Emergency measures brought in to ease prison overcrowding as rioters sentenced

The government has triggered a plan to ease overcrowding in prisons, as more rioters are being sentenced for their role in recent unrest, ITV News' Political Correspondent Harry Horton reports.

The government has activated emergency measures to avoid prison overcrowding in the North of England as more rioters are sentenced.

Operation Early Dawn, a long-standing plan that allows defendants to be held in police cells and not summoned to magistrates’ court until a space in prison is available, was activated on Monday morning, the Ministry of Justice said.

The measures will be put in place in the North East and Yorkshire; Cumbria and Lancashire; and Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire regions.

On a visit to Northern Ireland, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer was asked whether Operation Early Dawn posed a risk to public safety, in respect of policing resources being diverted or prisoners being bailed when they otherwise would not be.

“Well, these decisions are really tough decisions, and nobody wants to take them, they are difficult decisions,” he told reporters at the PSNI’s training college in Belfast.

“They are having to be taken for one reason and one reason only, and that is the terrible inheritance on prisons that we had as an incoming government from the previous government.

"There was a basic failure, which is a failure to have enough prison places for the number of prisoners that were being sentenced to prison...

“But, as I hope we’ve been able to demonstrate, we’ve taken tough decisions, we’ve been able to prove that if you commit disorder, you can expect to be put through the criminal justice system quickly, and we will continue in that vein. But I’m not going to pretend that this isn’t a challenge. We will take the necessary tough decisions on this, but we should never, ever have been put in the position that we’re in today.”

Pressed on a potential risk to public safety, he replied: “We are managing that risk and of course these are tough decisions, but I think you’ve seen over the last two or three weeks the way in which we’ve approached this, which is to make sure that any risk is mitigated, to make sure we do have the spaces available for the prisoners that we need to be held in prison."

Authorities could trigger and deactivate emergency plans to ease prison overcrowding in northern England several times over the next few weeks, suggested a Downing Street spokesperson.

She said she expects the area will “move in and out of” Operation Early Dawn during “short periods of significant pressure”.

She said: “It is a pre-existing contingency measure that is used for short periods – a matter of days or weeks to manage immediate, localised pressures on the prison estate.”

National Police Chiefs’ Council custody lead Deputy Chief Constable Nev Kemp added: “We are working closely with criminal justice system partners to manage demand in the system and ensure that the public are safe.

“Policing will continue to arrest anyone that they need to in order to keep the public safe, including policing protests and events and ensuring that people are arrested as expected.”

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After the riots that broke out across England following the stabbing of three girls in Southport, a total of 460 people had appeared in magistrates’ courts in relation to the disorder by the end of Thursday.

Operation Early Dawn was previously triggered by the Conservative government in May in a bid to tackle overcrowding in jails.

Last month, the Ministry of Justice said violence and self-harm in prison had risen to “unacceptable” levels as overcrowding pushed jails to the “point of collapse”.

Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced plans to cut the proportion of the sentence inmates must serve behind bars from 50% to 40%.The temporary move - which does not apply to those convicted of sex offences, terrorism, domestic abuse or some violent offences - is expected to result in 5,500 offenders being released in September and October.

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