Prisons can cope with UK riots inmates

Prisons Minister Crispin Blunt has said the disturbances in English cities this month were a "one-off" event. Mr Blunt said the justice system could cope in the short-term and there would be no long-term effect on the prison population in England and Wales. Last Friday the number of inmates hit a record of almost 87,000, largely driven by the riots, but the government expects numbers to fall again in 2012. Mr Blunt was speaking at the launch of a tougher community service regime. BBC home affairs correspondent Danny Shaw said Mr Blunt believed harsher terms for rioters were justified under case law. But the coalition's long-term plan to reform prisons and sentencing was unaffected by the riots, our correspondent added. Ministers have said they want to cut costs by reducing the population through the introduction of more robust community sentences for some offenders and improvements in the rehabilitation of offenders. 'Completely confident' Since the riots, the prison population has gone up by more than 1,000. As of Tuesday, there were 797 suspects on remand, almost two-thirds of all those to have so far come before the courts. Prisons chiefs have devised contingency plans in case they run out of space. In his first interview since the disturbances, the prisons minister said that he was completely confident the system could cope and that the jail population would be back to where it was before the trouble within six months. "We are completely confident that the prison system and justice system are going to be able to cope with what the police are producing for us," he told the BBC. "This is an exceptional event. There will be a one-off increase in prison numbers as people serve their sentences. "What we have to do is make sure there are prison places for those sent to prison by the courts and we will continue to do that regardless of how many people are sent to prison." His comments to the BBC came as he promoted the Ministry of Justice's previously-announced plan to make more use of community-based sentences for some offenders. Mr Blunt confirmed that from next year unemployed offenders doing unpaid work - known as community payback - will be made to do it full-time rather than spread out over many months. Under the current arrangements, offenders can work as little as six hours a week on manual labour projects such as cleaning up graffiti. The scheme aims to force offenders to work a minimum of 28 hours over four days with the fifth spent looking for a job. Ministers say the punishment will also be delivered more immediately after sentence. Some 100,000 offenders are given community sentences every year and the public can nominate online the jobs they want doing. In response to last week's rise in the jail population, shadow prisons minister Helen Goodman said she was becoming "increasingly concerned" about the level of capacity in the system. "The prison population has reached a record high and prison and probation officers are being increasingly overstretched," she said.