Would Sir Igor Judge and his pompous colleagues feel the same way when imprisoning someone for 'contempt of court'? Me thinks not.
There is nothing judges hate more than someone who defies the court.
Drunk-driving? Drugs? Shoplifting? GBH? "Sorry, the jails are too full".
Contempt of court? "Put him inside for one year".

The whole system is a laughing-stock.

Will Benson, Lincoln, UK

How about the people who are on remand with no previous convictions being allowed to be on conditional bail till the trial? This would free a lot of spaces for convicted prisoners. Being locked up for 23 hours a day when you have not been proved guilty of any crime must surely be wrong? Are these people innocent till proven guilty?

Julie Watts, Hastings,

I now live in Canada,have been in jail with 2 people per cell, tough.
YOU DO THE CRIME YO DO THE TIME.
We have the same problem with the system, it's like a revolving door to these offender's.
As for excersise that was a walk up and down the teir.
It's a holiday in jail for most.

bob macdonald, VICTORIA, CANADA

Lets all have a free for ALL ! you can basicly do what you want with no punishment.

Bill Ewing, Dundee, UK

Prison should not be an easy ride for offenders. We probably all agree with that . Building more prisons is not the answer. The whole justice system needs scrapping and starting again. The laws in this country have become farcical and political correctness has gone far too far. . We need to stop putting people with mental health problems behind bars and hospitalise them instead. We also need to free the hundreds if not thousands of innocent men and women currently in our prison system serving time for crimes they did not commit. No these things won't solve the whole problem but it would get it off to a good start.

Jo, Worcestershire, UK

Start looking at WHY we have so many criminals in jail . Maybe it is immigrants, maybe it is out of control youths ?.

Stuart King, Milton Keynes, Bucks

Prisoners already benefit from early release, often before half of thier sentence has been served. This government has introduced somewhere in the region of 2500 new offences since coming into office so they should not be surprised if the prison population has grown, where is the pre-planning?

Perhaps the learned Judge is , on this occasion, losing sight of the fact that incarceration is both a punishment and an attempt to protect the public.

John Morgan, Wakefield, West Yorks

Why do we care if they have to share cells or not get excercise. If its that little bit more miserable then they'll be less likely to do it again and it will act as an even bigger detterant.

gary horlock, crawley,

Perhaps we should be building more psychiatric hospitals specialising in treating the insanity of many of our judges. Their treatment should include having to accept and remember that the punishment - note: PUNISHMENT, should fit the crime, thereby helping to provide a deterrent for other would be criminals.

Brown - build more prisons - protect the public.

John, Bexhill on Sea, UK

It is not Sir Igor Judge place to say whether prisons are over crowded that is for government to sort out, his job is to pass sentence to fit the crime and if he can't do that then he should resign.

Sam, Mossley, UK

More prisons not shorter sentences and prisons that provide just the basic needs for they time spent there. Any perks should be earned. It's a punishment not a holiday.

Kate, Newcastle, England

Can we at least have some consistency here? If available capacity is to determine sentencing, can we apply the same principle to other areas? Let's start by capping flights to what can be handled by existing airports and, topically, limit population growth through immigration to reduce or contain the congestion on our roads and railways. Or, if the government isn't prepared to "predict and provide" for prisons, why not decriminalise a whole raft of offences? Such as theft, mugging and all but the most heinous crimes. After all, this would not be radically different from Labour's gerrymandering of education results to pretend that standards have benefited from all the taxpayers' money thrown at the system.

Alan, London,

Perhaps Sir Igor and all his sympathisers would put their money where their mouths are and offer to convert some of their rooms into cells to help deal with the overcrowding. A small stipend would make it worth their while.

Bill Q, Derby,

There is the easy way and the hard way.
The easy way is to deter bad behaviour. The hard way is to live in a society where bad behaviour pays so a lot more people behave badly...and the prisons are even more overcrowded.

Brian Gilbert, HAMPTON, Middx

Now I know that Britian has gone completely mad when a judge talks about 'dreadful conditions' in jails - surely the whole point of a jail term is that the experience should be so dreadful that the offender will never offend again. But no, the lily livered softies who run the country in their infinite wisdom have decreed that prisoners should have 5 star treatment and the opportunity to become fit, educated and addicted to every drug under the sun.

Carole, Gramat, France

Wrong, wrong, wrong. If gaols are full, we must build more, not stop putting wrongdoers in them.

PaulK, Thornton Cleveleys, UK

Absolutely no cuts in sentencing, there has to be an appropriate consequence to crime, we must build more prisons in the first instance, reduce school classrooms to 15 to create futures in the second. the second will clear the prisons eventually.

Terry , Leicester, leicestershire

“That will bring the whole system into disrepute,”

The system is already in dispute because judges like him are too lenient and regard criminals as having more rights than victims. The worse the conditions in prison the less likely the repeat offender will want to return and might actually start thinking prison is a bad place to be and not just a government run hotel.

David Thijm, Storubridge, UK

Jails overflowing: Isn't this a symptom of a failed state? Perhaps if incarceration were decided based on the potential threat the felon poses to society, less people would be locked up for not paying their TV licence and other victimless crimes.

Andrew Milner, Yokohama, Japan