The UK needs to build more prisons as official figures show space to jail criminals will run out in three years.
Charlie Taylor, chief inspector of prisons, said the government was already “scraping the barrel” in terms of places, with fewer than 1,000 spare spaces.
The government has quietly dropped its pledge to build 20,000 cells by the middle of this decade. Fewer than half of these places will have been delivered by March 2025, according to Ministry of Justice projections. So far 5,400 have been provided, with a further 2,500 due by March 2025.
