Prisons: Overcrowding
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment she has made of trends in the level of overcrowding in prisons.
Answered by Sir Nicholas Dakin
This Government inherited a prisons system in crisis and took immediate action to ensure it did not collapse. However, SDS40 was not a long term solution and we are once again at over 99% capacity. Recently, we only had 732 places left across the whole of the adult male estate.
Figures and analysis relating to the level of crowding in prisons is published annually in the HMPPS Digest.
This document states that in the 12-months to March 2024, the crowding rate at establishments across England and Wales was 23.6%, up from 22.9% in the previous 12-month period. Table 2, accompanying the Digest, provides a time series of crowding information back to 1999. The 2024/25 Digest will be published on 31 July 2025.
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