The government has taken extraordinary measures to avoid prison overcrowding as more rioters are due to be sentenced this week for their role in violent unrest, The Independent informs.
The activation of Operation Early Dawn aimed to help deal with short-term pressures on prison capacity in some areas, the Justice Department stated on Monday. It is a long-standing plan that allows defendants to be held in police cells and not summoned to magistrates’ courts until space is available in the prison.
Britain’s prisons have been operating at critical levels for the past few years, often with under 1 per cent capacity.
However, justice chiefs warned that the move would lead to “justice delayed.” The measure will be introduced in the North East and Yorkshire; Cumbria and Lancashire; as well as Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire regions. Prisons and probation minister Lord Timpson stated:
We 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 (…) and now introduced Operation Early Dawn to manage the pressure felt in some parts of the country.
Following the riots that broke out across England after the stabbing of three young girls in Southport on 29 July, a total of 460 people had appeared in magistrates’ courts in connection with the disturbance by the end of Thursday. According to the NPCC, more than 1,100 people have been arrested so far and nearly 700 have been charged.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced plans to reduce the proportion of the sentence prisoners must serve behind bars, from 50 per cent to 40 per cent. The temporary measure does not apply to those convicted of sexual offences, terrorism, domestic violence, or certain violent crimes.
However, Tom Franklin claimed that the situation should improve after 10 September, when thousands of prisoners would be released early from prisons under the new system. But vice-president of the Prison Governors’ Association, Mark Icke, said he was “not sure” how much Operation Early Dawn would help tackle the challenges in prisons “lurching from crisis to crisis for some time.”
