we cannot have is people who are convicted of perhaps violent or serious crimes not being able to be in jail.”

Pressure on the justice system has grown in the wake of racist riots across the country last month, with hundreds of people arrested and charged. A painter and decorator who helped fuel a fire outside a hotel housing hundreds of asylum seekers during rioting in Rotherham was jailed for nine years yesterday, the toughest sentence so far.