Conditions in jails 'close to breaching Human Rights Act'

Overcrowding and squalid conditions in jails may be breaching prisoners' human rights, the chief inspector of prisons believes.

Anne Owers criticised ministers for packing offenders into cramped and crowded prisons without tackling the issues that led them to break the law in the first place.

She said the rapid rise in the prison population, now standing at a record 72,000, could leave the Prison Service open to a legal challenge alleging that inmates suffer "inhuman and degrading" treatment.

"My feeling, and that of many governors, is that we are much nearer to breaches of the Human Rights Act than a year ago. It is something the Government should alert the Prison Service to," she said in an interview with this week's New Statesman magazine.

"We're getting closer to a situation where human rights becomes a critical issue. Because of overcrowding, there could now be cases which cause serious human rights concerns."

She said: "When there are so many people coming into prison, you can't risk-assess whether they are dangerous to themselves or others. I saw one cell recently shared by a man with a permanent catheter and a young prisoner who was self-harming. That is degrading."

Ms Owers, who had previously kept a low media profile since taking over as chief inspector a year ago, said she felt her job had rapidly become "surviving the day" and "fire-fighting".

Asked if plans announced by David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, to build more prisons would ease matters, she said: "It will solve the immediate problem of too many people in too small a space. But it won't solve the problem that prison on its own cannot deal with all the problems of social exclusion."

She added: "You have to ask yourself not 'can we do it today or tomorrow' but 'is it right?' People want a quick fix. Government tends to want to dig things up to see if they are growing."

Ms Owers, the former director of the human rights group Justice, said: "We lock up 23,000 more people than if we were any other European country, yet 50 per cent of men are reconvicted in two years and 70 per cent of young adults. Can we please see what we need to put in its place? There is this sense overcrowding is driving the agenda."

Ms Owers has delivered a series of scathing reports into conditions in jails. She has criticised Reading youth jail for failing to give inmates meaningful work and adequate living conditions, Manchester prison for jeopardising the safety of inmates and Eastwood Park women's prison in Gloucestershire, which she described as "an establishment in crisis".

Earlier this year she warned that the impoverished regime at Onley young offenders' institution in Warwickshire breached the Children Act and denounced Dartmoor as "the prison that time forgot", complaining that inmates were routinely abused and degraded by officers.

A spokeswoman for the Prison Service admitted that some jails were overcrowded, but added: "We have no choice, but to accept these people."

* The Prison Service failed to meet six of its 15 performance targets last year, including getting 5,000 sex offenders through treatment programmes, a report reveals today. The Prison Reform Trust's analysis of figures from the service's annual report shows that just 839 sex criminals completed the Sex Offender Treatment Programme – the fourth year in a row the target has been missed.

The Prison Service also set a target for reducing the number of assaults on prisoners, but there were 6,684 recorded incidents in 2001-02, 10 per cent higher than the stated aim.