Dangerous prisons should halve their population

The ‘unacceptably dangerous’ prison population of England and Wales should be cut to 45,000, a group of politicians have suggested.

Writing a letter to the Times, former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and former Home Secretaries Ken Clarke and Jacqui Smith argued that the recent violence witnessed at Birmingham Prison was a ‘wake-up call for this country’.

The cross-party trio claimed there had been a 31 per cent increase in prison assaults in the past year, with one prisoner killed themselves every three days and almost half of inmates re-convicted within a year of being released.

The letter says that cutting the number of inmates to 45,000 would bring the prison population close to the manageable state that it was under Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government.

Clegg argued that making ‘our prison estate smaller, safer and more effective in dealing with crime’ would be the best way forward in restoring ‘order, security and purpose to our jails’.