England<\/a> waiting for a court appearance will be kept in police cells until prison space is available.<\/p>\nThe government said that its action to \u201ctackle violent thuggery on our streets\u201d has \u201cexacerbated longstanding capacity issues in our prisons\u201d.<\/p>\n
James Timpson, the prisons minister, said: \u201cWe inherited a justice system in crisis and exposed to shocks. As a result, we have been forced into making difficult but necessary decisions to keep it operating.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the emergency measures would help \u201cmanage the pressure felt in some parts of the country\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added that anyone who posed a risk to the public \u201cwill not be bailed\u201d and police\u2019s ability to arrest criminals will not be affected.<\/p>\n
Nev Kemp, of the National Police Chiefs\u2019 Council, said: \u201cWe are working closely with criminal justice system partners to manage demand in the system and ensure that the public are safe. Policing will continue to arrest anyone that they need to in order to keep the public safe, including policing protests and events and ensuring that people are arrested as expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark Fairhurst, the national chair of the Prison Officers\u2019 Association, said on Sunday that the measure risked \u201cclogging up police cells\u201d and he blamed rioters for increasing the pressure on prisons.<\/p>\n
Fairhurst told BBC Radio 4\u2019s Broadcasting House on Sunday: \u201cLast week we had the biggest influx of new receptions I\u2019ve seen for quite some time. We had 397 new receptions. As of Friday we only had 340 spaces left in the adult closed male estate, which is feeling the most pressure.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be surprised if at some point tomorrow morning the Ministry of Justice would announce that Operation Early Dawn kicks in to play at some point next week, probably Tuesday onwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pinch points at the moment are the north-east and the north-west, so it\u2019s likely that if you commit an offence in those areas you will be carted 100, 200 miles away from home to serve your sentence because there\u2019s simply very few spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Operation Early Dawn is a contingency measure that has been used for very short periods \u2013 usually no longer than a week \u2013 to manage immediate, localised, pressures on the prison estate. It steps up coordination between police stations, the Prison Service and the courts to make sure nobody is taken to the courts until the Prison Service can guarantee a space for them should they be remanded.<\/p>\n
In May, Operation Early Dawn was triggered in London and north-east England before being rolled out across England after concerns over prison overcrowding. It meant that defendants in police custody remained there and were not transferred to magistrates courts for bail hearings in case there was no space in jail cells for those remanded into custody.<\/p>\n
During the same month, police were instructed to consider making fewer arrests because of the lack of space in prisons.<\/p>\n
Last month, the Ministry of Justice said violence and self-harm in prison had risen to \u201cunacceptable\u201d levels as overcrowding pushed jails to the \u201cpoint of collapse\u201d.<\/p>\n
The justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood, announced plans to cut the proportion of the sentence inmates must serve behind bars from 50% to 40%. The temporary move \u2013 which does not apply to those convicted of sex offences, terrorism, domestic abuse or some violent offences \u2013 is expected to result in 5,500 offenders being released in September and October.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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