Prison ships plan as jails overflow

Home Secretary John Reid is at the centre of a political row after it emerged that prisoners were being held in police cells because jails in England and Wales are approaching full capacity.

And on Saturday the Home Office announced it was looking at the possibility of securing up to 800 places for prisoners on ships.

Nineteen police forces are ready to hold prisoners in up to 240 cells initially, a Home Office spokeswoman said. The so-called Operation Safeguard came into force on Saturday.

The jail population reached 79,714 on Friday - a level still 65 below the all-time high of two weeks ago. But going into police cells was necessary in some parts of the country as overcrowded jails reached breaking point.

The Home Office on Friday placed an advertisement in the Official Journal of the European Union asking firms to provide 200 to 800 prison places on ships.

A Home Office spokeswoman said: "The Home Secretary wants us to explore innovative solutions to the prison capacity issue. He is looking at ways of involving the private sector. This is one example."

The decision comes after the Home Office's recent sale of the prison ship HMP Weare. The Weare, moored in Portland Harbour near Weymouth, closed last year after being described by Chief Inspector of Prisons Anne Owers as "merely an expensive container - and in the wrong place".

The ship's closure came nine years after she opened it as an emergency measure to deal with overcrowded jails.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said: "This is a short-term and costly measure that will only buy the Home Secretary a few weeks and will place even more burdens on our police. Yet again, the public are paying the price for Labour's failure."

Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said: "This crisis will have a direct effect on public safety because education and training to turn prisoners away from crime cannot work properly in police cells, or in our now hopelessly overcrowded prisons. This situation is the result of inexcusable incompetence right at the top of the Labour government.

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