We are sending too many criminals to prison for too long…

...that’s why our jails are full to bursting point, writes former HM chief inspector of prisons Nick Hardwick, and only radical rethinking of what justice means can save our criminal justice system

An aerial view of HMP YOI Peterborough, a category B prison for men and women, which has a capacity for 840 people (Getty Images)

Today, I spoke at the Justice Committee on the government’s response to prison population pressures.

On 6 October there were only 150 places left in men’s prisons in England and Wales. The prison system was full. The issues was not just thousands of prisoners crammed together in squalid conditions, often locked in their cells for 23 hours a day, and managed by thinly stretched and inexperienced prison officers – but that as Charlie Taylor, my successor as chief inspector of prisons has powerfully described, the essential education and rehabilitative activities that might reduce the risk a prisoner reoffending after release (and so create more victims), is simply not happening in many, many cases.

Back in October the prison population was 88,872. When I started working with young offenders in the 1980s and at the height of Thatcherism, the prison population was around 40,000. The latest government forecast now predicts the prison population will rise to 94,400 by March 2025, and up to 106,3000 by March 2027. The government’s long-term strategy is to build an additional 20,000 prison places at a staggering capital cost alone of £4bn.