Jails crisis forces rethink

The Government is to shelve plans for tough new sentences for repeat burglars as part of a package of measures aimed at stemming the escalating prison population.

The need for action was underlined yesterday with the publication of a Prison Service audit that warned that the jail system was at risk of running out of control because of overcrowding.

The rising jail population in England and Wales, which is expected to produce a shortfall of about 3,000 places by spring 1999, has become Jack Straw, the Home Secretary's first crisis. On Thursday, he announced a pounds 43m emergency cash injection to help ease the overcrowding.

Next week, he will announce that he will delay the implementation of new powers for automatic three-year minimum sentences on third-time burglars. This measure, which was expected to be introduced in 1999, would have resulted in the jailing of an extra 8,000 prisoners up until 2011. The power, already among the provisions of the Crime (Sentences) Act, will now have to wait until extra finances are available.

He will give the go-ahead for the introduction of automatic life sentences for second-time rapists and serious sexual and violent offenders, along with automatic seven-year sentences for third-time dealers in hard drugs. These measures will become law in the autumn.

The Prison Service audit, ordered by Mr Straw following Labour's election victory, says these new sentences for the more serious offences would only add about 170 to the prison population by the end of the century. But warned that the burglary provisions "would add very large numbers".

The Home Secretary will also unveil plans for the extension of electronic tagging in community sentences and methods of speeding up the criminal justice system, particularly the reduction in time that people spend on remand awaiting trial.

Mr Straw hopes these initiatives will help lower the prison total, which is about 62,200 and rising by about 250 a week. Hesaid yesterday that the prison population had risen by 2,500 since the general election - "the equivalent of five prisons over the last three months".