The prison population should be halved as two former home secretaries and an ex-deputy PM say numbers have ‘gone well beyond what is safe’
After riots in Birmingham the cross-party trio said the figure should be reduced from around 85,000 to 45,000
THE PRISON population in England and Wales should be cut by almost a half, two former home secretaries and a former deputy prime minister have urged.
The cross-party trio said numbers of people locked up had "gone well beyond what is safe or sustainable" and that they should be reduced from around 85,000 to 45,000.
Former Tory home secretary Kenneth Clarke, Lib Dem MP Nick Clegg and Jacqui Smith, who served as Labour's home secretary between 2007 and 2009, called on the Government to act to curb the "escalating prison population", in a letter published in .
The call for action follows last week's riot at HMP Birmingham, which saw hundreds of inmates wreak havoc in the jail over more than 12 hours of chaos.
The politicians said the violence was "a wake-up call for this country".
"To restore order, security, and purpose to our jails, Ministers should now make it their policy to reduce prison numbers," the letter said.
"We want to see the prison population returned to the levels it was under Margaret Thatcher, herself no 'soft touch'.
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"That would mean eventually - not overnight, but safely over the course of several years - reducing prison numbers to around 45,000.
"If the tide is not turned soon, the prisons crisis will do untold damage to wider society."
Mr Clegg told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Britain had "an overcrowded, large, dangerous and, crucially, ineffective prisons system".
The former deputy prime minister pointed to the rising levels of assaults and deaths in prisons, as well as high rates of reoffending.
He added: "The test of an effective criminal justice system is what keeps the public most safe.
"Actually locking up, warehousing, increasingly large numbers of people in very, very dangerous conditions, only to see them go out and commit crime again, is not the way to keep society safe.
"All Ken, Jacqui and I are saying is, yes, if we chose to as a country, we could move to American-style levels of mass incarceration. It's very expensive, it's very ineffective.
"Or we can try and think again and make our prison estate smaller, safer and more effective in dealing with crime."